Category Archives: Justice & Society

Jul 01 2012
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Justice & Society, Reviews

Book Review – “What Money Can’t Buy: The Moral Limits of Markets”

Recently read:

What Money Can’t Buy: The Moral Limits of Markets (Michael J. Sandel)

My grade (1 to 5): 4 – unsettling but insightful critique of pervasive market-based thinking in contemporary society full of different examples illustrating that, especially in the U.S., increasingly everything seems to be up for sale – and how we should think about this if we object to certain commercializing practices of things we consider too sacred or important to be treated in this way.

Key Ideas:

  • In what “Justice” author Michael Sandel calls “market triumphalism“, we find ourselves in a world where increasingly many problems are being solved by the application of a price and buyers willing to pay it. Whether we pay for convenience, trying to motivate individuals to behave a certain way, gamble on the life or death of celebrities, or try to support public goods like schools and the police, Sandel invites us to reflect on whether the practice of putting up virtually anything (and anyone) up for sale is desirable from a moral perspective.
  • Examples range from the seemingly harmless (e.g., paying to cut the line at airports, themeparks, congressional hearings, concerts, Shakespeare festivals, or naming rights on baseball stadiums) to the controversial (e.g., paying drug-addicted women to be sterilized, kids for good grades, for police cars to be rolling advertising bill boards, for the right to immigrate, for the right to pollute with carbon offsets, or for the right to kill endangered rhinos), to the outright macabre (e.g., companies secretly buying life insurance on employees to cash in upon their deaths, online sites to reward the right bet on the death of famous people).
  • For each example, the author explains that all arguments boil down to two fundamental objections every time that we feel disturbed by instances where the market/economic approach seems to inappropriately encroach on civic life. The first is an effect on reducing equality in society. The second is about corruption or degradation of the good in question by the practice of putting it up for sale. Throughout each example, Sandel applies this framework and offers his opinion whether the market approach is defensible or not based on either criteria.

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Apr 21 2012
1 Comment
CSR, Good & Gasp, Justice & Society, Philanthropy, Social Enterprise, Sustainability

Good & Gasp #4 – Scaling Social Enterprises, iPhone Guilt, Ethical Rankings, Philanthropy Limits

Good & Gasp #4

Scaling Social Enterprises, iPhone Guilt, Ethical Rankings, Philanthropy Time Limits

Themes that caught my attention, interest or made my eyes roll while roaming the web world of doing good:

  • Scaling Social Enterprises – how can social enterprises scale post seed-investment stage?
  • iPhone Guilt – is Apple or its loyal consumers (you) to be blamed for the Foxconn debacle?
  • Philanthropy Limits – should foundations consider spending their money quicker and winding down (dying) earlier?
  • Ethical Rankings – if weapons companies make the list of most ethical firms, what exactly do we mean by “ethical”?

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Mar 31 2012
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Good & Gasp, Impact Investing, Justice & Society, Social Enterprise, Sustainability

Good & Gasp #3 – Social Enterprise in Chinese, EcoMind, Common Wealth, Muppetgate, Human Engineering

Good & Gasp #3

Social Enterprise in Chinese, EcoMind, Common Wealth, Muppetgate, Human Engineering

Themes that caught my attention, interest or made my eyes roll while roaming the web world of doing good:

  • Social Enterprise in Chinese – 3 definitions of “social enterprise” in the same (huge) country?
  • EcoMind & Mental Myths – do the “end of growth” pessimists have it all wrong?
  • Common Resource Use Charges – should companies pay for polluting (and should we get some of the proceeds of such “common wealth” charges)?
  • Goldman Sachs’ Muppetgate – why do GS’ “muppet” clients keep coming back for more?
  • Human vs. Climate Engineering – should we consider genetically “making” humans more environmentally friendly?

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Mar 19 2012
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Career, CSR, Development, Good Archives, Justice & Society, Sustainability, Weekly Ponder

Good Archives #1 – Law vs. Justice, Respecting the Poor, Sustainable Entrepreneurship, Do Good Career Choices

If it’s true that the blogosphere is really skin-deep and that we tend to stay only on the first page of any blog, then perhaps there is some value in the ancient respected work of excavation and restoration.

To that end, I thought it might be useful to periodically dig up some previous posts and put them on a little list. Since most of the themes and questions on GG tend to be not time-dependent anyway, no dusting required! Also, some recently joined folks may find interest in them but would never in a million years bother to click through the history of this blog.

Topics in Archive #1:

  • Justice – Law vs. Justice in the Occupy Wall Street Movement
  • Poverty – Pity vs. Compassion when thinking about “The Poor”
  • Sustainability – The Right to Entrepreneurship vs. Sustainability
  • Careers – An Approach for Choosing a Do-Good Job
  • Reflections – Defining our Personal Boundaries for “Doing Good”

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On Justice

Law does not mean Justice (d’oh!) – Occupy Wall Street’s Core Challenge

  • What is the viability of the Occupy Wall Street Movement? In today’s society, is it possible to ask for justice (right or wrong) in a system where legality (rules and laws) is the official decision-making factor of a country’s rulers?

On Poverty

Respecting the Poor – What You Should and Should Not Expect from “Doing Good” Unto Others

  • How should we think about “The Poor”? What is the importance of periodically re-humanizing those we call “poor” people and what is the critical difference between “pity” and “compassion”? What’s at stake if we keep referring to those we seek to help as “the poor” without thinking about what that actually means to them (and what it would mean to us if we were in their shoes)?

On Sustainability

The Dilemma of Sustainability – Should Entrepreneurship be our Natural Right?

  • If we are serious about sustainability, should we start managing or impose stricter standards on the way every day in the world new companies get started that just add to the burden of resource depletion and emissions? Should the right to economic self-actualization overrule the need for environmental stewardship? How should we manage this unbridled activity especially in developing markets where people tend to be less educated or interested in sustainability?

On Careers

4 Steps to Choosing a “Good Career” (Part 1) – Scaling of Impact

  • How should we think about choosing careers in the so-called “do-good” jobs of social entrepreneurship, NGOs, philanthropy, impact investing, etc.? How can we make the decision as individually relevant as possible to our own desires and varying needs for ambitious results? Should we care more about how much impact we are having or how we feel about what we do?

On Reflections

Weekly Ponder #1 – Defining our Do-Good Boundaries: Will my Effort ever be Enough?

  • How can we define how much we should get engaged in the business of doing good or changing the world? Should we volunteer, work part time, work full time for our cause? How much of our effort is “enough” to achieve those goals? How much is “enough” for our personal satisfaction? What does this depend on?
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Feb 04 2012
3 Comments
Justice & Society, Reflection, Sustainability

In Search of Meaning – Why Intellectual Curiosity is Not Enough

Key Questions in this Post:

  • Why can intellectual curiosity change the world but not necessarily make it better?
  • Why should we consider shifting from the pursuit of the “Cool” to include the pursuit of the “Good”?

Oftentimes, when I look at a job description for just about any industry and my eyes move down to the “qualifications” the candidate should bring, I notice this one bullet that reads something like “strong intellectual curiosity.” Back in the day I thought this simply referred to the idea of being interested in as many things as possible. Later, when I got into consulting, I realized it referred more to the ability to tolerate and endure boring projects when you were staffed in something that could not be further from intellectually stimulating to you. For instance, if you were originally passionate about media and technology companies in Silicon Valley, but got assigned to work for six months at a mining company in Canada or a wood polish manufacturer in the U.S. Midwest, having “intellectual curiosity” meant that you would be less likely to jump off your hotel window on a depressing, cloudy Wisconsin Sunday afternoon.

But today I don’t want to talk about intellectual curiosity as a mere ability to endure the inane. Instead, I want to examine it in its classical sense as what most would consider a very positive driving force for intelligent people to engage in productive activity. However, I want to assert that for recent centuries it may have been dangerously overrated just about everywhere in the world… at the expense of something more important. I will argue that despite the marvelous inventions that we have been afforded by raw intellectual curiosity (and talent), overall many of us motivated by our talents and intellectual gifts do not necessarily find ourselves happier or at greater inner peace. Something is missing. But what?

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Feb 01 2012
5 Comments
Justice & Society, Reflection

The Centrality of Character – Do People in “Good” Companies have to be Nice?

Key Question in this Post:

  • Do people in “do good” occupations have to be nice?

This may seem at first glance a quite silly question, doesn’t it? Yet, after encountering throughout the years my fair share of people engaged in occupations that are meant to help others and improve lives, I have never ceased to be curious why some of these people are – how shall I put it – not nice (and occasionally, real as$h%^$s). Whether you are talking about NGOs, social enterprises, foundations or impact investors, these people pop up here and there, wherever you go. Who hasn’t met the occasional do-good employer during an interview who seemed arrogant and conceited? Who hasn’t seen the occasional ugliness between two members of the same nonprofit board? Who hasn’t seen philanthropists occasionally disparaged by investors?

Why do I find this curious? After-all, I’ve worked among other places also on Wall Street before, where not being nice registers just about on the bottom of improvement areas someone could have on their annual evaluations, to put it mildly. After-all, doesn’t the saying go something like “bad apples grow just about on every tree”? That is certainly true and it remains just as much a matter of fact like the sky being blue and grass being green. The impatient among you may cry right out: it’s nothing you can change, no matter where you work, so why care about it?

Yet, for some reason, there seems to me something profoundly odd and particularly offending about people in the “do-good” or social sector behaving like this, almost to the point where I would like to think that even if it might be this way… it should not. In this post, allow me to carefully argue that if you want to genuinely serve in a do-good job, I would expect you not only to be a “good” person, but also a “nice” person, and that something significant is at stake by your being so. Let me explain.

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Jan 12 2012
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Justice & Society, Reflection, Sustainability

The Dilemma of Sustainability – Should Entrepreneurship be our Natural Right?

Key Question in this Post:

  • Does the right to economic pursuit through entrepreneurship outweigh the duty of environmental stewardship?

In a previous post, I contemplated whether sustainability careers were actually “do good” or mostly “do less bad” careers. I argued for the latter and made an assumption that most companies, unless they can reverse the environmental degradation they cause, or at least come out neutral, ultimately cannot call themselves as entities that do good, but merely “more or less sustainable” than their competitors. This line of reasoning mostly addressed existing companies and their impact on the environment. It thus particularly mattered to those contemplating joining up-and-running companies and how to keep tabs on their sustainability practices.

Today, I would like to draw attention to the impact of companies that were just born today and yesterday. In other words, what is the responsibility and net effect of entrepreneurs in this whole discussion on sustainability? In our rabid attack on the boo-boos of familiar big brands around the world, some of whom are working hard at doing less bad, how many of us stop to think about the cumulative impact that companies started around the world every day have in the big picture? Hence, for all you aspiring sustainable entrepreneurs, have you ever thought about how much of your hard, hard sustainably defensible work is undone every day by your even more zealous, mostly financially driven counterparts in the developing world, many of whom doing so without paying too much attention to their environmental impact?

The question I am trying to raise is this: where does their right to economic development end, and where does your push for adoption of (more expensive) sustainability practices start?

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Dec 21 2011
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Justice & Society

Law does not mean Justice (d’oh!) – Occupy Wall Street’s core challenge

Reference:

“Occupy Wall Street Times Topic” (The New York Times)

Key Ideas:

  • As everyone who does not live under rock is aware of, this marks the third month of the  “Occupy Wall Street” movement that has spelled mass protests in America and many other corners of the world at this point, with the end not yet in sight
  • The cause of the movement is fundamentally an outrage about unequal economic conditions and a collective demand for more fairness. The original claim in the U.S. is that “The 99%” of the population was contributed their tax money, which was then used by the government to bail out “The 1%”, i.e., banks, insurance firms, lobbying corporations, and the general financial establishment under the notion of “too big to fail”. The insult, protesters explain, is that during all this time bankers and other “one percenters” keep receiving fat salaries and big bonuses. Implicitly, they are able to do this because their companies were saved by bailout money in the first place. Meanwhile unemployment and foreclosures continue to frustrate the “ninetynine percenters” – everyone else.

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Dec 19 2011
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Justice & Society, Reviews

Book Review – “Justice – What’s the right thing to do?”

Recently read:

Justice – What’s the right thing to do? (Michael J. Sandel)

My grade (1 to 5): 5 – thorough, provocative, forces you to think hard about your beliefs/morals and whether you (should) like them or not

Key Ideas:

  • We have a civic obligation to learn how to think about what we consider right and wrong and why; this will help us make better, sound decisions on both small and big issues in our private lives but more importantly, on public affairs that affect society as a whole
  • We cannot properly participate in debates on whether this policy is “just” or not, unless we understand its moral premises; those, in return, have to be first studied by reading and contemplating the thoughts of great political philosophers from Aristotle all the way to John Rawls; we have to understand (1) what they actually said, (2) why they said it, (3) in what era they lived that influenced their thoughts, (4) determine in what way their philosophy can be applied to judge a decision at hand, such as abortion, gay marriage, military draft, artificial insemination or the essential nature of golf, and (5) know on what grounds we support or reject these ideas in a way that aligns with our moral values

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