Executive Pay

The discourse regarding excessive executive pay packages seems to center on loss of talent where talent is needed the most. I understand that unfettered capitalism is being blamed for our current crisis. While in actuality, it isn’t capitalism at fault, it’s human greed. Nevertheless, if you’ll bear with me, let’s return momentarily to capitalism as the possible candidate to balance both issues.

Could it be that the brain-drain from the bailed-out firms might in turn, drive down executive pay across all industries in the long-term? How many millions does someone need in order to live a comfortable lifestyle?

Under human and capitalistic responses, the stronger companies theoretically need only pay slightly more to these executives than the pay-package-capped companies were able to pay. Just as pay was driven up, pay can be driven down. It’s all about balance.

And what would the extra savings be used for? Reinvesting in the economy. Into the company, industry, society. Hiring more staff, paying staff more and the executives less – again, balance. Keeping more work in our own country. Financing health-care and education, etc. Why does capitalism have to be all for one and none for all?

Where is the obligation to our fellow brethren? Can’t we find a way to find a
better balance?

Cross posted in comments on Globalethics.org

http://www.globalethics.org/newsline/2009/10/26/pay-czar/comment-page-1/#comment-1643

Compliance as End-Run to Ethics

Cook County, Illinois July 2009 – A conflict of interest has developed between the Cook County Forest Preserve and a County Forest Preserve Commissioner, Tim Schneider and his family’s property. The Schneider family owns a golf course at the far fringes of the county boundaries near Elgin, Illinois. The county wants to buy that land from the Schneider family. Since Tim Schneider and his family stand to make millions by this deal, there’s a very real conflict of interest. The matter has struck now as the Schneider family is thinking about developing that property and the County wants the property for the Forest Preserve district. (see links to articles at the bottom of this posting)

Oddly, none of the news articles I’ve read about this quandary indicate recognition that there is also a conflict of interest on the part of the county in wanting to purchase land from a sitting county commissioner. What has been pointed out is that the county, which has been crying about lack of funds and has recently raised taxes, is flush enough to purchase additional land.

So now to the meat of the matter: The Board of Ethics has decided that the whole issue can be laid moot by using the law of eminent domain – i.e., finding and complying with a legal loophole to bypass an ethical dilemma. By putting the whole issue onto the court system, the Board of Ethics seems to claim that it’s all out of their purview. Sorry, that end-run doesn’t work for this Cook County resident and sure shouldn’t work for a Board of Ethics, of all things! Am I alone in finding this an appalling state of affairs?

While ethical people care about being in compliance, the mere fact that someone complies with the law does not, ipso facto make them ethical entities. It’s about the spirit and intent of the rules and moral character of those vested in the outcome. This is the problem with our current fad of defining ethics on the basis of compliance frameworks. That’s fine when we were teenagers and found it convenient to blame our parents for why we couldn’t go to a party, concert, etc. But we’re adults and leaders now and should be able to make sound moral judgments on our own without passing the buck. And, we must be grown-up enough to get that we can’t always have what we want when we want it. Perhaps the only ethical solution here is that the Schneider family will just have to do what they want with the land and the County and we residents of the County can’t have the land.  When even the ethics “experts” suborn legal end-runs as solutions to ethical conflicts, those of us who believe in the social and personal value of ethics are doomed to be upstream swimmers in shallow waters rife with rocks and rapids.

“Never create by law what can be accomplished by morality.”
— Charles-Louis de Secondat Baron de Montesquieu, French jurist, philosopher (1689-1755)

http://www.chicagotalks.org/2009/06/23/golf-course-purchase-gets-penalty-shot/

http://cbs2chicago.com/local/golf.course.county.2.1079682.html

Corruption and Integrity

What is corruption?  And what does it have to do with integrity?

Transparency International defines corruption as the abuse of entrusted power for private gain.

Corruption is widespread.  It hurts everyone whose life, livelihood or happiness depends on the integrity of people in a position of authority.

So, it affects us individually and collectively.  The watchdogs and whistleblowers are doing their part but the real question is why, other than getting angry or disappointed, do we do nothing about the corruption in our lives?