This Time, It's Personal: A Presentation on the Evolving Ethics of Commercial Relationships
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Transcript of This Time, It's Personal: A Presentation on the Evolving Ethics of Commercial Relationships
This Time, It’s Personal
John Paul Rollert 9/26/2014
A Presentation on the Evolving Ethics of
Commercial Relationships for Belly
Carve out an “All Is Permitted” space for business 1
2
3
Business is Business
2
Distinguish personal behavior from professional behavior
Suggest “Greed Is Good”—for us and for everyone else
“It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer,
or the baker, that we expect our dinner, but from their
regard to their own interest. We address ourselves, not to
their humanity but to their self-love, and never talk to them
of our own necessities but of their advantages.”
--Adam Smith, The Wealth of Nations (1776)
What’s In Our Interest?
3
It’s A Small World After All
4
Good Credit =Good Behavior “[M]any things a tradesman may perhaps allow himself to do, and
may be lawfully done, but if they should be known to be part of his
character, they would sink deep into his trading name, his credit would
suffer by it, and, in the end, it might be his ruin.”
How to Succeed in Business
(At Least in the 18th-Century): Daniel Defoe
5
1
“Business for Life”
How to Succeed in Business
(At Least in the 18th-Century): Daniel Defoe
6
2 “Trade must not be entered into as a thing of light concern; it is
called business very properly, for it is a business for life, and
ought to be followed as one of the great business[es] of life . . .
this is one reason why so many tradesmen come to so hasty a
conclusion of their affairs: it must be followed with the full
attention of the mind, and full attendance of the person…”
Delight in Work
How to Succeed in Business
(At Least in the 18th-Century): Daniel Defoe
7
3 “To follow a trade, and not to love and delight in it, is making a
slavery, or bondage, not a business: the shop becomes a
Bridewell, and the warehouse a house of correction to the
tradesman, if he does not delight in his trade.”
Close Attention to Personal
Reputation “In order to secure my Credit and Character as a Tradesman, I
took care not only to be in Reality Industrious & frugal, but to
avoid all Appearances of the Contrary. I drest plainly; I was
seen at no Places of idle Diversion; I never went out a-fishing or
shooting; a Book, indeed, sometimes debauch’d me from my
Work, but that was seldom, snug, & gave no Scandal and to
show that I was not above my Business, I sometimes brought
home the Paper I purchas’d at the Stores, thro’ the Streets on a
Wheelbarrow…”
How to Succeed in Business
(At Least in the 18th-Century): Benjamin Franklin
8
1
Cultivation of Virtue
How to Succeed in Business
(At Least in the 18th-Century): Benjamin Franklin
9
2 • Temperance
• Silence
• Order
• Resolution
• Frugality
• Industry
• Sincerity
• Justice
• Moderation
• Cleanliness
• Tranquility
• Chastity
• Humility
Concern for Community
How to Succeed in Business
(At Least in the 18th-Century): Benjamin Franklin
10
3 “That as we enjoy great Advantages from the Inventions of
others, we should be glad of an Opportunity to serve others by
any Invention of ours, and this we should do freely and
generously.”
“Human Felicity is produc'd not so much by great Pieces of
good Fortune that seldom happen, as by little Advantages that
occur every Day.”
1. Good Credit = Good Behavior
2. “Business for Life”
3. Delight in Work
Ethics of Intimate Capitalism
11
4. Close Attention to Personal Reputation
5. Cultivation of Virtue
6. Concern for Community
Bottom line: Not only is being a good person not
at odds with being successful in business, being a
good person is essential to that success.
The Industrial Revolution Arrives
12
Brave New World
13
Brave New World
14
Between 1800 and 1850, the number of European cities boasting more than 100,000
inhabitants rose from 22 to 47.
In Great Britain, the proportion of the population living in urban areas was 25% in 1831. It
had grown to more than 50% by 1851 and had reached 77% by 1901.
Ominous Signs
15
“Formerly articles were manufactured at the
domestic hearth or in small shops which formed
part of the household. The master and his
apprentices worked side-by-side….[Today,] we
assemble thousands of operatives in the factory, in
the mine, and in the counting-house, of whom the
employer can know little or nothing, and to whom
the employer is little more than a myth. All
intercourse between them is at an end. Rigid
Castes are formed, and, as usual, mutual ignorance
breeds mutual distrust.”
--Andrew Carnegie, The Gospel of Wealth (1889)
Ominous Signs
16
The commercial elite “has left remaining no other
nexus between man and man than naked self-
interest, than callous ‘cash payment.’”
--Karl Marx, The Communist Manifesto (1848)
The Hallmarks of Anonymous Capitalism
17
Depersonalization of Commercial Relationships 1
Less Trust Between Employers, Employees, and Customers 2
Weaker Sense of Community Obligation 3
Proliferation of Cutthroat Commerce 4
Rise of the “Bottom Line” as Only Line of Concern 5
Faith in “Invisible Hand” as Guarantor of Common Good 6
Bottom line: Ethics and economics are not only largely
irrelevant to each other, the two may actually be at odds. 18
The World is Getting Smaller
19
1. Good Credit = Good Behavior
2. “Business for Life”
3. Delight in Work
What’s Old Is New Again
20
4. Close Attention to Personal Reputation
5. Cultivation of Virtue
6. Concern for Community
Bottom line: Good Behavior = Good Business
21
Thank you.