Analysis Of The Article 'Ethical Boundaries Of Capitalism'

Emmanuel, et al. “Double standard holds true for lying, kids say.” The New York Amsterdam News, 22 May 2003, pp. 20–20. EBSCOhost, Accessed 21 Feb. 2017.

In an article called Double standards hold true for lying, kids say by Children’s Press line (a part of The New York Amsterdam News) where kids ages 8 to 17 write their own articles, several kids discuss the topic of “lying” and “trust”. The authors who contributed held the same opinion in regards to how there is a double standard when it comes to how you should always tell the truth. The kids felt that it’s only okay to lie when you are protecting others but the truth, however, does not seem to apply to corporations who lie to benefit themselves. Emmanuel (one of the authors) saw lying in

Like any society, corporate capitalistic societies have a culture that defines them, influenced by others within that organization. The aspect of ethics is vital in putting in to relation how ethical corporations are. It’s hard to measure ethics, however, if the individual/organization believes they were doing the right thing. The pressures of maximizing profit also push some corporations into being unethical and taking advantage of the type of power and influence they hold. This unethical behavior is not illegal though. There is a fine line between ethics and legality and is usually used to the benefit of the company. Daianu and Vranceanu concluded that decisions should be made individually; ethics and capitalism should be kept separate from each other. Unethical behavior cannot be avoided do to the subjective nature of what is fair and what is good, in any outcome, there is someone that benefits most which, in the sense of capitalism, helps keep order within corporations and allows economic growth. There will only be certain exceptions to where the line between unethical and illegal is crossed, but since “man is social” this tends to limit just how selfish one will be

“Consumer culture” is an identifying principle in American life (Yosifon). Corporations consist of human beings, therefore they are always trying to do what they believe is right. Subconsciously, individuals seek to maximize their profit; corporations may be perceived as acting unethically, but from the corporations point of view, they were just acting in the benefit of their shareholders. Corporate responsibility is to that of the shareholders rather that of stakeholders, but sticking solely to the shareholder’s interest is hard for companies to do. This creates a dilemma in corporate law: a need to lie. Lying because of conflicting interests between stakeholders and shareholders; it’s difficult to work in the best interest of others if it were to negatively affect yourself.

Yosifon’s research intrigued me into learning more about consumer culture. This source will prove to be useful when it comes to better understanding how we got to where we are now as a capitalistic economy. The transformation of our consumer culture is also very interesting because corporations are not entirely at fault in this point of view. The culture we created ourselves has led us to this point of unethical but legal transactions and social relations between producer and