Ethics applied to Economics

In my recent post of Sept. 24, 2020 I claimed that Ethics could be taught to those of highschool-age or older. Will they care to learn? If they want to evolve into better human beings they will care. If they respect learning for its own sake, they care. If they want to stay out of trouble with the law, being ethical is a way to do it. If they want real happiness in life, it helps if one is ethical.

Let’s discuss the difference between Success and Happiness.

Success is having what you want.

Happiness is wanting what you have.

If your life is full of happiness, you are a success. Yes, have ambition; and accumulate some capital – adequate to put you into what Economists and Sociologists refer to as The middle (or the upper) Middle Class. Beware though that anything beyond such comfort might mean you are infected with Greed – a serious Personality Disorder. If you always want “more,” “more and more” you may have this neurosis - a character defect. Ethics teaches one to aim to possess a Good Character.

Kindness is one component, but it is not enough: continuous moral development, moral growth is necessary if you are to be ethical.

And remember
No Justice, no Peace.
This is what motivates the Black Lives Matter movement. Also one can see it as the people of African descent [within the last 200 years} who are Americans now asking for the same privileges as were gained by the Chinese, The Germans, the Italians and the Irish who came here and now are Americans, and who are treated with some respect by those who Serve and Protect, namely the police.

Many police departments have men of good intentions who turn out to be murderers of men and women of color, but who are not brought to justice for it: they don’t stand trial and/or they are not convicted; and they pay little or no penalty for the murder. That is why protesters cry out: No Justice :exclamation:

What say you?

I have posted some of this discussion in other places but it is more appropriate here.

Many ethical philosophies teach and advocate that we are to help those in need, the poor and the less fortunate.

The best way to help those in need is to empower them to help themselves: either teach them useful skills, or set up a sovereign-wealth fund of some sort. This fund will endow them sufficiently that they can then pursue their own constructive projects.

Granted, many will choose just to play games, watch TV, or to fritter away their time; but every now and then an Albert Einstein, a Jeff Bezos, an Elon Musk will come along ,pursuing their respective hobbies, and they will create wealth equivalent to what thousands of lazy bums are not producing.
The productivity of those few virtuosos (along with the organizations they will found) will make it all worthwhile.

If we work intelligently for it, then someday soon, there will be less ignorance (due to improved methods of instruction that are more efficient and effective. They wil be effective when used for instructing in the points made in the best Ethical Theory [size=64](a theory based on science that is an integrative synthesis of the best in other theories. Such a theory is one that has clarity and depth. [That, incidentally, is how the References below have been described.])[/size]

It is then predictable that with less ignorance in the future most all businesses that launch (that start up) will be structured as Workers Cooperatives. The workers will be the owners, or will be putting in the sweat-equity that will enable them eventually to buy in as owners.
They will likely often tend to vote: to pay themselves more, work less hours, yet still get it done!

With regard to compensation and remuneration: the way these co-ops are set up, the highest-paid worker is only allowed to receive four-to-six times as much as the lowest-paid worker - thus leveling the hierarchy we see currently. At present we note that the top officials are often remunerated at more than a hundred times more than the lowest-paid worker gets. So let’s endorse and promote workers co-ops That, in my considered judgment, will bring us closer to an ethical world.

Let’s hear your views on these topics !!

Hi thinkdr, it looks like you’ve been formulating this theory for a while, so I’m sure you’ve addressed my questions somewhere.

I’m not understanding your argument regarding good and bad economic systems: how are you defining “economic system?”

Greetings, dorkydood

I define “economic system” this way:

A system of production and distribution and consumption.

I do not subscribe to a command economy, nor to a Central Planning economy; I prefer a so-called “free market” economic system. The one we have now, though, is not free: it favors corporations and the rich, and who you know, over the ‘little guy.’ It is heavily loaded in favor of the well-connected. It is “Crony capitalism” and is designed so that money flows to the already-super-wealthy.

I agree with J.M. Keynes that consumers “make the economy and the country go round.” Put money in the hands of the needy and desperate and you will see vigorous economic activity. The economy will then really “hum.”

China today has State Capitalism; it is often mislabeled as “Socialism.” The latter word has about 25 definitions and those who use it conveniently don’t specify which meaning they intend.

As you can see from this thread, I favor - within Capitalism - workers’ co-ops which practice Democracy at work. They are democratically-run businesses. They do hire managers …which then function as bosses, but they can be fired at any time by a majority vote of the owners. These outfits still need to raise capital but they may be able to do it online by volunteers who see a good idea …as long as the contributors don’t insist on a piece of the business. The best functioning example of a workers’ co-op (nearly as vast as Amazon) is Mondragon in the Basque region of Spain. You can check it out on Wikipedia or in any search tool to get more information about it. New York has some big co-op businesses of this nature too. So far, however, they do not get much publicity. They choose to invest their income back into the business instead of spending it on promotion of the concept.

Today “the rich get richer and the poor get poorer.” There may be something wrong there…

What did you have in mind when you asked your question?

What do you Readers at this Forum think about all these matters?? Let’s participate :exclamation: :exclamation:

Thanks for the explanation! The reason I was asking was because you said:

Do you believe there are any truly “good” economic systems? Or they all a combination of good and bad? Is this more of an ideal we should be striving for?

Do you believe there are any truly “good” economic systems? Or they all a combination of good and bad? Is this more of an ideal we should be striving for?[/quote

Greetings, d0rkyd00d

You are most welcome! Glad I answered your question adequately.

I believe Norway, Finland and Denmark come close to being good economic systems because they have a proper, functioning social-safety-net. The well-off '‘kick like anything’ about the higher taxes they pay, but they wouldn’t want to live anywhere else: they don’t emigrate from their country.

They all are a combination. Let’s promote the good and minimize the bad.

This good economic system is, to quote you: “an ideal we should be striving for,” yet iit is more than that. Recall what I said towards the end of my previous post about the Democracy at Work structure for new start-up businesses (as well as for existing businesses that wish to convert over to it.) That could be the wave of the future IF WE WORK to encourage this development !!!

Workers co-ops that practice democracy may well be the way to go. Let’s get busy and apply Ethics to economics by advocacy, campaigning, and promoting in every creative way possible this awesome structure for a business.

That is how to be effective and help bring us all closer to an ethical world.

…your ideas?

I believe this link is relevant to our recent discussion:

institute.coop/ownershipnow?mc_ … ff3747cd62

What are your views on this?

Do you agree that we need more democracy in the workplace?
Is there anything you can do personally to encourage this movement?
Do you see clearly why this process is Ethics applied to Economics?

Some feedback from readers would be appropriate…

I think that money has served for a very long time as a crude type of social credit score. For a very long time is has been promoted that the noble, wealthy class are privileged because if they were not ethical, they would not be so wealthy or influential. We peasants (as well as the nobility) know now (especially after the US Presidential debacle) that wealth and influence have only a slight and corrupted relationship to ethical purity.

Ethical purity has been the backbone of religions from the beginning. Every effort was made to ensure that professed ethics were the highest and most noble by whatever standards they thought appropriate at the time. But in every case it seems they have failed. Every time there are loopholes and ways of cheating. And that always allows the unethical ethics-cheaters to gain more influence or wealth than those obeying the rules. Those obeying the rules are more restricted so naturally those more free of the rules gain advantage.

They have always promoted that those of wealth “should” care for the less fortunate. When has that ever worked out?

So by trying to set a standard of social ethics credit score (as the CCP does currently) for wealth what would be any different? You say we have a “science” of ethics now. But look at what has happened to science? Now science is merely whatever rumor is said to be of science and profits the one spreading the rumor. Even science doesn’t prevent political/social influence from corrupting the process called “science”.

It seems to me that until you have an extremely secure method for preventing cheating the “scientific system” you propose, nothing would be any different than what has been going on forever. What would that look like?

Perhaps super surveillance of every individual throughout the world would help ensure that there was no cheating. But what about cheating that surveillance mechanism? That has recently been proven to be a serious problem even for the CCP. And even if a super surveillance system was perfect, there is still the enforcement mechanism. How would anyone ethically ensure perfect enforcement of ethical behavior even assuming the ethics was both perfectly known and perfectly surveilled?

What happens if people are just given tax money every month? How are they going to spend it? Isn’t that relevant to whether it is ethical to give it?

If they spend their UBI in an unethical way, do they just keep getting it anyway? Doesn’t everyone else paying for unethical spending constitute an unethical system?

It seems to me you have to decide on every tiny detail of ethical behavior before you can even suggest anything like UBI. And you had better get it perfect, else you will create a system of liars and cheaters who reign over everyone else proclaiming (just as throughout the past) “those peasants deserve their poverty because they are not being ethical” - or perhaps - “those peasants deserve being locked up or retrained because they did not spend their money ethically” (that is the CCP answer).

The CCP seems to be doing most of what you profess is the good ethical thing - yet they are very obviously not ethical at all. How does that happen? - the same way it has always happened.

So honestly, what have you proposed that is really any different than the same struggle for power that has been going on forever =

  • proclaim an ethical standard
  • surveil the population for compliance
  • impugn those who are not favored
  • seek to maintain control by cheating those very ethics

In this thread (and your others) I have not seen anything to change anything at all.

  • just more small minded communist propaganda.

Recently came upon this quote from Philosopher-Scientist Albert Einstein. He wrote this in his role as philosopher:

p.s. In a piece of writing I dashed off way back in late 2009, in dialog form, readers can see what I mean by “Ethics,” when I use the term. The field includes the topics mentioned by these discussants around the table.
Let us know what you think of it …okay?
Here is a link to it:
wadeharvey.myqol.com/wadehar … ETHICS.pdf

If he said it then you don’t have to keep demonstrating the truth of it, do you. :smiley:

hi there, obervr

What is it exactly that you have against the idea of workers in a company owning a piece of the business?

For that is what the worker co-op represents. They call it “democracy at work” since the employee/owners get to vote on their hours and their pay; they have a voice in the matter. They also vote on whether to hire an outside manager, to help guide company policy. The major difference with other businesses is that rule that the new manager can only be compensated at four-to-six times what the lowest-paid worker makes in pay; in contrast with the 160-times as much which is often the case now in non-co-op businesses. And this ratio enables the top officials in conventional businesses to get very wealthy, thereby intensifying the inequality imbalance that damages our economy by keeping it unstable.

In the 1950s the U.S. was more in balance, as it had a strong middle-class. We don’t have that any more today. Do some research: investigate the policies that Dwight Eisenhower campaigned on …and actually delivered. {How much did assembly-line workers who had a strong union get paid on average then?}

p.s. Are you familiar with the book by Anne Applebaum, Twilight of Democracy: The Seductive-Lure of Authoritarianism.

Hasn’t the US had shared ownership companies for a long time? Why force it upon everyone?

They call that “union labor”. The US has had that for a long time too.

Where are these companies now? How well are they doing? And why do you want to force all of them to be the same way?

Your middle class has been the target of globalist authoritarians for decades. Socialism can’t allow a middle class. Socialism is about separating the upper and lower classes - the privileged wealthy and the oppressed workers.

Labor union companies or corporations end up highly political and corrupt (just look at what your teachers unions are doing right now). They very strongly affect your entire political system. Your State governors and many congressmen end up being elected entirely on the whim of the unions. But what about those not in a union? Unions are not controlled by the same laws as elected legislators. They are often socialist style organizations themselves.And they often use fascism to enforce their union party’s choices (got famous for it). And also realize that if everyone is in a union getting “higher wages” - higher wages are meaningless. A higher wage is only significant when there are lower wage people who suffer even more as those unions get more and more pay.

You are actually talking about increasing the corruption of a system vastly corrupt already - and under the guise of being “ethical”. That is not being ethical at all - quite the opposite. There is a far far better way to be ethical.

If you want every corporation in the US (or world) to have a 3 party division of authority (similar to the US Constitution) - that would allow for your voting idea and get rid of much of the corruption. And that is why your States are required to have it that way.

I am not forcing anything on anybody.
Anyone who has read my writings - a few of which are referred to below in the signature - knows this is true. The theory of Ethics that I have helped to create advocates, and demonstrates the logic of, Autonomy, and individuality. It stresses how we are all, and each, unique. It shows that autonomy is one of the highest values.

If, as you note, shared worker ownership has been around for a long time, and the past deserves some respect, then why smear its Federation’s promotional output, as “communist propaganda.”
That is the kind of conduct we associate with former disgraced Senator Joseph McCarthy.

Children - the primary target of social justice warriors - are not given choice.

Those who don’t give children a choice have authoritarian tendencies.

The Unified Theory of Ethics, when applied to parenting, recommends giving every child a choice.

Some comments here seem to be irrelevant to the topic …which is Ethics applied to Economics.

Now you’re catching on - maybe - aren’t you the one saying that ethics should be a primary or high school course? - guess who is going to be teaching such courses - it isn’t going to be you.

Perhaps but you are the one who brought up objection to the issue of forced ethics - in economics - which begins with earlier programming of children and naive university students - along with their overwhelming communistic ethics brainwashing.

I don’t think we can separate all of these things. We are living through a modern age world war - global authoritarianism vs national democracy. So far - democracy has almost entirely lost the game - the USA is no longer a republic - millions of people have been murdered in the war - millions more expected to be murdered by the apparent victor (all the while you have been sitting here in this quiet corner of the world - for years apparently - trying to sell your book on ethics).

Is it even economically ethical to ignore the reality of the world all around you just to sell a book?

Since I am not “trying to sell my book”; instead I offer links to my writings so that they can be read for free.

And since, observr has so much to express that is not exactly about Economics when systematic Ethics theory is applied to it,

And since observr has no idea what is denoted when I use the word “Ethics”, and thus we are not communicating after all this time,

we may conclude that it is now time for observr to get his own thread.

The alternative is that he (continues to) hijack this one.

…Who needs such condescending remarks such as, and I quote him:

Please remove - mistaken duplication occurred…

The title of this thread implies a question: What is the economic system that results when ethics is applied to the subject of economics?
Assuming you know what is meant by the word “economics,” the question then arises: What is meant by the term “Ethics” as Dr. Katz, a student of the profound philosopher, Robert S. Hartman, uses the term?
A good theory of Ethics will cover such topics as Morality, Integrity, Social Responsibility, Conscience, and Character formation.

WHAT IS ETHICS?
Ethics, as understood by the writer in the paper to which I a about to present a link,is the discipline that arises when persons are viewed as unique, as of high value, and as having a story to tell. They are seen as special in their own special way. {Admittedly, this is a novel usage. Yet as the new paradigm for Ethics is introduced in the following link, wadeharvey.myqol.com/wadeharvey/ … CIENCE.pdf - [size=48][24 ages if printed out on both sides of each page][/size]
the reader will see why it is reasonable to name it: Ethics.}
I wrote that paper about 20 years ago. Note also that the Unified Theory of Ethics has greatly evolved since then, as you can tell by getting acquainted with the more-recent items cited below in the References that follow.
The word “science” in the title of this 20-year-old essay is used in the original sense -according to its roots in ancient times - where it refers to something worth knowing. These days, I explain that the experimental branch of Ethics is Moral Psychology – a field also known as The Science of the Moral Sense. The research done, alluded to in the opening paragraph, was done by these Moral Psychologists. See the article on this topic in Wikipedia. And tell us if you learned anything valuable when you proceeded to check out these links:

Your comments are welcome!

Here, is a late-breaking update in the news:

Be sure to stay up to date by reading this report.

npr.org/2021/03/04/97365371 … tudy-finds

A scientific study found that the Stockton, California experiment really paid off.

Is it possible that giving people money is an efficient way to end poverty, not just temporarily, but more-permanently?
Is money the answer to lack of start-up capital?

Tell us your impressions of the findings contained in this report.

For details on the national program that gave the Mayor of Stockton the idea, see:
nationalseedproject.org/

For arguments on both sides of the issue, see
npr.org/sections/money/2020 … -everybody

I agree with Observr on the values of work; yet I want everyone of love their job. That would truly be Ethics applied to Economics.

Comments? Questions?