Business

CSR also sneaks in the ideal of altruism, the duty to serve others “to further some social good, beyond the interests of the firm.”

By clearly and publicly withdrawing their moral sanction of government’s freedom-curtailing and welfare-destroying actions, business leaders can have a big impact on all of our future.

If we want to promote human flourishing and avoid human suffering, it is crucial that we challenge the ideal of government ‘redistribution’ of wealth and regulation of the economy and advocate reason, freedom and individual rights instead.

Rather than complaining about ‘unfairly’ low corporate taxes paid by Apple and others, we would be better off advocating low, and eventually no, corporate taxes, more wealth creation, strong protection of individual rights by governments–and capitalism.

Every day, businesses make the world a better place to live, profitably, by creating and trading material values, by mutual consent and for mutual benefit. It’s time we’d recognize it and appreciate business people for what they do. Such a cultural change would, in time, create business heroes also in Hollywood movies and spiritual fuel for all of us.

Business is for producing and trading material values, driven by the profit motive.

In my years of teaching ethics to business students, I must have heard it all when it comes to justifying deception and lying in business.

True self-interest cannot involve cynical exploitation of others through initiation of physical force or fraud

I wish that people who make millions or billions of dollars, such as Bill Gates, would stop denigrating and seeking to undermine the very system that enabled them to be successful in the first place: capitalism.

A common exhortation heard today is: Set self-interest aside and act for the “common good.” Businesspeople in particular are accused of selfishness and are told (by media commentators, NGOs, and ethicists, among others) to serve the “common good.” This exhortation...

The beauty of the Uber model is that it actually makes free trade between Uber’s drivers and their customers possible, without the intrusion of the regulatory state.

In cheating customers and others, VW was not acting selfishly but self-destructively.

Can the government simply loan failing businesses money and “save jobs?”

The actual “wage thieves” are the politicians and others who impose minimum wage laws and other directives on the private sector. By impairing and ultimately destroying economic growth, politicians like Hillary Clinton are the ultimate wage thieves.

A quality decision is one that leads to achievement of values.

It does not matter how rich Apple is, or becomes. In the end, the government can do whatever it wants, at least so long as it keeps pushing the limits outside of its Constitutional boundaries, while our courts and citizens do absolutely nothing.

The “stakeholder” approach is based on the mistaken premise that everyone that makes a claim on a business must be—or deserves to be—treated equally, and that the business must appease every critic.

Tyranny—the cruel and oppressive treatment of others by those in positions of power—is not possible under capitalism.

There is absolutely no moral reason to boycott the company.

FedEx turned out to be much better than the U.S. Postal Service, teens ignore Hollywood and become rich and famous on YouTube, people skip hotels and find rooms via Airbnb and so on. Who knows what discoveries await if we don’t let tired old rules get in the way?