Re: Power and Propaganda (was Re: [Pen-l] The Uneasy Relationship between Business and the Humanities)

[raghu <mraghu01@xxxxxxxxx>]

On Thu, Jun 12, 2008 at 8:25 AM, Eugene Coyle <eugenecoyle@xxxxxxx> wrote:
> There is a good account of the utilities funding of propaganda in the
> schools in a book readily available.  Overcharge, by Senator Lee Metcalf of
> Montana and Vic Reinemer.  The book is around in used book stores and of
> course on the web.  You might find an account of what your particular US
> utility was doing back then.  What they are doing now remains for you to dig
> out.  But they continue.


Searching on Yahoo for this book brings up a very remarkable Harvard
Business Review article that justifies such practices as "unethical by
religious values but ethical by business values".

http://home.earthlink.net/~dockstader/PHIL/carr_IsBusinessBluffingEthical.html
----------------------------------------snip
Wherever we turn in business, we can perceive the sharp distinction
between its ethical standards and those of the churches. Newspapers
abound with sensational stories growing out of this distinction:

·        We read one day that Senator Philip A. Hart of Michigan has
attacked food processors for deceptive packaging of numerous
products.6

·        ·The next day there is a Congressional to-do over Ralph
Nader's book, Unsafe At Any Speed, which demonstrates that automobile
companies for years have neglected the safety of car-owning families.

·        ·Then another Senator, Lee Metcalf of Montana, and journalist
Vic Reinemer show in their book, Overcharge, the methods by which
utility companies elude regulating government bodies to extract unduly
large payments from users of electricity.

These are merely dramatic instances of a prevailing condition; there
is hardly a major industry at which a similar attack could not be
aimed. Critics of business regard such behavior as unethical, but the
companies concerned know that they are merely playing the business
game.

Among the most respected of our business institutions are the
insurance companies. A group of insurance executives meeting recently
in New England was started when their guest speaker, social critic
Daniel Patrick Moynihan, roundly berated them for "unethical"
practices. They had been guilty, Moynihan alleged, of using outdated
actuarial tables to obtain unfairly high premiums. They habitually
delayed the hearings of lawsuits against them in order to tire out the
plaintiffs and win cheap settlements. In their employment policies
they used ingenious devices to discriminate against certain minority
groups.

It was difficult for the audience to deny the validity of these
charges. But these men were business game players. Their reaction to
Moynihan's attack was much the same as that of the automobile
manufacturers to Nader, of the utilities to Senator Metcalf, and of
the food processors to Senator Hart. If the laws governing their
businesses change, or if public opinion becomes clamorous, they will
make the necessary adjustments. But morally they have, in their view,
done nothing wrong. As long as they comply with the letter of the law,
they are within their rights to operate their businesses as they see
fit.

[...]

Violations of the ethical ideals of society are common in business,
but they are not necessarily violations of business principles. Each
year the Federal Trade Commission orders hundreds of companies, many
of them of the first magnitude, to "cease and desist" from practices
which, judged by ordinary standards, are of questionable morality but
which are stoutly defended by the companies concerned.

In one case, a firm manufacturing a well-known mouth-wash was accused
of using a cheap form of alcohol possibly deleterious to health. The
company's chief executive, after testifying in Washington, made this
comment privately:

"We broke no law. We're in a highly competitive industry. If we're
going to stay in business, we have to look for profit wherever the law
permits. We don't make the laws. We obey them. Then why do we have to
put up with this 'holier than thou' talk about ethics? It's sheer
hypocrisy. We're not in business to promote ethics. Look at the
cigarette companies, for God's sake! If the ethics aren't embodied in
the laws by the men who made them, you can't expect businessmen to
fill the lack. Why, a sudden submission to Christian ethics by
businessmen would bring about the greatest economic upheaval in
history!"

-raghu.

-- 
"Oh, everything's too damned expensive these days. This Bible cost 15
bucks! And talk about a preachy book. Everyone is a sinner. Except
this guy."
 - Homer Simpson
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