A ubiquitous rule of business "ethics"

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I've worked at a few jobs from around 2005 to 2007, and though this isn't much compared to many people, one general ethical philosophy in practice seemed to be followed at all of them. That is this: if an action is beneficial to the company, then it is considered acceptable, but if an action is detrimental to the company, then it is considered reprehensible.

Agreed. I ran into real employment problems because of this horrible double standard.

I actually had a boss call me into his office and give me s**t for speaking honestly with customers and rival clients. He said "I want you to tell the customer what they want to hear, and I want you to tell *** what they want to hear and ****-****** what they want to hear". I was just start to try to figure out how to be honest with all of those people when he finished his statement making it loud and clear what he expected "And I want you to always tell me the truth!"

The suggestion of course, was that I was to lie to all of them. And the insinuation? That my boss would have no trouble lying to me.

I quit. Not right there, but the next morning when it was too late for them to cover my scheduled appointments. The customers got screwed, but none of the other parties were honest.

Businesses do not hire people to be honest, they hire people to help them make money, whatever those requirements may be. The law usually limits certain actions but very frequently the law is ignored or gotten around in some manner. It's pretty naive to believe a business has any other reason for employing help.

It is the very sort of thing an aspie stumbles over.

That's why I never was a good businessman.

Me neither, especially sales. I avoid business professions like the plague. There are plenty other worthwhile professions that don't require much flexibility with regards to honesty. Science, arts, teaching, and non-profit endeavors are some that come to mind. In general, if your primary goal is to make money, you'll need to lie, cheat, and steal in order to be successful. Not always, of course, but certainly in most cases.

I think that if consumers where more willing to hold a grudge against companies who lie or cheat, such companies wouldn't exist.

I also believe that, ideally, the government should focus less on regulating business and more on exposing liars. Consumer outrage would, in a perfect world, kill any company accused of corruption.

I daydream about a "consumer rebellion" of sorts, where people just start refusing to give any money to any company with an ill reputation, causing those companies to wither and die. That's why the bailouts made me so angry: they meant a consumer regulated economy was impossible.

Yes. It's the capitalist version of communism. If you hurt the company then you hurt the income of the business and thereby your employment is a detriment.

In the current order, business firms are either auxillary tax collections agents or sources of slush to the politicians. The last thing the government wants is for consumers to put corporate "bad boys" out of business. It would be a loss of revenues to the politicians.

ruveyn

Remember: in a business, "good" isn't what's nice, it's what's profitable. And if something is nice but it loses money, your company will not support it unless they can get something out of it for themselves. That's life, and that's business.

I, as an Aspie, have no trouble with this concept at all. Making money is what's important in business, you can be nice when you get off work.

Remember though, it is what's profitable to businesses that copyrights exist and why people who illegally© allow others to view television shows for free are prosecuted. This is in relation to your other thread about censorship™. I'm not intending to start a flame war or anything hostile with you, but yes you have ticked me off in the antiquated thread regarding pgd by calling me a Troll©.

I wouldn't say copyrights cause censorship, except for a few films in the US, but that's a problem with US copyright laws, not the concept of copyright itself. That said, the way copyright law is structured in general is something I am against which is why I support the Pirate Party.

As far as I'm concerned, Spain has this copyright s**t done properly: piracy is legal for personal use, but illegal for commercial use. Keeps access to content free but still keeps businesses making cash.

As for me calling you a troll... Well, you made a thread for the specific purpose of attacking another member of the forum. That counts as trolling in my book.

Having the context of the state of the forum at that time would alter that perception. I wasn't intending to personally attack, but rather I had latched onto a statement that NobelCynic, the person who necromanced my obsolete thread about pgd, had made and just gone haywire with it. At that time I seriously had thought that there was potential for pgd to be using Wrong Planet as a psychological laboratory, and to me such a notion is just not cool. I don't really care to be the unwilling subject of an experiment or mind-games, and hence my thread. That was what it was about and not an attempt to personally attack someone I don't know.

That does make more sense, as it should only be considered wrong if somebody is profiting off of the work of another.

I suppose if he'd just joined and he was acting suspicious then I understand your thoughts, but I still think PMing a mod would have been better than starting a thread to publicly call him a troll.



Exactly right. That's the whole point of intellectual property.

Well, firstly I don't like the whole talking-behind-people's-backs routine of gossiping, and secondly my thought was that if pgd were using Wrong Planet as a laboratory then bringing awareness to this possibility would then skew the results sought after - perhaps to the extent that WP would stop being used as a laboratory. Since then I've recognized I was wrong about him and it's just his manner of communication and not actually treating the other denizens of WP as guinea pigs as I had mistakenly thought back then.