Ethics and Chocolate: Are Both Countercyclical?
Jun 23rd, 2008 • Posted in: Commentaryby Rushworth M. Kidder
It’s said that people buy more chocolate during economic downturns. Maybe it’s the only fun they can afford. Maybe it’s a cheap pick-me-up, or an escape mechanism, or a longing for simple childhood comforts. Whatever the reason, chocolate apparently is countercyclical: As the economy slows, chocolate sales rise.
I’m beginning to suspect that ethics also is countercyclical. Over the years, I’ve sensed a deepening of public concern over moral issues whenever the economy falters.
If that’s so, this past week not only should benefit Hershey’s and Cadbury; it also should drive ethics higher up the national agenda. With stocks sliding, oil prices rising, the housing market dragging, Midwest crops flooding, and global food shortages appearing, we well may see a greater interest in returning to ethics basics.
But why? Is there a link between moral insolvency and an economic slowdown? That suspicion was renewed last week with the arrests of two former executives at Bear Stearns (which was bailed out by the feds in March in a high-profile effort to stabilize the housing market) on charges of fraud related to the credit debacle. Last week, too, Canadian investigators brought criminal charges against three former top executives of Nortel, the Toronto-based telecommunications company long revered as a safe investment, in connection with an accounting scandal that severely rattled Canadian markets in 2004.
There also may be a link between political ethics and the economy. The Gallup Organization has just released data from its May 2008 survey showing that Republicans are particularly concerned about “the overall state of moral values.” This year and last, 51 percent of Republicans felt the nation’s moral condition was “poor” — up from a steady 36 percent between 2002 and 2006. Views of Democrats and independents, however, still sit at the 36-percent level.
The result puzzled Gallup’s analysts, who could find no apparent reason for this anomaly. But surely there are a few options:
- Quagmire. Gallup asked participants about 16 issues, including abortion, homosexuality, cloning, gambling, polygamy, and divorce. Unlike their liberal colleagues, conservatives may feel stalemated on many of these fronts, leading to pent-up frustration that finally surfaced in this poll.
- Skew. Gallup’s list didn’t include national security, education, immigration, or other current issues fraught with ethical overtones. Those issues might have given Republicans more reasons to applaud.
- Definition. Listing only topics in the news, Gallup effectively defined morality in public-policy terms. Had Gallup used a virtues-based lens — asking about values such as honesty, respect, responsibility, fairness, or compassion — would Republicans have expressed less concern?
- Exhaustion. President Bush’s approval ratings are in the cellar, even among some conservatives. With little time left to address ethics issues — and little visible appetite in the administration for doing so — once-loyal Republicans may be throwing in the towel.
But suppose Gallup got it right. Suppose a newly energized slice of the nation is, countercyclically, sounding the moral Klaxon. Have they recognized that unethical executives who deliberately wreck their companies may inadvertently be destroying whole economies as well? Are they sensing that while economic downturns can stem from broad, global forces, this one may have been abetted, at least in part, by local chicanery and turpitude? Are they realizing that a politics of divisiveness, animosity, and stalemate is not only inefficient and negligent but fundamentally immoral? Are they recognizing that when times are good, nobody wants to rock the boat with this “ethics stuff” — but that when times are tough, we face hard questions from the helmsman of our conscience? Are they feeling that perhaps we’ve overdosed on global resources — and that the globe finally may be pushing back?
If ethics is increasingly in demand, what the seekers will need most aren’t platitudes and surveys but ethical pathways and decision-making frameworks — structures to help embed integrity and resolve moral dilemmas all the way from the kindergarten couch to the CEO suite. But they’ll also need to be assured of something else: This didn’t need to happen. We didn’t have to wait for an economic shock to wake us up. We’re not so dumb that we can’t contemplate and correct our ethical future before it catches us unawares. And we’re not so hedonistic that we happily trash the moral long term as long as the short term feels great.
How do we know we’re not? Because, apparently, when times get tough we still care enough to be morally countercyclical.
©2008 Institute for Global Ethics
Questions or comments? Write to newsline@globalethics.org.
Print This Story
Email This Story
[...] see: Related Newsline Commentary, July 14 — Related Newsline story, July 7 — Related Newsline Commentary, June 23 — Related Newsline story, June 9 — Related Newsline story, June 2 [...]