A good journalistic piece in The New York Times: “The Perverse Effects of Rent Regulation.” (Thanks to R.M. for the link.) Rent control is a classic case of bad economics and bad ethics. The bad economics is ignorance of unintended consequences — in this case a price control that makes the initial problem worse. The […]
Davidson on rent control as “perverse” Read More »
According to numbers released by the Bureau of Labor Statistics late in 2012, workplace injuries continue to decline: * The injury rate for workers in the private sector has fallen to “3.5 cases per 100 equivalent full-time workers.”[1] That is a 31% drop over the last decade. * The injury rate for public sector workers
Safety in the workplace — encouraging statistics Read More »
The 1984 disaster in Bhopal, India, is one of the major business ethics cases of the past generation. A hazardous chemical was spilled and, tragically, many people died. Awful. But I am weary of reading the standard journalistic accounts that run like this: In the name of profit, a large American multinational corporation neglected safety;
Lessons from the Bhopal chemical-spill disaster Read More »
My concluding video lecture on abstracting the principles in the business ethics cases we’ve covered so far: Minimum Wages, Rent Control, the Tragedy of the Commons, Laetrile (pharmaceuticals), and the F.C.C.’s “Fairness Doctrine” (telecomm). This lecture is part of the Business Ethics Cases series. Contents: Summary abstraction: comparing the cases. Supplement: Summary chart. Go to
Conclusion: abstracting the principles [Business Ethics Cases series] Read More »
From May 23-25, I’ll be participating in a colloquium on “Virtues and Entrepreneurship,” organized by Sweden’s Ratio Institute. My talk will be an extension of the theme of my “What Business Ethics Can Learn from Entrepreneurship,” arguing that the success traits of entrepreneurship map onto an updated Aristotelian virtue set. The conference will include keynote
Upcoming talk in Stockholm Read More »
My video lecture, part of the Business Ethics Cases series. Contents: 1. What the tragedy is. 2. The free-market solution. 3. The socialist solution. 4. Comparing the two solutions. The entire video (43 minutes total): Supplements: * Garrett Hardin, “The Tragedy of the Commons”, Concise Encyclopedia of Economics. * Transcript of the above video lecture
Tragedy of the Commons [Business Ethics Cases series] Read More »
An introduction to applied case study methodology, part of the Business Ethics Cases series. Total time: 17 minutes. Next: Rent Control. Minimum Wages [forthcoming]. The Tragedy of the Commons [forthcoming]. Go to the Business Ethics Cases series. Or full playlists at YouTube. Go to the Philosophy of Education lecture series. Go to the StephenHicks.org main
Introduction: Case Study Method [Business Ethics Cases series] Read More »
The Business Ethics Cases project is new for 2013. The initial series contains cases on Rent Control, Minimum Wages, The Tragedy of the Commons, Laetrile and Experimental Cancer Drugs, and the FCC’s “Fairness Doctrine,” as well as a short introductory lecture on case study method and a concluding lecture abstracting the common patterns of argument
Business Ethics Cases — introducing my new series Read More »