Hades Ethics Consultancy

Clairvoyance?

2025-07-15T00:00:00-04:00

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 hades@acaciavalleyhoa.org. Tell us what's on your mind, we won't judge.

Clean Slate for Petty Crime?

2025-01-04T00:00:00-05:00

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 hades@acaciavalleyhoa.org and may you stay morally aligned in the Happy New Year.

Hollywood Whiteknighting?

2024-12-01T00:00:00-05:00

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 hades@acaciavalleyhoa.org with your ethics questions for our team of seasoned ethics consultants. Let us be your reason this season!

Tinder for Payroll Management?

2024-07-06T00:00:00-04:00

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 hades@acaciavalleyhoa.org.

Get Ethics Cornerstone Certified

2024-06-07T00:00:00-04:00

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!

Jamming to Hold Music?

2024-05-18T00:00:00-04:00

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.

(source: https://gutenberg.org/files/34901/34901-h/34901-h.htm)

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 hades@acaciavalleyhoa.org if you have any additional ethical travails … until next time!

2024’s Most Ethical Homeowner’s Associations

2024-05-11T00:00:00-04:00

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: hades@acaciavalleyhoa.org.

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.

Domestic Ethics?

2024-04-17T00:00:00-04:00

Amanda in Portland, ME, writes:

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%:

No other gods before me
No graven images or likenesses
Do not take the LORD’s name in vain
Remember the sabbath day
Honour thy father and thy mother
Thou shalt not kill
Thou shalt not commit adultery
Thou shalt not steal
Thou shalt not bear false witness
Thou shalt not covet

(source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ten_Commandments)

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 hades@acaciavalleyhoa.org if you have any ethical questions you need consulting on.

Street Racing?

2024-03-21T00:00:00-04:00

An anonymous reader writes:

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!

2023’s Least Ethical Bookstores

2023-12-08T00:00:00-05:00

Here at HEC, we believe that every man, woman, and bookstore is entitled to a fair trial before a jury of their peers, and let’s just say: The jury is in with our ranking of 2023’s least ethical bookstores.

For this year’s ranking, we leveraged a “secret shopper” methodology of ethical inquiry in which members of the staff personally purchased books from the bookstores that were in the running.

To validate our findings, we cross-compiled our observations from the secret shopper visits with further sources of ethical perspective including internet searches, street interviews, and social media analytics. That’s why you can trust us when we tell you what’s 2023’s least ethical bookseller.

#1: Amazon.com

Amazon.com is the least ethical bookseller of 2023. Amazon was founded by CEO and founder Jeff Bezos in his garage in Washington, USA in 1949, initially as a bookstore, but as the tides have ebbed and flowed over the years Amazon has had to “branch out”—some (not us) might say like the mighty branches and tributaries of the Amazon river that gives the website its name—into other areas of commercial activity, including electronics, ebooks, cosmetics, medical, grocery, and other products.

This has made it hard for Amazon to really put the priorities on when it comes to its core premise of offering books at competitive prices and doing ethical business, which is something we care a lot about here at HEC. Amazon’s main motto is that they are “customer-obsessed,” but recent decades have seen a departure from this nobel mission as Amazon has allowed shady third-party sellers to hawk their wares on its online bazaar, including grifters who use AI to automatically generate books and translations on trendy topics, making it difficult for customers to find the book they are looking for in the haystack of books that are more like hay than needles relative to the book they are looking for.

That’s why we’re naming Amazon as 2023’s least ethical bookstore. It’s not just that it’s bad, but it’s its demonstrated track record of getting worse, and its demonstrated future trajectory of getting worse and worse.

#2: Barnes & Noble

Honestly, it’s not clear what B&N’s business model really is: They’ve tried to ape Amazon’s Kindle by developing their own line of ereaders (can you even remember what those are called), and they’ve tried to ape Starbucks by putting a Starbucks in every store—talk about a relinquishment of identity. The only thing we can say for sure about Barnes & Noble is that they’re copycats, and dear reader? Plagiarism is not very ethical.

Conclusion

Hey, why not check out some of our other ethics ratings or ethics Q&As that we’ve posted here on our site? Or if you have a quandary that you can’t square the circle without some outside assistance, drop us a line: hades@acaciavalleyhoa.org.