Author: Shel Horowitz—Green/Ethical Business Expert

A lifelong activist, profitability and marketing specialist Shel Horowitz’s mission is to fix crises like hunger, poverty, racism, war, and catastrophic climate change—by showing the business world how fixing them can make a profit. An author, international speaker, and TEDx Talker, his award-winning 10th book, Guerrilla Marketing to Heal the World, lays out a blueprint for creating and MARKETING those profitable change-making products and services. He is happy to help you craft your messaging and develop profit strategies. Learn more (and download excerpts from the book) at http://goingbeyondsustainability.com

By Posted on Posted in Energy & Sustainability, Marketing Trends/News, Media Ethics, media-general, Politics Tagged with , , , , ,

Want to know why right-wing pundits far outnumber those on the left in mainstream US TV? Bloggers Jay Rosen and Glenn Greenwald shared a theory on Bill Moyers Journal: having someone like Amy Goodman of Democracy Now would interfere too much with the construct disseminated by US mainstream media that the US government and major corporations are our benevolent friends, and they don’t want to air views that might help explain why the US has enemies abroad.

Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, and Ann Coulter, those preachers of hate, are OK in their view because they are simply putting out a more vitriolic version of the Reaganite “mainstream.” But the soft-spoken, highly articulate and very well informed Goodman (who I consider one of the best interviewers in contemporary journalism) is considered a threat!

Of course, this doesn’t explain how another articulate and well-informed progressive,
Rachel Maddow, gets air. But it says a lot about the nature of today’s corporate media.

In the “know your enemies” department, fans of intelligent TV must read this brief transcript or watch the video. It’s a shocker.

Facebooktwitterpinterestlinkedinmail

By Posted on Posted in Business Ethics, Ethics-International, Social and Economic Justice

Editor’s note: Holly McCarthy submitted this provocative guest post, and I’m running it in the hope of starting some dialogue. I share some of Holly’s concerns about outsourcing (particularly about using it to duck around environmental laws), but also believe there can be ethical ways to do it, and that when done properly, it can be an important leg up to the hardest-pressed communities at the bottom of the world’s pyramid. Curious as to what others think.
–Shel Horowitz

Guest post by Holly McCarthy When we talk of business ethics, we’re generally referring to the right way to do business, the moral way that leads to principled profit. But the advent of globalization has brought on a new kind of ethical value that we must bow to, but one which we tend to ignore because it doesn’t concern us directly. I’m talking about the process of outsourcing, a practice that’s pretty common these days because of the low cost of labor in countries like India, China and the Philippines.

Issue number one: The first unethical aspect of outsourcing is that we’re ignoring our own talent and paying people overseas just to cut costs. Our people are languishing without jobs and yet we’re shifting more and more jobs overseas. There are times when we even tend to hand over sensitive information to unknown faces who are connected to us through just a computer and an Internet connection, thus putting at risk our customers’ privacy and identity. Besides this, we are closing down offices in our country only to open new ones in other countries, thus effectively contributing to development on foreign lands and stagnation in our own.

Issue number two: We’ve also taken to shifting our manufacturing operations overseas, not only because of lower costs, but also because these countries do not have effective anti-pollution laws. We are luring them to ruin with huge amounts of money, and the sad part of this whole shady situation is that those who gain from this venture are not the ones who are affected by the effluents that result from the manufacturing process. It’s the poor and indigent people who live off the land who are hurt the most – they cannot afford bottled water like the rest of us and so must still drink from the stream that’s been polluted; they cannot afford to sit inside air-conditioned rooms and so must breathe in the polluted air; they cannot afford medication, and so they must suffer respiratory illnesses and other ailments in silence.

Outsourcing is and has always been a sore point with developed nations like the USA and the UK. The burgeoning of talent in developing countries, talent that is available at a fraction of the cost incurred in hiring local labor, had made organizations take the easy way out. Of course, when there’s money to be made, it’s understood that you want to be among the profits. But there’s an ethical line that cannot be crossed, and it’s up to you to decide where you want to draw it.

This post was contributed by Holly McCarthy, who writes on the subject of online universities. She invites your feedback at hollymccarthy12 at gmail dot com

Facebooktwitterpinterestlinkedinmail

By Posted on Posted in Business Ethics, Customer Service as Marketing, Transparency vs. Secrecy, Web 2.0/Social Media Tagged with

Just yesterday, I blogged about the massive user outcry over Facebook’s new Terms of Use. Last night, CNet reported that the social networking giant had retreated.

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg acknowledged the controversy, saying, “we have decided to return to our previous terms of use while we resolve the issues that people have raised.”

And better still, this time the process will be collaborative–which is especially appropriate, given that Facebook exists because of content its users create:

If you’d like to get involved in crafting our new terms, you can start posting your questions, comments and requests in the group we’ve created—Facebook Bill of Rights and Responsibilities. I’m looking forward to reading your input.

I think I’ll sign up for that group!

Facebooktwitterpinterestlinkedinmail

By Posted on Posted in Business Ethics, Transparency vs. Secrecy, Web 2.0/Social Media Tagged with ,

Facebook’s recently adopted Terms of Use are attracting harsh attention in the online world.

Ownership; Proprietary Rights

Except for User Content and Applications/Connect Sites, all materials, content and trademarks on the Facebook Service are the property of Facebook and/or its licensors and are protected by all relevant IP laws and other proprietary rights

OK, no problem so far; user content remains the property of those posting it, and Facebook quite correctly maintains its rights to its own intellectual property. But then a little later, the kicker. An apparent transfer of rights to Facebook, to use your content any way it wants, with no compensation to you.

Licenses

You hereby grant Facebook an irrevocable, perpetual, non-exclusive, transferable, fully paid, worldwide license (with the right to sublicense) to (a) use, copy, publish, stream, store, retain, publicly perform or display, transmit, scan, reformat, modify, edit, frame, translate, excerpt, adapt, create derivative works and distribute (through multiple tiers), any User Content you (i) Post on or in connection with the Facebook Service or the promotion thereof subject only to your privacy settings or (ii) enable a user to Post, including by offering a Share Link on your website and (b) to use your name, likeness and image for any purpose, including commercial or advertising, each of (a) and (b) on or in connection with the Facebook Service or the promotion thereof. You represent and warrant that you have all rights and permissions to grant the foregoing licenses.
(snip)
Submissions

You acknowledge and agree that any questions, comments, suggestions, ideas, feedback or other information that you provide to Facebook (“Submissions”), are non-confidential and non-proprietary. Facebook will be entitled to the unrestricted use of any such Submission for any purpose, commercial or otherwise, without acknowledgment or compensation to you.

Say, what? By my reading, this not only gives Facebook the right to sell our content without even telling us, let alone cutting us in on the revenues, but also could be interpreted–it’s a stretch, but lawyers exist as an industry because of these sorts of stretches–as allowing the company the right to use any content that includes a please-link-back utility that includes Facebook.

Writing in The Consumerist, Chris Walters says this means “anything you upload to Facebook can be used by Facebook in any way they deem fit, forever, no matter what you do later.”

As Amazon, Google, and other content platforms have claimed in the past, Facebook responds that it’s just claiming the rights necessary to operate the service:

We are not claiming and have never claimed ownership of material that users upload. The new Terms were clarified to be more consistent with the behavior of the site. That is, if you send a message to another user (or post to their wall, etc…), that content might not be removed by Facebook if you delete your account (but can be deleted by your friend).

Quoted in the Chicago Tribune, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg put it this way:

We wouldn’t share your information in a way you wouldn’t want,” Zuckerberg said. “The trust you place in us as a safe place to share information is the most important part of what makes Facebook work.

Still, like those other platforms, this response seems thin and inadequate. Surely a lawyer could easily create language that fully protects Facebook while at the same time making it completely unambiguous that user-posted content belongs to its creators, who are merely providing Facebook the right to display and link to it. Without sublicensing, monetary or other compensation, or other seizure of rights the company doesn’t need.

Meanwhile, I’m not a lawyer (and this is not legal advice), but here’s my gift to the Internet community. I freely grant anyone the right to use or modify the following paragraph (which will be posted to Facebook, since my blog automatically feeds into Facebook notes):

I hereby note that I was not presented with the option to sign or decline Facebook’s February 4, 2009 Terms of Use revision, and that while I allow Facebook to display my content on any page where I post it or on any page where another Facebook user links to it, I do not transfer ownership of my intellectual property, nor do I agree to allow Facebook to relicense or reprint my content outside these uses without my approval. I am willing to negotiate licensing and revenue-sharing agreements with Facebook, but I explicitly do not grant blanket permission.

Facebooktwitterpinterestlinkedinmail

By Posted on Posted in Abundance and Prosperity, Energy & Sustainability Tagged with , , , ,

Mycelium mushrooms reclaiming oil spills, sequestering carbon, fighting disease, hunger, and pests, more. One of the most inspirational videos I’ve ever seen. A must-view.

He even makes a claim that the Internet is essentially humanized mushroom technology.

Facebooktwitterpinterestlinkedinmail

By Posted on Posted in Peace and War

Blackwater, a company heavily tarnished with a reputation for corruption and violence, a company that has done a lot of the heavy lifting for the Bush administration in Iraq, a company that was defeated in its plan to turn a US-Mexico border region into an armed camp…one of the most powerful private armies in the world–is feeling so much heat that it’s changed its name from Blackwater Worldwide to the innocuous-sounding (and totally vague) Xe.

It can run but it can’t hide. It’s still responsible for the atrocity/massacre at Nissur Square. It still has blood on its hands in incident after incident. And it’s still banned from future operations in Iraq.

It is an outrage that the US outsources its dirty work to companies like this (which pay their people a lot more than the government pays its soldiers), and then claims they can’t be held responsible for their actions because they’re outside the military system. That was the policy under Bush. I hope it changes under Obama.

Facebooktwitterpinterestlinkedinmail

By Posted on Posted in Energy & Sustainability Tagged with , , , , , ,

From December, so a few references to Obama’s Cabinet choices have shifted. Vital analysis, lightheartedly delivered out of her personal experience, looking not only at implications of squandering water, but also on our current system’s vulnerabilities, and how much it will really take to rebuild infrastructure.

My favorite quote:

Here in California, fish have much better lawyers now than they did back in the day. Sustainability and environmental concerns are not going away in California or anywhere else.

If you don’t know Rachel Maddow, she’s a host on MS-NBC TV and AirAmerica radio, very progressive, very smart. I’ve been following her since her first radio gig maybe 10 or 12 years ago, here in Western Massachusetts.

Facebooktwitterpinterestlinkedinmail

By Posted on Posted in Uncategorized

“His Holiness [H.H.] thought it was prudent to make his office open and assessable to a more youth and technologically advancing audience.”

So says the Office of His Holiness the Dalai Lama on his brand new Twitter page, which is responsible for His Holiness’s media presence. That presence now not only includes a website, Facebook (still below the 5000 limit on friends), and MySpace.

H.H. is keeping a pretty active profile on Twitter; launched just 15 hours ago, the stats are
Following 2,704
5,498 Followers
25 Updates

Oh yes, and when I went to H.H.’s Facebook profile, I saw that he is a fan of Burmese dissident leader Aung San Suu Kyi.

Somehow, even though he’s a generation younger than H.H., I can’t imagine George W. Bush having pages on these sites.

Facebooktwitterpinterestlinkedinmail

By Posted on Posted in Ethics: General, Publishing, Web 2.0/Social Media Tagged with , ,

Someone on a social network forum posted a really great article. The only problem was, it looked like the poster hadn’t gotten permission.

As entrepreneurs, we need to be careful to respect the intellectual property rights of other entrepreneurs, and that includes writers, photographers, etc. It is often not difficult to get reprint permission (I have over 1000 reprinted articles on https://www.frugalmarketing.com and https://www.frugalfun.com, and I have permission for every single one. To simply place a whole article and not get permission or give credit to the source, is an act of theft. If you published a book, you wouldn’t want someone taking your hard work and publishing their own edition.

I’m sure the person who posted was not acting out of malice but of ignorance. Many people don’t think of reprinting an article as stealing, just like they don’t think throwing a toxic cigarette butt on the ground is littering. It’s totally appropriate to quote the first paragraph or two, mention some key points in the article (in your own words), and post a link–or to go get permission from the author.

Let’s not do things that come back to haunt us.

Note: I have posted a whole bunch of articles about business ethics on my ethics site, PrincipledProfit–and yes, I have permission for all of those as well. I’ve also written an award-winning book on success through business ethics: Principled Profit: Marketing That Puts People First.

Facebooktwitterpinterestlinkedinmail

By Posted on Posted in Business Ethics, Frugality/Frugal Fun, Social and Economic Justice

Some random thoughts about the economy and ethics today.

1. President Obama took a small but welcome step toward curtailing corporate abuses yesterday, restricting CEO pay for those companies taking government bailouts to a “measly” half a million dollars. Tom Peters, author of In Search of Excellence, endorsed the idea but said it didn’t go far enough, noting that the myth of the irreplaceable CEO was just that, a myth. He’d like to max out CEO pay at the same level a top general or admiral receives. Not a bad idea!

2. For those CEOs who can’t imagine living on that amount, I assure you that it’s possible to live comfortably, even luxuriously, on far less. I remember when $10,000 per year felt like an enormous sum of money to me. I actually had a job in New York City as recently as 1980 that paid $82 per week of hard work–that was part of the “research phase” for my e-book on having fun cheaply, The Penny-Pinching Hedonist: How to Live Like Royalty with a Peasant’s Pocketbook. In fact, if you’re a CEO who finds this new “limited” income a hardship, contact me. I’ll give you a free copy of the e-book, and the $8.50 you save will be your first step toward frugality. ;-). It’ll save the typical reader between $500-$2000 per year. In your case, it might save you a million or so.

3. Talk about sleeping at the switch! Whistleblower Harry Markopolos not only claims (and, I understand, documented during his recent testimony) that he gave the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) enough info to break up Bernie Madoff’s Ponzi scheme as far back as 2000, but also laid it out for a Wall Street Journal reporter who was interested, but couldn’t get the go-ahead from brass, back in 2005. Markopolos had some pretty harsh words for the SEC:

I gift wrapped and delivered the largest Ponzi scheme in history to them and some how they couldn’t be bothered to conduct a thorough and proper investigation because they were too busy on matters of higher priority.

4. The left-of-center political action group MoveOn is jumping into the fray with a petition opposing the use of bailout dollars for executive bonuses. This is from the message you can send to friends after signing, which you can do at https://pol.moveon.org/bonus/?r_by=15503-5426570-ynLMRyx&rc=comment_paste:

Did you hear that Wall Street gave out $18.4 billion in bonuses in 2008? $18.4 billion to the people who crippled our economy with their recklessness and greed and then took $700 billion of our money. Outrageous, right?

Not only did I sign, but I feel any company that took our tax money and then paid even a dollar in bonuses should be made to pay it back. Just because the Bush administration was too incompetent to specify how this money was spent does not mean we have to tolerate this outrage. And forgive me for being out of touch, but I always thought bonuses were something you earn through stellar performance–not for running your company, and the economy, into the ground.

Facebooktwitterpinterestlinkedinmail