Rutger University professor Wenwen Zhang, wrote a 2018 dissertation that said conceptions of amorality in business literature are diverse and ambiguous. Belief that morality is irrelevant and inapplicable in business results in unethical behaviors, done for the benefit of individuals, organizations and nations.
Discarding or downplaying morality is a shortcoming of business education. Because financially successful enterprises enable and promote most political candidates, amorality is commonplace in governments.
In Dwight Eisenhower’s 1961 farewell speech, the U.S. President and former five-star General talked of the military-industrial complex. Eisenhower issued a prescient warning:
Throughout America’s adventure in free government, our basic purposes have been to keep the peace; to foster progress in human achievement, and to enhance liberty, dignity and integrity among people and among nations. To strive for less would be unworthy of a free and religious people. Any failure traceable to arrogance, or our lack of comprehension or readiness to sacrifice would inflict upon us grievous hurt both at home and abroad.
Today’s Trumpublicans and almost all Democrats are what the WW2 hero cautioned Americans about. Most don’t see themselves as evil. Amoral warmongers, colonizers, and unscrupulous arms dealing have killed well more than 100 million humans since 1900.
The USA has participated in countless foreign wars and today arms the genocidal actions in Gaza, the 21st century’s deadliest military action. Israel’s leader Netanyahu was honoured with a standing ovation this week at the U.S. Congress. Perhaps for his contribution to America’s arms industries.
Amoral climate change deniers profit by sustaining industrial activities that threaten ultimate survival of Earth’s 8+ billion people. That is an outcome too painful to comprehend, so most people ignore it. More than a few grow rich by fostering ignorance.
A lesser but still outrageous tragedy fits this theme. It is one where millions will suffer or die while amoral governments choose other priorities and businesses pursue unconscionable profits. A UN report1 includes this:
World leaders can fulfil their promise to end AIDS as a public health threat by 2030, and in so doing prevent millions of AIDS-related deaths, prevent millions of new HIV infections, and ensure the almost 40 million people living with HIV have healthy, full lives.
…right now, the world is not on track to succeed, and the inequalities that drive the HIV pandemic are not being addressed sufficiently...
A widening funding gap is holding back the HIV response in low- and middle-income countries, with fiscal space being tightened even further by the debt crisis. The recent surge in the promotion of anti-rights, anti-gender and anti-democracy policies is generating justified fear among people from marginalized communities who most need HIV prevention, testing, treatment and care services, and among the heroic frontline workers who provide them.
Extremely troubling is this report from The Guardian:
A new drug described as “the closest we have ever been to an HIV vaccine” could cost $40 (£31) a year for every patient, a thousand times less than its current price, new research suggests.
Lenacapavir, sold as Sunlenca by US pharmaceutical giant Gilead, currently costs $42,250 for the first year…
UNAids said it could “herald a breakthrough for HIV prevention” if the drug was available “rapidly and affordably.”
Given by injection every six months, lenacapavir can prevent infection and suppress HIV in people who are already infected.
In a trial, the drug offered 100% protection to more than 5,000 women in South Africa and Uganda, according to results announced by Gilead last month…
In other words, a new HIV drug that currently retails for over $40,000 per person per year could be sold profitably for as little as $40.
Now decide if business and government has too much amorality and too little morality.
- The urgency of now: AIDS at a crossroads. Geneva: Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS; 2024. ↩︎
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Categories: International, Justice
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Universal single-payer health care makes us all victims of the inflated prices for drugs, equipment, and the profits inherent in the building of healthcare infrastructure. And we still have to host bake sales, running events, lotteries, and naming rights to finance what is clearly a public good and an urgent necessity. We can list this in our ‘fail’ column.
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