"Business ethics" is mostly used to promote social policy that is incompatible with the profit and loss system. The argument of the business "ethicists" is simple. They say corporations neglect their social obligations because they are focussed on making money for selfish stockholders. Government must prod businesses to give back to society what they have taken. It is the corporation's penance for capitalist sins.
The events of March 1995 could be a watershed in international monetary affairs. Beginning with the Bretton Woods agreement 50 years ago, the Federal Reserve system has been the global monetary regulator. The collapse of the dollar is a no-confidence vote that may have brought this role to an end.
You're looking for a job. You want to get paid several times your worth, come and go when you please, work only when you feel like it, take as long a lunch as you want, and get ten paid holidays per year and six weeks paid vacation per year. There's only one way to go: work for the federal government.
Performance budgeting (PB) is the newest strategy to make the public sector work. Yet as with other similar strategies, PB is fundamentally flawed. Without a system of profit and loss, a bureaucracy not only has trouble motivating its employees; it can't determine the value of what they are doing in the first place.
If you thought the end of the Cold War would mean the death of "defense" socialism, or even the shrinking of the massive Pentagon bureaucracy that has been choking off and diverting the productive sector of the economy since World War II, then think again.
Four in five Americans opposed the $50 billion Mexican bailout, but they were powerless to stop it. When the central bank says it's in charge—as it does in every financial upheaval of this magnitude—we are supposed to hold our tongues and leave it to the experts, even if their actions generate only uncertainty and volatility.
Americans are rightfully skeptical of "economic development." From India to Egypt to Brazil, it has meant Aswan Dam-size government projects that have failed to raise living standards while generating pollution and cultural instability.
Free-market economic development is entirely different.
After two years of pretending to be for free trade, the Clinton administration, backed by the Republican leadership in Congress, finally 'fessed up. In their dealings with China and Mexico, they shredded two centuries of economic wisdom, repudiated every principle of sensible economic relations, and kicked taxpayers and consumers in the teeth.
In 1994, bondholders lost hundreds of billions, thanks to Clinton's monetary escapades. What happened? It's a sad story of interest rates and their manipulation by government planners.
How can business comply with the Americans With Disabilities Act? It can't. The ADA has created an inescapable trap for companies, a bottomless pit for liberty and property, and an unremitting excuse for harassment and control.
