Business Ethics

The commercial enterprise of capitalism has enabled humankind to produce admirable work, verily, on a global and everyday basis. Who can dispute that American industries are not a marvel? See the shelves of grocery stores bulging with good food, slip behind four hundred sweet horsepower and breathe freedom on amazing highways, visit a theater and witness Hollywood spare no effort on astonishing scenes that last one second. The internet alone is witness to no end of human capacity and creativity via business. People are everywhere on the go, stimulating the blood, keeping it circulating. Others are now dreaming with their eyes open, concentrating over scratch paper how they might build or improve something. A little candy for their efforts is a plus to what many would do anyway simply because they are energies. Business organizations can also be magnanimous. For but one example, they supply shelters for the homeless with food. But capitalism is abuse-prone because the bargaining process that is called free trade is a matter of gaining as much as you can while returning as little as possible. Like the manufacturers of toilet seat covers who are so stingy with every last nap of material that the consumer pays hell to make one fit on a toilet seat. That's where the actual competition is, not excellence. The ideal of the bargaining process is sometimes referred to as efficiency or equilibrium, but it is really no more than two parties endeavoring to take advantage of each other. In some markets it is an unspoken principle of practice, simply because it is true, that poor quality will gain more profit than quality. Excellence is often more likely to cause businesses to struggle, even fail, than succeed, which is why excellence is withheld.

Contrary to Daniel Klein's idealism in Market Failure or Success, retailers often have little knowledge of what they shelve and, in fact, couldn't care less. Even when a product is known to be of poor quality it will yet go on the shelf so long as it is profitable. In some markets the profit factor will almost always exclude the quality factor. Exceptions to this are the food and beverage industries, but it is notoriously true in electronics and computer or computer-related products and services.

The situation is often no better than gypsies who refer to their customers as mullets (suckers), everything from making refunds too inconvenient to pursue to the customer "deserving" poor quality for being "cheap" (blamed for not spending a couple thousand more on more expensive poor quality) to products designed intentionally poorly to keep the customer spending money post purchase. Manufacturers even distribute products which they know full well to not work at all, often to not lose money they've invested in the development of a failure. Instead of taking the loss responsibly, they sell it anyway. So what? The consumer now finds this kind of behavior in the market place to be admirable.

Some products are made so poorly in general that many companies don't include worthwhile warranties anymore – you have to buy one, while the company hypes that it's doing you a favor to offer you this option to spend more money. The public is so snowed that no one mentions planned obsolescence anymore – it's taken for granted that junk is junk and everybody simply expects it now. The calculation is that the inconvenienced customer won't have a product repaired when it falls over, upon being removed from the box, but simply trash it and go buy another, the public now well-trained to accept this as quality. It is also well known that people are too busy or too poor to do anything but swallow it when they've been done a cheap act. Repeat customers are not necessary because there are countless potential new customers. For every lost customer there are a thousand others who haven't bitten at the bait yet.

Abuse is everyday, everywhere. It's a noosphere. Criminals are not unobservant of how legitimate businesses make money. Legitimate businesses are not unobservant of how criminals make money. Companies are applauded as class acts so long as they are profitable. It far from matters how – Enron was but blatant. For instance, have you ever purchased a product for $3 that didn't work? Big deal – until you consider that the company is selling the same item that does not work to millions of consumers. But this is not called theft in today's society. It's called a smooth business maneuver, the more so the more innocent a company can appear while leaving the more victims (also called customers) helpless.

Viola Fair welcomes correspondence from those with grievances.

	Business Principles
	Businesses to Beware
	Simplicity of Trust not Possible
	Surpassing Businesses