Theos-Talk Archives (November 1994 Message tl00082)

My dear Jerry! Your beginning remarks re questioning my Bob's
ethics, sight unseen, doesn't make me feel especially sisterly
towards you.  My very a propos sisterly advice to you would be
"don't be a supercilious academic." As a matter of fact, Bob has
tenure, & expressing his opinions is not going to result in his
losing his position, especially since his bosses' and his
outfit's interests don't always coincide with those of large
corporations.

Re the red herring, I think there's no way we're going to be
able, to stop most of the exporting of jobs to places where
hourly wages are lower than ours.  Rather than putting more
people to work at McDonald's (who, on top of it, had lousy, flat,
dried up hamburgers back in the days when I ate them), I would
like to see the TRA stepped up, ie retraining of workers who've
lost their jobs to foreign competition for jobs which are needed
here.  As for instance we seem to have a shortage of Master
electricians & plumbers.  That's one I happen to know about.
There are others, but I don't have access anymore to the Dept of
Labor's statistics.

JHE "Is it ethical for American Corporations to move industries
to these countries".  In my experience all corporations are in
business to make money, and only become ethical if someone else
makes them...  Very rarely do you find a business man who
concerns himself with ethics, when he's concerned with his profit
& loss statement.

Andrew Carnegie comes to mind.  He amassed a fortune not too
ethically, & at the end of his life decided to donate a lot of
money to building libraries.  The Rockefeller Foundation has
donated to worthy causes ...  there's another one, whose founder
wasn't too bent on running his business on ethics.  You're
barking up the wrong tree by asking whether the corporations are
being ethical.  That isn't going to change corporate thinking &
acting one iota.  You need to find a different handle.
Preferably one with a Dollar sign attached to it.  I'm with you
when you talk about that we have the power to push for changes in
the 3rd world countries.  I'm all for doing that.

I used another more personal & smaller power.  I told my African
Theosophical correspondent about what I'd read in that book,
after he'd told me there were some American firms starting up in
his country.  For whatever it's worth.

You're right, John Algeo's talk was given at a convention,
probably at Lake Geneva, a number of years ago.  Of course, John
set up the whole thing.  I can't see that you can draw situations
from & have a free wheeling discussion with an audience of a few
hundred people.  When I went to school a prof with that many in
class always lectured.  I think the talk was given before the
days when they broke up meetings such as this into small groups
who discussed & then reported their findings & decisions back to
the assembly as a whole.  I thought the 2-choice answers were an
imaginative & feasible middle ground between those 2 ways of
presenting material.  I'm sure that the questions John posed,
which are realistic enough to this day, caused people in the
audience to think & discuss among themselves what they would do
under these circumstances.  At least I put these situations onto
our net because I thought they'd be interesting to discuss.

TO: WILLIAM ALLEN

I would think that by being on committees looking into how you
are going to implement the new state mandate, you would be able
to contribute something that would try to ameliorate, to the best
of your persuasive powers & etc., said implementation towards
your sense of the right & the feasible.  I would consider that a
worthwhile contribution, & I'd not feel guilty about it.  You
_need_ to work with that state mandate, ther is no other choice,
but maybe there are shades of working with it that you can help
implement.  Apparently you've decided that it's not weighty
enough to resign over it, & be without a job, & all that this
entails for yourself & your family.  I don't think you need to
feel guilty either for having the urge to support your family.

Aloha means Love
Liesel