“Ethics is the first thing to go when profits are on the line,” a businessman told me. That said, a business can be anything we want it to be. Why not make an ethically good business?
This page is my continually evolving notion of how ethics can work with business. I am battling against the idea that business cannot be ethical.
So, let’s get started...
A business is a transaction or set of transactions. Some businesses deal with lies, some with pleasure, and some focus on selling useful things. Following my Operating Principles, I aim to sell useful things.
Ethical work leads to correct results. We know something is correct if we say it is good, equal, fair, stable, healthy, consistent, consensual, and just. In other words, a balanced transaction is ethical. Aristotle taught me that.
I act ethically by seeking a compromise between two extremes. Example: Customers like free things. I like to get paid. The ethical concession is finding a reasonable price that pays me without gouging customers.
I want the world to flourish. Ancient Greeks had a word for the kind of flourishing I am after, Eudaimonia. Eudaimonia is a sort of supreme knowledge. Everyone must have the affluence that comes with more knowledge.
In more concrete terms, I hope to increase social mobility.
Children are not as well off as their parents are in our society. That means that human progress will stagnate.
I hope my work improves social mobility, increasing global Eudaimonia (related: see My Utopia ).
I look at my experience and interests to understand how I should reach my ethical priority.
The best record of my past work is the invoices I have sent. Most of my recorded time (8,184.08 hours and counting) was solving website technical problems, so whatever I do should build on that.
To find my interests, I look to my journals.
For the past five years, my journals are obsessed with ethics. I constantly interrogate how to do good.
Therefore, I must do something that solves website technical issues and engages my interest in ethical questions.