For today's Ethics Q&A we share a business idea from a pair of business associates:
Recently my associate and I have noticed an uptick in job postings that require a specific certificate to apply for the job, like an AWS cert, or a medical license, that kind of stuff. So we had an idea for a business which is actually two businesses: one that sells a cert and another that hires for a job that requires the cert. For example the certificate we sell, you get from an online course in say antelope identification (teaches you how to identify an antelope). And then the other business is for example an AI algorithm for detecting if there's an antelope in pictures. And the AI business is hiring people as data labelers to train the algorithm. But they need to be good at this so they need the cert to be hired. And we can use the images from the antelope detector customers as training materials for the AI cert. You see the vision. Of course it will take us some time to work out the pricing but we are thinking we can make the profits on both sides feed into each other, unlocking a feedback loop of revenue growth
Associates—we LOVE the hustle on this one. But you might want to add paragraph breaks, and a legality check. At Hades Ethics Consultancy we believe that all are equal before the law. And your proposal, on its face, seems to us to equal a form of fraud, similar to the Brad Paisley song "The Cigar Song" in which Mr. Paisley purchases fire insurance for his carton of smokes. Then smokes them. Then gets arrested for fraud. Fraud is against the law, and we can't enthusiastically recommend it!
What do you think? Is there wiggle room in this proposal? Send us your thoughts at [email protected] and stay subscribed.
Steve, a devoted reader of the Hades Ethics Consultancy blog, wrote in to share
his ethical concern:
Well, my Hades, I seem to have trapped myself in a proper fix this time. You
see, it is as follows. I have a very dear colleague, and let us call her
Susan. Susan is, in my own opinion, an employee of the very highest caliber.
Her work is always timely, attentive to the smallest detail, and thoughtful in
the extreme. Our corporate establishment has been on many an occasion the
beneficiary of her wisdom or insight, indeed, that rare quality you may even
call innovation, indeed, even genius.
Now allow me to divulge a private observation of mine about Susan, which is as
follows. Susan, for her many talents, appears to face certain issues as
regards self-confidence; specifically, Susan often wishes to seek counsel from
a superior or colleague before carrying forth even the most trivial of
decisions. For example, Susan is inclined to ask my review for tone and
accuracy before pressing “send” on even the simplest of emails, even in such
cases where an error in communication could be easily resolved via the “reply”
feature. Lately, Susan has taken to sending daily updates on the status of her
long-term project, including such trivia as specific numbers of emails
exchanged with experts on her research topic.
Now, in my inward wonderings, I have reflected often on the ways in which
one's style or manner of communication in the workplace might shape others'
perceptions of oneself; for example, those who speak crudely of others or are
prone to innuendo may acquire the reputation of a gossip-monger, and so on.
And one observation I have made of certain individuals is as follows: That
some, in their attempts to appear a conscientious and hard-working employee,
may betray to others their own insecurities about that very matter, and indeed
thereby attract only greater scrutiny, finding themselves the subject of with
such cynical questions as: “Why is Susan sending so many goddamn emails? Does
she really have nothing better to do with her time?” Or perhaps even such
back-handed and limiting praise as “Big slay at the email job, Susan. You're
so thoughtful!”
Yes, it was in such a spirit of detachment and confidential musing that
yesterday I found myself applying my observation about the relationship
between one's stylistic choices and the impression created thereby to our
Susan. It was thereby that I made a certain prediction as follows: That Susan,
too, might soon find herself “slotted-into” the template of a precocious
junior hire whose sole and outstanding ability is facility with email and the
quality of being well-organized.
Now, it is not uncommon for a man such as myself to issue such predictions in
the privacy of my own thought-space. But today I was caught “off-guard” and
indeed quite surprised by a phone call from the our very Susan, who appeared
in great distress and expressed to me a spirit of panic as follows: That she,
over the past few weeks, as she has engaged in her campaign of daily
informatics, has found herself receiving much positive feedback, but also a
much unbearable increase in her workload. Worse yet, the bulk of the added
load consists of such trifling and simpletonian tasks as compiling lists of
staff in standardized text formats.
Upon receiving this news, I found myself in a spirit of great perplexity and
indeed moral uncertainty. For Susan's words represented the “coming-true” of
my very prophecy from the day before. Indeed, I seem to have predicted the
precise misfortune with which Susan now finds herself face-to-face—that she
would “brand” herself as a functionary of far fewer abilities than fact!
This newfound power, as I am sure you know, my dear Hades, weighs very heavily
on me. For if it should be true that I have the gift of prophecy, then a great
many opportunities would avail themselves, for example, in the stock-market,
or sports-gambling, to name a few. And I have to wonder if taking such
advantage of my gifts would be an ethical breach, a transgression of commonly
understood norms of fairness, or simply the manifest destiny of my natural
talent.
Please, dear Hades, elucidate.
Hey Steve! Believe it or not supernatural powers are one of the most
well-documented sources of ethical dilemmas. In fact, there is a famous story
in Greek mythology that deals with precisely this theme, but our former
copyeditor appears to have taken the HEC office copy of D'Aulaires Book of
Greek Myths with her to a new job in the marketing department at Marlboro, so I
regret that we are unable to provide a citation.
Going from memory, I think the main theme for you to consider as you turn this
"proper fix" of yours over and try to find its honest moral underbelly in your
search for truth is as follows: What does fairness even mean? It's possible
that you could use, as your suggest, your powers of clairvoyance to game the
stock market and enrich yourself greatly at the market's expense. But you
could also turn your powers to good for a more prosocial cause.
For example, there is much investment currently pouring into the development of
new AI technologies to predict how different medicines might interact with
different diseases. Why not offset these very expensive research and
development costs by offering, at a fair price, your prediction services to
physicians and hospitals who need to know which course of treatment would
produce the best health outcome?
It's just an idea! But what our ethical analysis in the previous paragraph shows
is that tools, such as the ability to predict the future, do not have an
inherent ethical weight such as "fair" or "unfair." It's in the application
of the tool that we find insight into whether the application was a good ethical
use or an unethical use.
That's right folks: When it comes to ethics, it's all very case by case!
That's why you should submit your case for consideration using our Ethics Q&A
feature by emailing [email protected]. Tell us what's on your mind,
we won't judge.
Therese Bottomly, a newspaper editor, recently reached out to HEC via the
newspaper The Guardian to
ask an important ethical question
that our experts are qualified to answer:
The Portland-based Oregonian once had community reporters in bureaus in
surrounding suburbs who would cover hyperlocal news, including very trivial
offenses, said Therese Bottomly, the paper’s editor. “Is that something that
should really haunt somebody for years and years?” she questioned. Recognizing
these were minor offenses the paper no longer covered, she formally launched a
clean slate program in 2021, establishing an internal committee to review
requests.
According to the article, the clean slate policy allows the newspaper to go back
and remove people’s names from newspaper articles about crimes they committed if
the crime happened more than four years ago and was minor. This is supposed to
help criminals in moving on from their past lives.
To Therese’s question: We agree about the idea that something you did as a
youngster shouldn’t haunt you for years and years. In fact, in Therese’s clean
slate program we can recognize echoes of the well-known legal principle known as
the legal principle against double jeopardy. That says that you can’t be
punished twice for the same crime. Criminals whose accomplishments on the street
are documented in the newspaper are typically arrested, tried, and convicted for
it, and thus have already been dealt their due punishment by the legal process
that we already have as a society in place for that. Also, destroying their
ability to find a good job and romantic partner because Google turns up nasty
stories from before they had rethought their ways is kind of like asking them to
serve a second legal sentence, only outside the legal system. That’s bad.
But here at HEC, we never just answer the ethics question on its surface,
but always look to form a deeper, contextual understanding based on our
thorough knowledge of Western society and online culture. It’s through this
wide-angle angle that we can raise some questions about whether the
Oregonian’s clean slate program is really doing as much good as Therese might
hope it does. Because if there’s one thing you have to know about online
newspapers, it’s that they don’t have full authority over where their content
gets copy-pasted to and replayed across the internet. In fact, there are lots of
websites such as The Internet Archive that store copies of newspaper articles
as soon as they go online, so even if the newspaper changes the story to remove
someone’s name, it’s still their in the archive, ready to be searched up.
Now, it can be argued that archive.org is a lot less
discoverable via search engines than something like the Oregonian since
usually search engines prefer to give searchers the newest version of the
article they are searching for. And if you want the archived version, you
usually have to actually go to the Internet Archive and put in the URL yourself.
But newspaper articles about things like petty (and not-so-petty) crimes are
hot-button issues, and in the modern era of artificial intelligence (AI)
language models, there are emerging companies that specifically comb the web for
negative-sounding articles about regular people and repost the articles all over
the place, with crazy search-engine optimization (SEO) to boot. This is done to
farm clicks and make ad revenue, but we can also guess that there’s a more
nefarious motive in play, such as to generate so much negative buzz that the
victim of the tarnished reputation is willing to pay an affiliate company to
remove the information.
So what we learn here is that while it’s great that Therese is doing her part,
it’s not the whole part, but just part of the part.
As if you needed it—maybe that’s why you should stay subscribed to our Hades
Ethics Consultancy Ethics Q&A, which is always committed to giving you the whole
story about any ethical predicament you bring to the table. Send us your
ethical pickles at [email protected] and may you stay morally
aligned in the Happy New Year.
An anonymous reader writes with a tricky “ethical dimension” inspired by the movie
It Ends With Us:
Hello there Hades. I wanted to reach out about a movie I saw this weekend its
called It Ends With Us released 2024 by Columbia Pictures and Wayfarer
Studios. This was a really tough movie about domestic abuse and it makes you
ask a lot of hard questions about where abuse comes from and how you can
recognize the signs of it. Because sometimes abuse is very obvious but
othertimes it is hard to tell just because she has a bruised eye doesnt mean
it wasnt an accident. By the way sorry if there are any spoilers in this
email. I dont know if you have a no spoilers rule.
Anyway I wanted to reach out about the movie to ask about an ethical dimension
that came up for my while I watched the movie and reminded me of your blog
which I like to read. You see I am very interested in ethics always have been
especially since I started reading about it on social media specifically the
website Tumblr. One of the most important scenes in the movie and again
spoiler alert is when the ex boyfriend character called Atlas notices that the
main character Lily has a black eye at his restaurant. He is worried that its
because she is being abused by her new boyfriend but when he asks her about it
she says no it was an accident dont worry. Now one of the important things I
learned about on Tumblr is this believe women. But this time it was an
accident but in the movie it turned out that the new boyfriend actually was
hurting her and if Atlas believed her that would be bad in the end.
So my question is this in the end does believe women really matter if the
abuser is going to make Lily not even believe herself and even lie about it
when Atlas asks her if the abuse was real or not.
Thank you for your quesion, anon. We dispatched an HEC to investigate some of
your primary source material in depth to ensure the highest possible quality “A”
in responding to your ethics “Q.” Hence: we apologize for our delay in getting
back to you! But enough with the chuff.
Here’s what we figured out: Tumblr says “believe women,” but it’s a little more
complicated than that. You also need to remember an important ethical principle
from Reddit which says that “whiteknighting is bad.” Whiteknighting is a
Reddit term for when a man tries to do a nice thing, but he has an ulterior
motive.
In the movie, Atlas’s behavior is classic whiteknighting—his ulterior motive is
that he has empathy for Lily and cares about her—and according to Reddit, this
means he is in the wrong. But now we recall a second Tumblr rule which is that
Reddit is bad. This rule is actually more powerful than the one about
believing women. So we can conclude that Atlas was in the right after all to
approach Lily and intervene in the abusive situation.
Hope that makes sense!
Don’t forget to reach out this holiday season at [email protected]
with your ethics questions for our team of seasoned ethics consultants. Let us
be your reason this season!
Jordan from Atlantic County, NJ, writes with a “million dollar question”—well,
more of a enterprise than a question:
A buddy and I have a startup idea that we wanted to run by you. Essentially,
think “Tinder for payroll management.” It’s an app that plugs into your
existing corporate social media (Yammer or whatever) and instructs employees
to swipe right on profiles of colleagues who they think are paid more highly.
If they match, then both have their salary set to the average of their current
salaries, minus a small commission for us (the service provider), a fixed
percentage of which we pass along to the company (the client) as a
cost-savings measure. The client doesn’t have to do anything but sit back and
enjoy the cost savings.
If employees are maximizing expected value, then the equilibrium of this
limited-information game is for everyone to play, because your salary can
only increase. And if anyone is too risk-averse to participate, then the firm
gains valuable psychometric data about its employees that it can use in
promotion and salary advancement discussions.
Thanks for the idea, Jordan!
The first thing we at HEC would like to point out regarding your proposed
money-moving matchmaker is that HEC doesn’t condone workplace relationships of
any kind. They’re just too rife with opportunities for misstep into a pitfall.
A core principal of ethics consulting, just like business management, is the
idea of balancing risk and reward, and the rewards just don’t quite come out
on top in this case—that is, either in the case of the workplace relationships
or this startup idea, which aims to introduce the already controversial “Tinder”
into one of the most fraught environments of all, namely, the corporate
environment.
That’s why we’re a soft no on this payroll management thingy. It just
doesn’t add up. And how would it work for employees who actually have access to
payroll data?
That said, HEC staff were impressed by your equilibrium analysis of the core
dynamics at the heart of your business model. Ethicists love to reason about
about “the deeper truth” and your investigation of such questions as: Would it
work? How? What are the incentives? Why? … is in firm keeping with the
longstanding tradition of asking tough ethical questions and pursuing the
answers. So, keep it up!
And you, dear reader? Light our inbox (and your day) up with your ethical
dilemma by emailing us at [email protected].
Our wide-angle view of today’s hottest ethical issues has shown us there’s a
real supply/demand mismatch of ethical talent on the market today. That’s
why we are launching HEC Cornerstone—a certification course specially
designed for advisors, executives, politicians, and the ethically curious to
gain professional skills in the art and science of ethics consulting.
Graduates of HEC Cornerstone become certified Ethics Cornerstones, which
equips and empowers them to be the “ethicist in the corner” in all corners of
their work and personal life.
We antipate rapid, and rapidly escalating demand for certified Ethics
Cornerstones throughout business and government. A big trend in the corporate
nowdays is ESG, which stands for environmental and social governance. That means
doing all the great profit-generating activities that business already do, but
doing so with an eye to and focus on environmental and social issues. It’s hard
for businesses to achieve the ESG ideals if all corners of the pyramid rest on
the old model. That’s why we’ve created HEC Cornerstone. To be an ethics
cornerstone that balances the pyramid and serves the growing need.
So why hesitate, email us today today to
enroll in HEC Focus at our special introductory rate—the world can wait, but you
can’t!
Thanks to “Gorgonzola from Goa” for the following imaginative ethical stumper:
Morning HEC, was wondering what thoughts you have on the ethics of jamming
along to hold music? I know you’re supposed to think hold music is annoying,
but some of the lo-fi beats they’ve been putting out lately are just hard to
resist moving along to.
Gorgonzola, it’s great to see that you are puzzling through an ethical problem
that, while it may seem specific at first blush, actually belies an ethical
dilemma that many of our readers and even us face every day: What to do when
what you want to do is in conflict with what society says you should want
to do in a given situation—or, in the situation you’ve given, what society
says you shouldn’t want to do but you want to do!
You may be surprised to learn that acclaimed ethicist John Stuart Mill
actually took up this precise question, albeit in a more general form, in a
viral blog post entitled “On Liberty: Chapter IV. Of the Limits to the
Authority of Society over the Individual.” Mr. Mill, like you, noticed that
sometimes society tries to tell us what is and isn’t moral in a given situation.
And sometimes, society’s “majority” opinion is right—humans have sure had a lot
of practice over the years, after all—but other times, society’s majority
opinion is more about getting in the way of everyday people like you and our
other loyal readers to simply enjoy life the way they want to enjoy it—or not.
But let’s read it in the words of Mr. Mill himself:
But the strongest of all the arguments against the interference of the public
with purely personal conduct, is that when it does interfere, the odds are
that it interferes wrongly, and in the wrong place. On questions of social
morality, of duty to others, the opinion of the public, that is, of an
overruling majority, though often wrong, is likely to be still oftener right;
because on such questions they are only required to judge of their own
interests; of the manner in which some mode of conduct, if allowed to be
practised, would affect themselves. But the opinion of a similar majority,
imposed as a law on the minority, on questions of self-regarding conduct, is
quite as likely to be wrong as right; for in these cases public opinion means,
at the best, some people’s opinion of what is good or bad for other people.
We happen to think your situation about jamming along to catchy hold music falls
into the latter category. It’s one of those behaviors that some, perhaps even a
majority of people, might find morally questionable or problematic, but at the
end of the day, when the chips have fallen where they may, that’s really just
“some people’s opinion,” and you’re free to take it or leave it.
Now, don’t forget to blast us a message over at [email protected] if
you have any additional ethical travails … until next time!
Hades Ethics Consultancy proudly presents our ranking of 2024’s most ethical
homeowner’s associations!
Homeowner’s associations—or HOAs for short—truly run the gamut from upstanding
organizations that advocate for the needs of their members, to predatory and
discriminatory HOAs that actual stifle homeowners and prevent them from
exercising their property rights. Our ranking will guide you to the HOAs that
have your best interests at heart.
How the ratings were compiled
Our team of ethics consultants takes a multimodal approach to ethics
research, using a broad variety of techniques and resources such as web sites,
web forums, informal interviews, and focus groups to ensure we leave no stone
unturned in our search to get to the bottom of which HOAs truly come out on top
in terms of ethics.
We found in our research that lots of HOAs pay lip service to ethical values
through low-cost activities such as distributing “in this house we believe” yard
signs—but very few HOAs truly go above and beyond and put ethics at the
center of their organizational design and policy.
Even worse, there is a small but substantial variety of HOAs that appear to have
deliberately forsaken ethical conduct in favor of discriminatory and upsetting
activities. For example, some of these HOAs charge their members exorbitant
monthly dues equivalent to the cost of rent in many communities across the
country. Others impose arbitrary restrictions on members’ lifestyles without
clear justification, such as regulating the kinds of decorations or plants that
residents can place in their yard.
#1: The Acacia Valley HOA
The Acacia Valley HOA is our #1 pick for the most ethical HOA. Acacia Valley
continues to outdo itself in terms of having a solid ethical foundation. They
strive to be a “low-touch” HOA, which means minimizing the cost to members while
maximizing the benefits. In fact, as of this writing, Acacia Valley HOA’s
membership dues are completely free.
Acacia Valley is super transparent—so transparent that you’ll never look at
glass the same way after reading their detailed wiki,
which documents all of the organization’s policies, events, and so on in great
detail. The wiki even has a paged called Strategic
Objectives that
outlines the HOA’s strategic objectives so you can see exactly what their goals
are and how their policy connects with it. And they have a really obvious
leadership structure that makes it so you can become part of the leadership and
advocate for changes if the HOA isn’t in line with its strategic objectives.
Oh, and they even provide their members with a distinctive email address—don’t
forget to reach out to us on ours: [email protected].
Conclusion
There are sure a lot of HOAs out there, and it’s hard to know which one is best
even before you look at the ethical dimension. But in this guide, your trusted
ethical advisors here at Hades Ethical Consulting have laid all the facts right
out for you, and now you’re ready to make an informed decision about which HOA
you want to join.
Congratulations to Acacia Valley HOA and its members for their outstanding
performance in 2024’s ranking of the most ethical homeowner’s associations.
I noticed on your website it says you have experience in something called
“domestic ethics.” What's that?
Thank you for your question, Amanda!
For as long as humans have been domestic, there have been ethics. In fact,
questions of the proper way to manage a household, the rights of children vs.
parents, divorce, household finances, have been probed in some of humanity’s
most enduring texts. For example, in the Bible we find that at least two or
three of the Ten Commandments consider the domestic sphere, which is as high as
20 or 30%:
But to answer your question, domestic ethics are really just any form of ethics
that has to do with homes, home life, families, and things like that. Here at
Hades Ethics Consultancy we are proud to have a long tradition of giving deep
consideration to challenging domestic questions such as differences in parenting
style, spousal differences, and conscious coupling and uncoupling.
If you enjoyed this installment of Expert Q&A with Hades Ethics Consultancy
be sure to bookmark this page and check back regularly—the future is rife
with uncertainty but we’re pretty certain you can count on us to be back next
time!
And be sure to drop us an email at [email protected] if you have any
ethical questions you need consulting on.
Hey Hades, what do you think about the ethics of street racing? I have been
looking for ways to spice up my commute and recently learned that it’s quite
popular in my town. But I’m concerned about the possible risks and legal
consequences. Care to weigh in?
Thanks for your question, Steven! We love that you are giving this topic careful
and due consideration. We did a bit of research on our end, and according to our
findings, street racing is both highly risky and illegal. We don’t think it’s
very ethical, either!