A DISCUSSION WITH BILL BLACK.

by: Brooke Allen

William Black is an Associate Professor of Economics and Law at the University of Missouri-Kansas City. He was the Executive Director of the Institute for Fraud Prevention from 2005-07. Bill is an outspoken critic of our regulators, banking, and business leaders. You may have caught him on Bill Moyer’s Journal, or in his congressional testimony where he stressed accountability and the fact that elites refuse to accept responsibility.

I recently attended a conference on institutional decision making and group behavior. Many academics presented experimental results and mathematical models to explain how we make bad decisions. Yet, when I asked about the role morality plays in individual decision making, I was told that little research has been done and therefore there was not much that can be said about the topic.

So, I called Bill Black. I caught him at a conference run by the Gruter Institute for Law and Biology.

Brooke: You coined a term, “control fraud.” Could you tell us what that is?

Bill: Yes, control fraud is when the people that control a seemingly legitimate entity, whether it is private, non-profit, or governmental, use it as a weapon of fraud.

Brooke: There seems to be a lot of that going on now.

Bill: Yes, way too much. And the FBI just announced that property crime had fallen to yet another all-time low, because we don’t count serious white collar crime. None of the major things that cause massive losses are even counted. And, if you don’t count it, at the end of the day, it doesn’t much exist [as far as they are concerned].

Brooke: I recently sat next to a young soldier coming back from Afghanistan; a wise man at age 20. I asked him, “What have you learned?” And he said, “I have learned to make apologies, not excuses. If your gun jams because you have not maintained it, and your buddy gets killed because you can’t cover him, you have to apologize to his widow, and it is not your gun jamming that caused his death.”

He also said, “I now see my country as a nation that cannot apologize, and that is full of excuses masquerading as reasons.”

How can we be excused just because we haven’t modeled morality mathematically therefore we can’t know anything about it? This young man knows something about it.

Bill: Brigadier S. L. A. Marshall found that small unit cohesion was the absolute key. You will do astonishing acts of bravery for your little group, and you will do it for members of your group who you actually hate. And they’ll do the same thing for you.

What you see from our elites is an almost complete unwillingness to take responsibility. We even have all these flakey apologies. To take the soldier’s statement, when he apologizes, he doesn’t say, “I am sorry if you have interpreted my comments in a manner that caused you distress,” which is the standard non-apology apology that people use today that puts it on you; there must be something flawed about you that led you to take offence at your husband being shot down because my gun jammed.

Brooke: I have an MBA in Finance, and I took an ethics class, which was all about how to stay legal, and not about ethics. The strongest impact for me was in a course called Managing Organizational Behavior where we talked about the Milgram Experiments. [A series of experiments conducted by Stanley Milgram of Yale University, where he showed that most people would go so far as to give people an apparently lethal shock when instructed to do so by an authority figure.] These experiments were presented in class as things that couldn’t be repeated again. We are obligated to mention them, but don’t worry about them because we can’t repeat the experiment. But, isn’t that experiment repeated all the time? I had a hard time sleeping after that because I saw it in all our behavior. It was not Germans in Germany who did what they did in World War II, but humans, just like the rest of us, and we are all capable of that. That, combined with small unit cohesion (you fight for your buddies, not your cause) is a combination that is extremely powerful and scary, isn’t it?

Bill: It’s weird, but I had the same experience. That is the single scariest thing I have ever watched in my life, and of course, I have seen much more horrific, graphic, violent things that are real – and that was an experiment. My fear was, my god, what would I have done? I know what I hope I would have done, but after you see that film, you have to wonder. [He continued with a discussion of the Stanford Prison Experiments.] That’s why you have to have immense restrictions on abusing people you have made powerless, because it is such a human thing to abuse them.

_____________________________________________________

Perhaps psychologists consider running the Milgram experiments to be unethical these days, but reality TV producers do not. In 2006, a British TV station produced a show called The Heist in which illusionist, Derren Brown, began with 13 businessmen and women, and was able, in just two weeks, to persuade four of them to commit what they believed to be an authentic armed robbery. As part of the show, he reenacted the Milgram experiment as a test to identify his four most obedient participants. Darren got the same results Milgram did in 1963: over 50% of the subjects administered what they believed to be lethal shocks simply because a man in a white coat told them to. You can watch a report on the TV show here.

_____________________________________________________

Brooke: Are business schools doing a good job of teaching ethics?

Bill: When I am in a dispirited mood, I refer to them as “fraud factories.” They do a miserable job right now. We know empirically that in business schools and econ programs, when people enter they are materially less altruistic than their peers, and we know when they get done with the program, that is even more true. (See a paper by Gintis and Khurana.) So, through self-selection, training, and peer effect, we are turning out people who find it easier to cheat other people and to not care about other people. So, yes, we are teaching ethics, and we’re teaching it effectively, but it should be called “anti-ethics.”

Brooke: So, if you want to get a good ethics education, you should take diligent notes, and then negate whatever you are being told.

Bill: Yes, put a negative sign in front of most anything.

I refer to our prior conversation with Professor Mintzberg of McGill University, in which he said there is a clear moral obligation for colleges to disclose the flaws in their education, but not a legal one. Bill and I continued to discuss how a moral obligation is enough of a reason to refuse to do something that is wrong, and you don’t need to discuss it any longer.

Bill: That’s right. You’re done. Period. It doesn’t matter how fancy you make it, how many excuses you create, you’re done. End of story. It’s off the plate as an option if it’s unethical.

Bill explains how our simple social rules keep most of us from cheating each other. He continues,

Bill: What if you say my job is to maximize return to the shareholders, and, if it is not illegal, and short-term profitable, then am I supposed to do it even when it is immoral? If that’s the rule, then you have just developed a rule that will destroy America.

Brooke: A psychologist friend of mine says that many of her patients don’t have psychological problems; they have morality problems. They want to feel good about themselves while they cheat on their spouses, screw their business partners, or steal from their clients, and if she can’t help them with talk therapy, they want a drug. She says, “They don’t have an emotional problem. The problem is their emotions are working fine.”

Bill: Exactly. The problem is they are not listening to their body. There is something in their system that is telling them that what they are doing is very wrong.

We return to the question of whether ethics can be taught.

Brooke: A fellow applied for a job with me, and I asked if I hire him, could I introduce someone to the job he currently has because I am all in favor of helping improve employment, and when I hire someone away from another employer, I haven’t decreased unemployment, I’ve just transferred my problem to his prior boss.

He said, “I would never recommend anyone to my job because I am asked to do immoral things.”

So, I asked him why he had not quit.

He said, “What are you talking about? I need a job.”

I said, “Let me see if I have this straight. What you are doing is immoral and you don’t think anyone on the planet should do it, but you are willing to do it.”

How does this work? How can I teach someone that, if they have that feeling, they have to stop, and it doesn’t matter if they are getting paid to do it; they have to stop?

Bill laughed: Did he get it, once you talked to him?

Brooke: I might have succeeded in sending this guy home much more conflicted, because he came with an attitude that it was his employer that was causing his problem, and the solution was to get Brooke to hire him. I made it clear to him that he was not qualified to work for me. I said, “If I do something immoral, which can easily happen – I’m deathly afraid of that – I need you to tell me that I am doing something wrong. And if I don’t respond, you need to tell my boss, and Compliance, and if the organization doesn’t respond, you need to quit your job and you have to go to the regulators.” I need that because I do not think I am immune from what Milgram showed.

Bill: You expressed that it was an ethical issue where the individual had deliberately put scab tissue on to make sure he did not internally frame it as an ethics issue. All you can do with a person like that is make the point that they are acting immorally directly to their face, in a naked way, and you did it where there was an actual consequence of his unwillingness to take a moral stand.

Similarly, when you find somebody is unethical and you fire him you need to consider avoiding the advice you get from everyone and give him a negative reference. People have to take a willingness to get sued, and if that can’t work, then as a society, we have to give protection.

We must simply start teaching ethics in our own ponds with our own kids, or own friends’ kids, using our own behavior. You always look, as a parent, for teaching opportunities that are not didactic, so it was always great when someone gave me back too much change when my kids were present, because I simply made sure that they heard me giving it back, and that they were actually paying attention when I did it.

Brooke: Recently, I was on a train and sat with this young woman who is in her second week on the job working for a dubious corporation, that’s to say a large Wall Street firm, but I repeat myself.

I ask her, “What do you do if you are asked to do something unethical?”

She says, “What are you talking about? There are two sides to everything?”

I say, “But what happens when you are on the wrong side? Have you ever taken an ethics class?”

She says, “Of course. It was required. But, that’s what’s wrong with you old people, and how you guys used to be taught, because in our classes, we all get to discuss all sides, and everybody is entitled to their opinion.”

Do you think that is the right way to teach it?

Bill: I’ll give you my interaction with a young person who worked for a law firm who said, “What I like about my firm is that it is really ethical.”

You know, you don’t often hear that, so I said, “Wow, that’s great. How did you learn about that aspect of the firm?”

And she said, “Well, I know that my firm would never do anything against the interests of Israel.”

We both laughed. This would probably distress supporters of Israel, but Bill and I know that you can’t know in advance that Israel will be for all time on the right side of every issue.

Bill: I was dumbfounded. Frankly, I decided my powers of persuasion were probably impossible when dealing with somebody like that. It is bizarre what some people define as ethics.

The young woman you met was taught that ethics disappears because issues are complex, so there is never an answer, and we are not required to seek an answer.

Brooke: Many of our subscribers at www.NoShortageOfWork.com are in the New York area, used to work in finance, and are now unemployed.

One of the things I try to teach, which is probably the most useful thing from economics, is the concept of opportunity cost.

I say that when you’re unemployed, the advantage is that you can do anything because the opportunity cost is zero. You might have to struggle to get people to bid up your price, so it is a good idea to pursue things of value to others.

If you are not working at an unethical firm because you are not working at all, then you are not called upon to compromise your ethics. You will not have to say to yourself, “Oh, my god, if I don’t continue to do this, then I will lose my job, and I won’t have money to send my kids to college where they can take an ethics class.”

Perhaps, if you are on the street without a job, now you have time to reflect on those things.

Bill: That’s right. Reflect. Take the opportunity to read. And teach your children well.

—

Bill Black recommends To Kill a Mockingbird.

What do you recommend? If you have read a book lately of interest to No Shortage of Work readers, let us know. We will even try to arrange for you to interview the author, although I wouldn’t count on getting Harper Lee to take your call.

____________________________________________

____________________________________________

A conversation with Henry Mintzberg, Professor of Management Studies at McGill University.

By Brooke Allen, founder of No Shortage of Work

“Perhaps business schools should issue recall notices.” These words were spoken last week by Henry Mintzberg, a featured speaker at a Fordham University conference titled, “MBA Under Siege: Reimagining Management Education”

Because I feel my MBA is one of my all-time worst purchasing decisions, I gave Professor Mintzberg a call at his office in Montreal.

I began, “As a hiring manager, I can report that there are lots of recently minted MBAs with upwards of $100,000 of debt, who, as far as I can tell, have no skills or knowledge I’d pay them a dime for. Worse yet, they come with an attitude, and it usually isn’t a good one. Are you saying that business schools have an obligation to tell students when their product is faulty?”

He replied, “There is no question that schools have a moral obligation to disclose, but it isn’t clear that they have a legal one. Toyota has a legal obligation to let people know when they uncover a problem, but the case can be made that schools are not failing all students, and in many cases they add value. I refer to the functional courses in business, not the courses in management, where they do very badly.”

“But, the fact that most Toyotas work just fine does not mean they should cover up a fault in a few,” I said. “Besides, one of the things I hated about my MBA education was that the discussion in Ethics class was about legality, not morality. Isn’t a moral obligation enough of a reason to do something? Shouldn’t universities hold themselves to a higher standard than businesses?”

Mintzberg laughed, “Don’t look for too much morality at most Universities these days. It is popular for academics to make the case that honesty pays, that ‘It pays to be good’ n – not so– it’s a sham. Sometimes, it pays to be bad. Shouldn’t you always do the right thing, whether it pays or not? I’ve written about that in my book, Power in and Around Organizations.”

“In your more recent book, Managers, Not MBAs, you say that businesses are all about making things and selling them, but MBAs don’t study that. Instead they develop a disdain for production and sales.”

“That’s right. Selling is earthy, and business schools don’t do earthy things. Marketing is one-to-many, and it is hard to tell if you are doing a good job. Selling is one-to-one, and there is instant feedback.”

“And rejection can make you feel bad,” I said, “I once took a day-long sales training class that began with the instructor asking each of us why we where there. One fellow said, ‘I want to manipulate people so they will do what I want.’ The instructor took out his checkbook, refunded the $100 fee, and told him to leave. He said selling was about helping people make decisions that are in their own best interest. Then he taught us how to do it. On that one Saturday, I learned more of value than during five years of night classes at N. Y. U. where not once did I see anyone, professor or student, called on the carpet for their ethics or morality.”

He said, “If you want to be a doctor, you should go to Medical School, and if you want to be a nurse, you should go to Nursing School, but if you want to manage in business, you should not go to management school.”

“So, how can someone learn about management if not in school?” I asked.

“Some colleagues and I have created a program called Coaching Ourselves. We provide materials and guidance, but the basic idea is that small groups of people can learn a lot by reflecting on their own experiences, and sharing their thoughts and feeling with others. Rather than send employees to business school, we created an in-house program that helps develop groups of managers for a few thousand dollars, rather than hundreds of thousands.”

I was impressed. “We’ve sent three people in our group for master’s degrees with explicit instructions to report anything they learn that we can use, and they have not reported a single thing. I can certainly imagine it would be much better if we just got together and discussed things in the context of our own circumstances. But what advice do you have for our readers, many of whom are unemployed or working at firms with no education budget whatsoever?”

“They could do Coaching Ourselves by themselves; implement our methodology without us. They would get the benefits of pre-selected and synthesized material, not a person to help, but people can certainly implement these concepts on their own.” Of course, on their own, managers can still get the benefits of reflecting with each other on their experiences, just without the CoachingOurselves content downloaded to stimulate their discussions.

“It may be much more time-efficient for us to buy a solution for our employees, but if my friends and I were unemployed, we’d have more time and much less money, so perhaps we could roll our own. Professor Mintzberg, I, and our readers, thank you for your time.”

“And I thank you.”

It is refreshing to hear a business school professor call it like it is.

- – -

If you would like to join with other NSoW subscribers to learn from each other as Professor Mintzberg suggests, go to our newsletter submission page, and select “Form a Study Group” from the first drop-down menu.

Recently I had dinner with a couple I’ve known for many years. They question some of the ideas I am promoting here, and they point out that working for free can be illegal (in violation of minimum wage laws) and perhaps even immoral (as in the case of slavery).

Here is my response to them:

- – -

Dear Friends,

Thank you for talking with me. We have known each other for a very long time. As you have said, we disagree on many things, but I suspect we mostly disagree on means and agree on ends. Although it may not seem like it at times, I think we have similar values.

As you know, I promote the idea that people work for free when they can’t find employment. You seem to be against some of my ideas, and have told me that in certain circumstances it is immoral or illegal to work for free.

I certainly do not propose that anyone violate the law, and it is clear that under certain circumstances, employing someone for free violates the minimum wage laws. Anyone who has any doubt should check with an expert. And I certainly don’t want to advocate for immoral acts.  What guiding principle shall we use regarding morality? Is it good enough to ask, “What if everyone did this?” or “Would I want to be treated the way I am treating others?”

Let us consider extreme examples.

On one extreme, you would not believe that someone who cooks dinner for a friend should be demand payment because to cook for free takes a job away from a chef.

At the other extreme, if a wealthy factory owner fired all his employees and replaced them all with unpaid “interns” then you would consider that immoral. Just because an employer can find someone to work for free does not, in my mind, relieve them of moral responsibilities. The only reason I would not suggest the workers burn down that factory is that I am not going to advocate illegal acts.

Now, let’s look at the middle ground. I can certainly cook a meal for my friends for free. May I become a cook for a non-profit soup kitchen and not be paid? If I start a restaurant, may I work for myself without pay? I would think so… although here I am making an investment and might have expectation for a return in the future.

Let us imagine I want to become a chef and open a restaurant some day. A friend of mine is a chef and owns a restaurant that is failing. May I become his assistant chef without being paid so as to learn the ropes?  Although I am gaining experience, I am not earning the minimum wage, and I am keeping someone else from having a paying job that would have existed if my friend could have afforded it. Is there something immoral about helping a friend?

If this is OK, is it only friendship that makes it so? What if I didn’t have any friends who owned restaurants but I still wanted to gain experience? May I ask for a job as an unpaid assistant at a failing restaurant run by a stranger? We may very well become friends, for everyone is a stranger until you get to know them. Is being a potential friend good enough to help a stranger?

Now, imagine I have become pretty good and I want to learn  from a master. But the only master chef in town is very successful. He could pay me, but he doesn’t want to because he has all the assistants he needs. If he is willing, would you permit me to offer to work for him without pay? Would you allow him to take me under his wing without paying me? Do you think that would be immoral? If you were writing the laws, would you make it illegal?

Consider my friend with a failing restaurant, would you allow me to give him a gift of money… say, $10,000? What if my friend decided to then hire me as an assistant so I could learn the ropes? In effect, he is paying me with my own money. Would you allow that? What if, when I proposed the idea, he said, “Instead of giving me money to help me out, I would rather you help me out directly with your labor.” Would you prevent that? Is it immoral for him and I to do this? Is it moral for another person (or the law) to prevent us?

Much of the publishing world is run on unpaid labor. At one magazine only seven employees out of 30 people received pay. Do you believe that if the magazine cannot pay everyone, it deserves to go out of business? Let us imagine it does cease to exist, so now nobody is working at all, even the seven people who had been drawing salaries. Is the world now somehow better off? I can imagine those thirty people might not have liked their financial circumstances, but should you have the power to force the magazine to close because YOU did not like the way they conducted their business? Would that be a moral act on your part?

Imagine the magazine folds of its own accord and the twenty-three unpaid interns start their own on-line magazine, working only for equity and a share of profits, if they ever materialize. With a certain ironic justice, they offer to let their previous bosses join them as unpaid interns. The bosses say they would be glad to; they would rather be helping their former colleagues get off the ground than sit at home pining for the good old days. Would you allow that to happen? Would preventing it be a moral act?

We talked about how working for free can be tantamount to slavery, and how large farmers might (and often do) exploit workers. During harvest time, a farmer (many of which are large faceless corporations) will perhaps house, clothe, and feed itinerant workers… keeping them alive for a few months in exchange for labor, but little else. And when the season is over, they are let go with little regard to how they will survive the winter. You (and I) might envision circumstances where this is in fact worse than slavery for when such workers were the property of the farmer, there was an economic incentive to keep these people alive and healthy through the winter, so they could work the fields again. Treating people this way is unconscionable, and I think that if someone were unemployed, and they saw a way to put an end to such practices, then working to end them (even if not being paid to do so) would be noble work. It is that second kind of unpaid work that I am promoting, not the first. And if you were well off, and you pursued putting an end to such practices, and others chose to follow your lead in putting an end to this practice, I would not hold the fact that you were well off against you. And I would not demand that you pay those who follow you in your mission. If your mission grew to have millions of followers, you might be very effective in ending such exploitive acts, but you might easily go bankrupt paying each of your “workers” even minimum wage for just a few hours of labor.  I choose not to judge others by the size of their bank account, but by how they spend their money, and by their acts.

But, should I leave any room for forgiveness in my condemnation of farmers who only shelter and feed their short-term labor, and who pay not one cent to help their workers through the winter? What about WWOOF which stands for World Wide Opportunities on Organic Farms. Their website (www.wwoof.org) says, “WWOOF is an exchange – In return for volunteer help, WWOOF hosts offer food, accommodation and opportunities to learn about organic lifestyles.” Are such farmers acting morally? Or would shutting those farmers down be the immoral act? I think the latter. I have met people who have volunteered their labor in such a program, and they reported that they were better for it. But what is the difference between a college kid, supported by parents of means, volunteering their labor to a farmer for the summer and the agri-business exploiting day-labor? Perhaps those kids are acting immorally by learning how to farm, while helping a farmer survive economically, instead of forcing the organic farmer to pay a living wage and helping bankrupt them if they cannot make ends meet without paying salary? If I had the power to put an end to those practices, and I did, would I not be committing the immoral act?

I told you the story about how Sally landed a job as secretary at a company I worked for. She offered to replace the temp for no pay while she continued to look for work. After two weeks, my boss liked her so much, he hired her – and paid her back to the first day. Do you think it was moral for her to offer to work for free? Was it moral for him to accept?

You asked me the question: “What would keep me from having Sally work for me for 2 weeks for free, and then replace her with someone else who was willing to work for free – and repeat this over and over until I could have a year’s secretarial help without having ever paid anyone anything?” To this I reply, “Perhaps your conscience would prevent you from doing that.” Mine certainly would. But, I am not beyond helping a secretarial school rotate their students through my business so they can get practical experience in an office. And I can imagine not paying them, just as I have received free haircuts from students learning the haircutting trade.

You asked how big the company was that employed Sally. The answer is nine people: the owner, four salesmen, three of us in systems, and Sally. I think you asked because it might or might not have been illegal depending on company size, since companies with fewer than fifteen employees are exempt from certain laws. I don’t know if they are exempt from minimum wage laws, but a question is, does size matter when it comes to being exempt from moral law?

Can laws themselves be immoral? There are many firms that employ unpaid interns, but only if they are earning college credit. The reason is that minimum wage laws have an exemption for students who are earning credit since they are receiving compensation, albeit in the form of credit, not money. But is it really college credit that is the compensation, or is it the experience, whether a college recognizes it or not? The effect of this law is that a poor person, interested in the education, but without the means or credit to pay a college $20,000 in tuition is prohibited from being an intern, but a kid from a wealthy family, or a student willing to take on a crushing debt, is allowed. Is that a moral law?

You are a union man, and your union represents you in your dealings with a large, faceless corporation. I have no doubt that your life is better for that union, and I do not begrudge you or your fellow union members. By way of contrast, my parents were predisposed to be anti-union because they had a friend who had been put out of business by organized labor demanding that he pay the same wages as his large, faceless, corporate competitors (who could pay better). And they were able to pay better because they were able to charge their customers more than if they had more competition. And, at least in that one case, the union was able to help their employer prevent competition from a “little guy.” I am afraid of the unintended consequences of my acts. Were those union organizers concerned about the unintended consequences of their acts as well? Does morality play a role in all this?

Even though my parents had an anti-union predisposition, they did not think in black-and-white terms. Indeed, my mother helped organize the union of librarians at Princeton University, where she worked. And my father, who was an artist, designed the logo for the union. They were proud of at least one union, but they did not support all unions, and they were vigilant in their concern that even the thing that they created might evolve into something they could no longer support.

My father gave me guidance on how to deal with the issues we’re discussing. His philosophy was founded in a morality based on the two questions with which I started this letter: 1) Am I treating others as I would want to be treated? and 2) What if everyone behaved this way?

He also told me, “Give yourself to a person, but not to a corporation, for a corporation has no soul.” He was not religious, and he did not mean a soul as in the thing that goes to heaven. He was referring to the ability to be empathetic. Corporations, although a “person” under the law, are incapable of empathy for they are not a person in fact. He did not mean that you could not give yourself to a person who happened to be running a corporation, particularly if that person was the owner of that corporation, and was bearing the responsibilities of ownership.

He felt that there was a point to wealth, and the point was not to treat yourself to more goodies. Wealth allowed you to afford to treat others better than you need be treated in return. It also allowed you to be the shock-absorber for people who can’t bear the ups and downs that life deals us all. If you are the owner of a company, then you are only entitled to what is left over after all is settled up. By this I mean that everyone else must be taken care of before you. Your customers must be happy or they will leave. Your employees must be happy because unhappy employees lead to unhappy customers. Your creditors must be paid or they will take you into bankruptcy court. You must be good for society or the law will put an end to you. You must make sure your managers orchestrate all this, for if they don’t, bad things will happen. You must keep your eye on the till, or everyone (including your “trusted” managers) will rob you blind. You must follow your conscience or you will not be able to sleep at night.

If you do all these things, success is still not assured. The windfall you receive in a good year needs to be saved for the hard times and then you will see your net worth dwindle as you try your best to keep your endeavor afloat. The more you spend on yourself, the less you have to absorb the shock for others. For my father, being an owner is essentially an unselfish proposition, for you must put the interests of everyone else ahead of your own. Wealth is not the spoil, but the soil, with which you grow an enterprise to serve the needs of others. Having personal wealth is like putting on your oxygen mask before helping your children… if you are gasping for breath you can be of little help to others.

Almost all the people I have met who sincerely share these beliefs are wealthy, or were until they lost their wealth by following their conscience. I have met people who will say they share my beliefs once they hear me express them. But how can they say that in all sincerity, if the first time they had the thoughts was when they heard the words from me? Besides, nobody knows what they truly believe until those beliefs are put to the test. Our actions reveal our beliefs, not our words.

But most corporate owners don’t follow my father’s advice. They own their companies through shares, often indirectly through pension funds that in turn own mutual funds. Even if they thought they had responsibilities as owners (and how many of them think they do), then there is not much of a mechanism for them to exercise influence. When shareholders intervene in corporate affairs, they usually do so in the name of “shareholder’s rights,” in other words, their own self-interest.

These shareholders do not have savings they liquidate to keep their companies afloat during hard times, to keep their employees employed, and their customers satisfied, at a time when continuing to do so erodes their net worth. Rather, they see their stock portfolios as if it were a savings account that they can liquidate when they want money to spend on themselves. It is hard to blame most of them. They are not wealthy. They are in no position to act as the shock absorber that my father described. If they are to be faulted for anything, it is for becoming shareholders in the first place without understanding what that means, or what their role needs to be if they want the endeavors they own to flourish.

I have not started No Shortage of Work to promote the exploitation of labor, be it day-labor, or college students paying tens of thousands of dollars for the privilege of putting a corporate name on their resume.

Rather, I have started NSoW to show people that they can compete with those large faceless, soulless corporations run by owners who do not bear responsibility of ownership. I want small business owners who cannot make payroll due to no fault of their own to feel no shame in asking for help. I want students, and unemployed seniors alike, to feel free to offer their help to others. I believe that together they can get through hard times, and compete in the face of those behemoths that have legal departments who can design internship programs that skirt the minimum wage laws, at great expense to their interns.

I am not advocating exploitation of our fellow humans. I am suggesting that we are all in this thing we call life together, and we need to help each other out, particularly when times are tough. I do not want to impose my sense of what is right on others, but merely suggest it.

If you are considering taking my advice, and deciding to either work for another, or give work to another, without money compensation, I suggest you let your own conscience be your guide, not mine. Will you be able to sleep at night? If you want my advice on how to determine what unpaid work to accept, and what to reject, I recommend my father’s advice.  Are you committing yourself to a person or to a non-person? You are a human. Is there another human on the other side of your efforts who will have a hard time sleeping if they think they are exploiting you? If not, keep looking. You are setting yourself up for heartache.

If you are working for some inhuman organization that does not meet my father’s test, and you are doing so only because they are paying you, perhaps some of that pay is compensation for ignoring my father’s test. Should you be surprised if you have dedicated yourself to something inhuman when some day, in order to protect itself, it treats you in an inhuman way? What do you expect of things not human?

Is refusing to help your fellow humans during their time of need itself a selfish act? Is it a requirement that if you help another, you must take compensation in dollars rather than experience and skills gained?  If someone is attempting to create a profit-making business, does that condemn them to be unworthy of your consideration? It would be a sorry place indeed if we required all our needs to be met by a government or by altruists. I also posit that, during hard times, unemployed people will help themselves in terms of personal growth and improved skills by being of help others rather than by sitting home stewing in their own juices.

My father told me that in addition to giving yourself to another human with a conscience, you should dedicate yourself to your principles. With No Shortage of Work, I am trying to promote a set of principles. They are my principles and I would not want to force them on another.

Since you have very strong feelings about how people should treat each other, what the law should be, and what is moral and just, I would like you to review my stated principles. While I do not feel up to the task of changing society, or even its laws, I am certainly willing to change my principles. Indeed, I feel strongly that I (and everyone else) should state what they believe so as to open them up to inspection and criticism, and so that they might be called out as a hypocrite.

Below are the principles I am promoting. They are available for the world to see at: http://www.NoShortageOfWork.com/philosophy. They are in a formative stage, and so you should expect them to be amended. In fact, the point of this letter is to ask you to suggest your own changes.

I thank you for forcing me to reflect on what I am doing, and look forward to hearing from you soon.

With love and admiration,

Brooke