Executive compensation
A while ago, I investigated how much CEO’s deserve to make. My conclusion, we needed better tools for quantifying the worth of executives to a company.
This presents a further challenge, that of determining the value of the executive to the company. Supporters of current executive salaries would argue that these people are the most important figures in gigantic corporations, and that their salaries reflect their contribution. Given that the ratio of a CEO salary to the average worker in the company is increasing so sharply, this would mean that the relative value of company executives has been rising exponentially.
Debates over executive compensation have ignored these trends, and commentators have failed to seriously investigate metrics that could actually measure the value of a CEO to a company. Unfortunately, that’s the only way to settle this contentious debate.
Pay attention to Wikileaks?
Sam recently wrote about the ethical complexities that arise from the unsanctioned and rather unruly behavior of Wikileaks, a site that has gotten a lot of attention recently for its mass release of documents relating to the war effort in Afghanistan.
He cautioned that Wikileaks, as a non-traditional rogue outfit, should not expect the same standards of treatment in the U.S. that would be accorded to journalistic efforts that go through all the proper channels.
An article in the Wall Street Journal raises similar concerns about the legitimacy of Wikileaks. It portrays Wikileaks founder Julian Assange as “frustrated” that a large percentage of Wikileaks disclosures have been largely ignored by the public, and the latest leak (and accompanying media attention) as an attempt to reignite popular interest.
Setting aside questions about the sensitivity of Wikileaks content and its lack of traditional journalistic methodology, it’s perhaps more troubling to think of this latest leak as a publicity stunt. While the leak itself has generated tons of news, its contents have doubtlessly remained largely unexplored by the individuals Wikileaks purports to serve. Its revelations (the war isn’t going as well as we thought?) are far too banal to justify a media craze about their release.
Wikileaks’ intention in leaking this information is just as important as the information itself. If they did it largely to draw attention to themselves, their actions are both unprincipled and dishonest. Before they continue to blow the whistle on the U.S. government, Wikileaks should take a look at its own practices.
Wikileaks would have a far easier time convincing the public of its fidelity to the principles of open democracy if it acted less carelessly with its information.
-Ethan
Image used under a Creative Commons attribution license from Flickr user jenny8lee.
Graham’s vote for Kagan
When should senators confirm judges whose judicial philosophy differs from their own?
On Tuesday the Senate Judiciary Committee approved Elena Kagan’s nomination to the Supreme Court. The vote split along party lines, with the exception of South Carolina Republican Lindsey Graham, who broke rank to support Kagan’s nomination.
Graham defended his choice by saying that while he disagreed with Kagan on many issues, he felt it was his duty to support President Obama’s nomination provided she was fair and competent. The conflict raises an interesting ethical and constitutional question, should, and if so when, may Senators vote against judicial nominees on ideological grounds? Read more
Rockin’ the symbols
The State Senate of California recently voted to strip serpentine of its title as “State Rock” on the grounds that the rock contains asbestos, and is therefore an unwelcome harbinger of asbestos-related cancer. Many geologists, however, contend that the dangers posed by serpentine are grossly exaggerated and that the symbolic move by the California State Senate is an example of political correctness gone awry, with serpentine being used as a bugbear by certain political interests.
In some ways, this could be considered analogous to the “zero-tolerance” for violence policy of many public schools. Last month, a child in Rhode Island was arrested for wearing a hat decorated with an American flag and plastic Army men, on the grounds that the inch-long M16s wielded by the toys violated the school’s no-weapons policy.
Neither serpentine nor plastic army men, it seems, are so offensive as to deserve public condemnation. They do not obviously promote hate, aggression, self-destruction, or any other undesirable tendencies. Some symbols undoubtedly have such grim associations that public disapprobation seems appropriate, but plastic figurines and serpentine are hardly in the same league as Swastikas or conical white hoods.
It’s conceivable that just about any image could be considered offensive to some person, but in the interests of free speech, where do we draw the line? Moreover, is it ever appropriate for free speech (and policies that limit it) to be used to score political points?
-Charles
Image used under a Creative Commons attribution license from Flickr user Laughing Squid
The nuclear arsenal and promise-keeping
An article in the L.A. Times reports that the Obama administration plans to greatly increase spending on the nuclear arsenal. Obama has made the reduction of nuclear weapons a serious and oft-repeated promise both during his campaign and throughout his time in office so far. Indeed, the plan calls for a reduction in the amount of weapons in the arsenal. Unfortunately that reduction in number is accompanied by $175 billion over the next twenty years to spend on new weapons, testing facilities, and increasing the longevity of the weapons we already have.
It also comes as a rather unpleasant surprise that administration officials defend the spending by “argu[ing] that even as they reduce the number of U.S. warheads, they need to bolster the government’s ability to increase weapons production quickly if a new threat arises.”
It’s time to proceed with a full program of nuclear disarmament. The current policy and future plans are merely an empty gesture. Those who fear that such a comprehensive program would do irreconcilable damage to our national security should realize that the last time nuclear deterrence was thought of as a sound policy was during the Cold War. More importantly, every promise we break on nuclear policy damages our international reputation.
The Obama administration has consistently taken the stance that the proliferation of nuclear weapons is a danger to everyone and vowed to do its fair share in reducing that danger. The new budget is a sign that they have not remained true to that stance. Reducing the number of warheads while drastically increasing the budget and researching new weapons is a hypocrisy that cheapens the value of our voice in the international community, particularly those statements we have made concerning the danger of nuclear weapons and the necessity of their strict control.
This kind of discrepancy between words and action is not only wrong; it will also hurt our credibility as a worldwide, often aggressive advocate for nonproliferation.
As a world leader, the U.S. needs to send a stronger message about the use of nuclear weapons.
-Ethan
Image used under a Creative Commons attribution license from Flickr user mightyohm
The unintended consequences of prohibition
Illegal immigration and the rule of law
Last Tuesday, the Department of Justice filed suit against the state of Arizona and its governor Janice Brewer, arguing that the state had overstepped its proper role by interfering with the inherently federal issue of immigration. The move fits into a larger debate over how the United States should deal with illegal immigration. One important question raised by this debate concerns the appropriate response to situations in which constant and flagrant violation of the law is the norm.
In the case of illegal immigration, a number of different approaches are commonly discussed, alone or in combination, such as prevention (a wall or more rigorous border patrols), deportation, punishment of employers who use illegal labor, amnesty, and guest worker schemes. These remedies fall into two general categories. Some focus on integrating illegal immigrants into a more open and transparent system and, in the process, effectively decriminalizing illegal immigration. Others rely on strict policing to stem and discourage the flow of undocumented labor into the country.
At the extremes, supporters of the new Arizona laws argue that tolerating illegal immigration is destructive of the rule of law; opponents argue that attempting to enforce the unenforceable is worse. Read more
Safety vs. privacy, resolved today
Should high-crime neighborhoods have a say in police staffing levels?
This week the New York Times featured a program which targets high volume of police attention and effort in a small geographical area, a Brooklyn housing development. This mostly takes the form of stop-and-frisks, designed primarily to reduce the number of guns in the development.
Data shows that the stop-and-frisks are useful in reducing crime within the projects but have not been effective in reducing crime for the precinct as a whole. The legal basis for the program appears a bit tenuous. Police are required to have reasonable suspicion before stopping a citizen. In the city-owned projects, police routinely use violations of housing code as a pretense for stops.
The piece presents residents of the development as conflicted between the increase in public safety and the decrease in privacy.
Should residents be given a role in deciding the nature of police involvement? One could certainly envision a neighborhood referendum putting the question of increased police scrutiny to the test.
(Certainly one could just say that increased police involvement is good in principle but should be conducted in some better way; I’d like to bracket that question for now).
There are certainly benefits to society as a whole to decreasing levels of crime. This seems to be a special case in that the program is ineffective outside the walls of the housing complex, but quite successful inside. The key stakeholders are quite clearly those inside the complex. With that in mind, I’d argue that it does indeed make sense to give communities some decision-making power. The proper balance between safety and privacy is one that local police departments are not likely to get right when working on a block-by-block basis. Given that decision-making must be this granular, it makes sense to offer that power to the communities the police serve rather than to the police themselves.
–John
Image from thomashawk used under a Creative Commons license.
Morality, meet the financial crisis
Many things have been blamed for the economic crisis, including easy credit, consumer (and banker) irrationality, poor regulation, unmonitored derivatives trading, the inappropriate use of government-sponsored enterprises, and the underlying forces of the global real-estate bubble. In a Project Syndicate article, Raghuram Rajan, a finance professor at the University of Chicago and former chief economist of the IMF, has a particularly interesting and unique take on the root causes of the crisis. According to Rajan, the proximate cause of the financial crisis was easy credit, with inequality at its root. Inequality led policymakers to pursue policies that encouraged consumption rather than addressing the root problem of stagnant middle-and-lower class incomes in an increasingly skill-biased economy.
So it turns out that inequality –- an issue generally seen as normative — may play an explanatory role in the most consequential economic challenge of our time. Could this be true of other things generally thought of in moral terms, such as freedom, order, peace, or justice? Are these only moral goods in their own right, or do they also have real bearing on outcomes that we might consider desirable?
–Charles
Image used under a Creative Commons attribution license from Flickr user saxarocks
Veganism as a misguided project
What is the ethically appropriate stance towards meat-eating?
An article in The Chronicle of Higher Education makes a strong case against the practice of Veganism, arguing that vegans are entangled in a futile practice with no meaningful goals. Taking the stance that we are ethically implicated in the killing of life forms simply in virtue of our existence as humans, the author denounces Veganism as a mainly narcissistic exercise. Instead, he suggests that Vegetarianism is a far more practical, and thus admirable goal. Vegetarians, he goes on to argue, have a realistic understanding of the world with “fewer cosmic pretensions.” Instead of an overly optimistic ideal that exists only to support a fragile notion of moral innocence, Vegetarianism adopts a modest stance far more appropriate for the world in which we live.
Is this an effective argument against Veganism? And what do we make of his stance towards vegetarians? If we’re going to go through the trouble of purposely avoiding meat, going vegan can seem like a natural extension of that. An attempt to further minimize animal suffering would then be seen as laudable, rather than foolish. Why applaud vegetarians and not vegans? As I understand it, each choice represents varying degrees of effort in an ethical stance he sees as admirable, but ultimately futile.
-Ethan
Image used under a Creative Commons attribution license from Flickr user Sunfox
Happy 4th of July!
For Fourth of July several pundits at Bloggingheads TV debated the merits of patriotism. What a way to spend your holiday weekend, eh!
Attacking the notion of patriotism, Will Wilkinson of the Cato Institute argued that “loving liberty through ones country” is problematic because it leads to the assumption that America always acts in defense of these values. Wilkinson, a sharp critic of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, contends that Americans initially supported these conflicts so wholeheartedly in part because of a belief that our country “must be doing the right thing when it acts on the world stage.” Read more
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