For more information, see this week’s Research Report.

by Rushworth M. Kidder

Consumer spending, we’re told, accounts for 70 percent of the nation’s economic activity. So last Saturday my wife and I did a bit for the economy at our local supermarket. That brought us face to face with the core dilemma of current recession: Must the nation spend its way back to economic health, or should we stem the tide of materialism and engage in a new thriftiness?

You could see both sides at work in our market, a typically unprepossessing box plopped down onto former farmland and beset by parking lots in a clear triumph of function over form. Inside, however, the designers have labored to create some inviting corners — a deli with a lowered ceiling and a mural, a seafood market with beds of ice, a wagon of cut flowers by the entrance. It won’t pass for elegance, but it does reach for décor — a word whose very spelling charges it with a whiff of the exotic.

Yet there’s nothing elitist here. Like many U.S. supermarkets, this one is a genuine crossroads, where shoppers of every economic stripe mingle without friction. Some come to get the most for their money. Others come to buy the best, even if it costs a little more. And if a few of the latter dismiss the place as kitsch, the former find a standard of finish and cleanliness beyond what many of them have at home or at work.

Unpretentiously, then, the modern supermarket has become a living experiment in democracy and equality. It’s also become a cathedral of free-market economics, where the right to choose is sacred. When I was growing up, a head of iceberg was the only lettuce on offer at the grocer’s, and only a handful of cereals were available. On Saturday I puzzled my way through a leafy forest of salad-makings before settling on Romaine, and then spent 10 minutes stalking the box of Basic Four I’d been assigned to buy. It was tucked onto the bottom shelf of an entire aisle devoted to cereal, obscured by a display stand erected in front of it.

So in one sense, we’ve won. At least in the rural parts of the country, we’ve razed the barriers between rich and poor, inviting them to shop together in places that are safe, clean, accessible, and not unattractive. And we’ve provided choice upon choice for a range of tastes and pocketbooks. But we’ve paid a steep cost, perfectly illustrated by that display stand. Not only did it interfere with my cereal quest, but it also created a significant impediment to traffic in the narrow aisles, forcing shoppers into maneuvers apologetic or annoyed. In fact, that was its whole point. I’m in your face, the display fairly shouted, complicating your searches, slowing your progress, and urging you to abandon the well-laid plans scrawled on your shopping list. My whole duty is to make you buy, on impulse, something you hadn’t come for.

In a way, the U.S. economy has, within a single lifetime, become a vast collection of display stands. In the great cultural supermarket of the mind, the aisles of necessity have become the gauntlets of desire. However cannily we set out to be frugal, we’re constantly tripping over the allure of excess. The trend isn’t new: It’s been inching forward decade by decade, forcing us to redefine our wants as our needs. Slowly, incrementally, the benefits of progress turned into the entrapments of materialism. And now comes the kicker: This addiction to stuff, we’re told, is essential to our economic progress. Without consumer spending, the recession will drag on. If this 70 percent slips back to, say, 65 percent, even more of the faces in the supermarket will wear the sober tension of the unemployed. Without our willingness to buy stuff we don’t quite need, the economy will splutter along unhealed. Meanwhile, the display stand has triumphantly added another argument to its litany. See, it now says, if you don’t buy more than you intended, you’re being selfish and unpatriotic. Only if you abandon your silly frugality will we rebuild our prosperity and get out of this mess.

Hence the dilemma: Everything in America’s Puritan background recoils against the idea of excessive materialism, but everything in economic theory insists that our well-being depends on greater spending. Conscience tells us to save, but patriotism urges us to buy.

So we’re in a paralysis of mixed messages. At the deli counter, I opted for the salami on sale, but then berated myself for being too chintzy. Back home, scanning the mail, I came upon a complimentary travel magazine whose cover appealed to the frugal (”What $500 buys now”), while its insides hollered for the flash (a full-page Las Vegas hotel ad: “Got it. And flaunting it.”).

Will we be a prosperous nation glued to materialism, locked into impulse buying and got-it-and-flaunting-it spending? Or will we honor the basic moral attributes of thrift, responsibility, and penny-saved-penny-earned accountability — even at the cost of an extended recession? It’s right to prosper — and right to save. America’s next great invention will be an economic model that breaks the addiction and tells us how to do both.

©2009 Institute for Global Ethics

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Last week’s guest commentary, which examined the ethical and legal implications of bloggers who remain anonymous while posting vicious criticisms of others, drew many comments.

Most who responded agreed, to varying extents, with the premise of the commentary: that a partial lifting of the veil of anonymity could heighten the level of discourse on the Web without doing too much violence to the First Amendment.

“I cherish the Bill of Rights,” comments an editor, “but keep on hoping that someday there will be an equally respected Bill of Responsibilities. People who yell and scream ‘I know my rights’ are often the same ones who have no idea that they also have responsibilities.”

“I agree,” writes a journalism professor. “Bloggers should not have free rein to throw bombs without some method to make them accountable if they cross the line.”

A lawyer predicts that the anonymity question is an “area of the law that will keep lawyers working — on both sides of the issue.”

One reader felt the commentary missed “the real point…. When one considers the historical context in which that constitutional guarantee was made, the likelihood of knowing the issuer of the words was easily and likely traceable. Speech was free; the speaker was never free of responsibility for it. When does free speech — whenever, wherever, and however rendered — relieve the speaker of responsibility for the consequences of the words spoken, whether merit or culpability?

A novelist notes that he instantly deletes all material — “especially political, religious, or commercial — that hides behind the cloak of any unknown factor. But I read anything that is signed by a person I know to be real.” A blogger himself, he notes that he can sometimes be scorching in his prose but “if anyone disagrees, they know where to find me.”

And a regular reader raises an interesting question about the relationship of the commentary and last week’s letter from a reader critical of the tolerance of drug use. ” I was struck by the relativity of the issues described in the two leading articles in this week’s Ethics Newsline — our fondness for the anonymity of the Internet and our fondness for drugs despite their illegality…. Are these signs that we are beginning to give in to our baser natures, or are they simply modern-day challenges in our never-ending struggle against immorality?”

– Compiled by Ethics Newsline® editor Carl Hausman

Please note: Letters appearing in Ethics Newsline reflect the opinions of the letter’s author, not necessarily those of the Institute for Global Ethics or its staff. The Institute for Global Ethics reserves the right to edit published letters for length and clarity.

“It is extremely disappointing that the Obama administration is continuing the Bush administration practice of relying on diplomatic assurances, which have been proven completely ineffective in preventing torture.”

– Amrit Singh, a lawyer with the American Civil Liberties Union, commenting after President Obama’s announcement last week that he will continue the controversial practice of rendition, or sending terrorism suspects to other countries for questioning.

Critics of the practice note that those countries sometimes torture such suspects despite assurances — and U.S. government pledges — to the contrary. Singh “tracked rendition cases under President George W. Bush,” notes the New York Times.

Source: New York Times, Aug. 24.

For more information, see: Related Newsline story, June 9, 2008 — Related Newsline story, Aug. 13, 2007 — Related Newsline story, July 30, 2007 — Related Newsline story, Jan. 9, 2007.

Cheney says ends justified means, arguing that harsh interrogation prevented terror attacks; CIA says that claim is unclear

WASHINGTON
The debate over interrogation methods used on terror suspects dominated the news last week following the release of new details concerning the conditions faced by detainees.

Prisoners in CIA-run facilities overseas could be forced to stand, handcuffed, for days without sleep, according to newly declassified documents, the Agence France-Presse reports.

A 2007 memo from the Office of Legal Counsel, which gives the president legal advice, also authorized slapping and slamming the suspect into a wall.

In a related development, U.S. attorney general Eric Holder last week named a special prosecutor to probe allegations of CIA prisoner abuse, reports the Reuters news agency.

Former vice president Dick Cheney again defended the tactics, saying they were justified from the perspective of preventing another terrorist attack, reports the McClatchy newspaper syndicate.

But the CIA inspector general said it was unclear whether the interrogation tactics were responsible for heading off violence, notes the Boston Globe.

On Sunday, Cheney claimed that Holder’s probe of the CIA will make it less likely that personnel will volunteer for sensitive and important positions because they fear they will be prosecuted when the political climate changes, according to a report from the Christian Science Monitor.

But Slate’s Dahlia Lithwick takes issue with Cheney’s claims, noting that a setback in CIA morale may not be the key point as the inquiry continues into the methods approved by the White House Office of Legal Counsel and CIA higher-ups.

“It’s hard to imagine who’s more demoralized and embarrassed today — the CIA, the Justice Department, the president, or the Office of Legal Counsel,” Lithwick writes. “But transparency and accountability are embarrassing. This may not be a process anyone will feel good about, but feeling good isn’t the only objective.”

“The American legal system isn’t just about crime and punishment. It’s a set of guideposts to direct us in the future and to send a message about our values to the rest of the world,” she adds.

Sources: Christian Science Monitor, Aug. 30 — McClatchy, Aug. 28 — AFP, Aug. 26 — Reuters, Aug. 26 — Boston Globe, Aug. 26 — New York Times, Aug. 26 — Slate, Aug. 25.

For more information, see: Related Newsline story, Aug. 17 — Related Newsline story, July 27 — Related Newsline story, July 13 — Related Newsline story, June 15 — Related Newsline story, May 25.

Critics question whether act was part of deal for oil; in related story, new poll shows majority of Scots disagree with decision

EDINBURGH
U.K. headlines continue to be dominated by the ethics controversy over the Scottish government’s decision to release the only person convicted in the 1988 terrorist explosion of Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland.

Scotland last week announced that it would release Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed al-Megrahi on compassionate grounds, saying he had less than three months to live due to advanced prostate cancer.

Heating up the debate are contentions that Megrahi’s release actually was engineered during talks between Britain and Libya dealing with trade and oil, the Financial Times reports.

Critics are calling for more disclosure about the substance of the trade talks between current and former British leaders and Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi. British officials repeatedly have denied that trade talks and oil deals were linked to Megrahi’s release, according to an analysis from the Times of London.

But Gadhafi last week said that Megrahi’s release “was always on the negotiating table” in “all commercial contacts for oil and gas with Britain,” reports the Wall Street Journal.

In related news, a BBC poll conducted in Scotland has found that 60 percent of those surveyed are opposed to the government’s decision to release Megrahi. A similar poll in the United States found 82 percent opposed.

Sources: New York Times, Aug. 31 — Times of London, Aug. 29 — Financial Times, Aug. 29 — BBC, Aug. 28 — Wall Street Journal, Aug. 24.

For more information, see: Related Newsline Research Report, Aug. 31 — Related Newsline story, Aug. 24 — Related Newsline story, May 15, 2006 — Related Newsline Commentary, Nov. 1, 2004 — Related Newsline story, Aug. 19, 2002.

Oregon Supreme Court rejects suit by car sales manager who says he was fired because he refused to go along with deceptive sales practices; U.K. survey identifies best and worst innovations from environmental standpoint; Guardian columnist ponders who is responsible for keeping endangered species off the menu — the chefs or the customers?

PORTLAND, Ore., and LONDON
Last week’s stories included several pieces examining business ethics. Among them:

• The Oregon Supreme Court rejected a wrongful discharge claim by a sales manager who said he was fired by a car dealership because he would not take part in unethical sales practices. The Associated Press reports that Kevin Lamson won his original suit in a lower court, claiming he had complained about tactics that inflated prices without customers’ knowledge. But the Supreme Court held that an internal whistle-blower complaint about business practices did not rise to the level of “sufficient public importance to support a claim that plaintiff (Lamson) was discharged for fulfilling an important societal obligation,” according to the written ruling cited by the AP.
• Ethical Consumer magazine conducted a survey of environmental experts, asking for their opinions of the most ethical innovations developed in the last 20 years as well as the ones they would like to see banned. Bicycling, the fair trade movement, and the Eurostar train line running to London, Brussels, and Paris finished at the top of the list, reports London’s Telegraph. At the bottom of the list in the “should be banned category” were the standby device on the television set, which keeps it partially powered up all the time, the international framework for carbon offsetting, short airplane routes, and gas-guzzling SUVs.
• The U.K. Guardian’s Tony Naylor last week examined a culinary ethics question: Who decides the ethics of what to serve in restaurants — the consumer or the chef? Naylor writes that certain chefs “claim to relish the creative challenge of having to impress guests within the constraints of certain ingredients being off-limits” and won’t serve dishes made from species considered endangered, such as bluefin tuna, turbot, and monkfish. Others cited in the piece say it is not the restaurant’s business to dictate customers’ morals. Naylor comes down on the side of chefs being opinion leaders, saying the food professionals are in a better position to study the lists of endangered and sustainable sources.

Sources: AP, Aug. 20 — Telegraph, Aug. 24 — Guardian, Aug. 24.

For more information, see: Related Newsline story, Aug. 24 — Related Newsline story, Aug. 10 — Related Newsline story, Apr. 20 — Related Newsline story, Aug. 22, 2005 — Related Newsline Commentary, June 15, 2003.

California attorney general says he will scrutinize whether drugs were prescribed for specific medical problems

LOS ANGELES
California attorney general Jerry Brown has joined the investigation of several doctors who treated singer Michael Jackson before his death due to drug overdose.

The Los Angeles Times reports that the case now has been ruled a homicide, linked to acute intoxication from an anesthetic usually reserved for surgery.

Brown told the Times that his office will be looking to see if doctors operated within ethical standards, including the requirement that a prescription must be linked to a specific medical problem.

The involvement of Brown’s office appears to be linked to the drug monitoring system housed there, which is designed to track prescriptions and controlled substances, reports the San Francisco Chronicle.

The drug at the center of the investigation, propofol, has generated controversy among anesthesiologists because of reports of abuse, according to CNN. A recent study showed that about 18 percent of academic anesthesia programs in the United States had at least one reported case of propofol abuse in the previous 10 years.

Dr. Paul Wischmeyer, professor of anesthesiology at the University of Colorado and lead author of the study, told CNN that systems of accounting for propofol in hospitals are inadequate.

Jackson’s personal physician, Conrad Murray, who treated the singer just before his death, is currently the target of a manslaughter investigation but has not been charged formally, reports the Baltimore Sun.

Sources: Los Angeles Times, Aug. 28 — CNN, Aug. 28 — San Francisco Chronicle, Aug. 28 — Baltimore Sun, Aug. 28.

For more information, see: Related Newsline story, Aug. 3 — Related Newsline story, June 29 — Related Newsline story, Mar. 3, 2008 — Related Newsline Commentary, June 20, 2005 — Related Newsline Commentary, Jan. 26, 2004.

Rangel faces new disclosure problems; regulators decide in case where pressure group wants to encourage campaign donors to ask for a refund; about half of South Carolina voters say it’s time for embattled governor to start packing

VARIOUS DATELINES
Follow-ups and new developments in ethics-related stories about U.S. politics made many headlines last week. Among the coverage:

• There are new ethics problems for embattled Rep. Charles Rangel (D-N.Y.), reports WCBS Television in New York: Investigators say Rangel did not report millions of dollars in outside income on his financial disclosure forms. Rangel has not commented directly on the allegations. The House Ethics Committee has been probing Rangel’s finances for over a year, according to WCBS.
• Federal campaign regulators last week approved a conservative group’s plan to call New York Sen. Arlen Specter’s donors and urge them to seek refunds if they are unhappy about his recent switch from the Republican to the Democratic Party. USA Today reports that Specter had promised to return money to any donor upset about his defection.
• Half of South Carolina voters want Gov. Mark Sanford to resign, according to a new poll. Politico.com reports that the Insider/Advantage poll released late last week shows Sanford’s support has declined since June, when it was disclosed that he had an affair with an Argentine woman.

Sources: Politico.com, Aug. 27 — WCBS TV, Aug. 27 — USA Today, Aug. 27.

For more information, see: Related Newsline Commentary, June 29 — Related Newsline story, July 6 — Related Newsline story, Feb. 16 — Related Newsline story, Jan. 26 — Related Newsline story, Aug. 6, 2007.

The technique would change not only the person being treated, but future generations as well — a practice long considered taboo in the research community

NEW YORK
Scientists in Oregon have developed a technique that could be used to prevent certain genetic diseases, but also carries heavy ethics baggage because it creates a permanent genetic change in not only the individual but in future generations.

National Public Radio reports that the technique involves modifying genes contained in mitochondria, cell components that produce energy for the cell but are vulnerable to various mutations that produce disease.

Research on monkeys shows that DNA from mitochondria can be removed and replaced in the egg, a technique that eventually may be able to prevent birth defects in humans as well as mutations that are linked to Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, and Huntington’s diseases.

But the procedure, known as germ line therapy, is problematic because it affects future generations, ethicist Arthur Caplan of the University of Pennsylvania tells NPR.

Germ line therapy has been taboo for two reasons: an unintended side-effect could magnify problems in future generations, and it could produce generations of people with what could be genetically superior qualities — something uncomfortably close to eugenics.

“It does breach the principle: no germ line engineering,” Caplan told NPR. “It breaches a promise that many geneticists have made — that whatever else, they’re not going down that road. I always thought that promise would be difficult to keep. This particular experiment shows why.”

Caplan says that since the goal is not to make a superior person, but simply a healthier one, he approves of the theory of egg manipulation.

U.S. News & Word Report notes that there is another ethics dilemma associated with the protocol: It involves a process that appears very close to cloning.

The results of the study were published in the journal Nature.

Sources: Bloomberg, Aug. 31 — NPR, Aug. 31 — Nature, Aug. 26, 2009 — U.S. News & World Report, Aug. 26.

For more information, see: Related Newsline story, Aug. 10 — Related Newsline story, July 20 — Related Newsline story, June 8 — Related Newsline story, Apr. 27 — Related Newsline story, Mar. 9.

But psychologists warn there’s an important distinction between feeling bad for the act and bad about yourself

NEW YORK
The New York Times last week examined an experiment that purports to measure a component of the development of ethical behavior in children: feeling guilt for a misdeed, or what the children called a “sinking feeling in the tummy.”

The study, at the University of Iowa, gauged children’s reactions when they broke a toy that was not only touted as being precious to the adult in the experiment but also rigged to fall apart.

According to Times writer John Tierney, the authors of the latest in the series of studies on guilt found that “2-year-olds who showed more chagrin during the broken-toy experiment went on to have fewer behavioral problems over the next five years. That was true even for the ones who scored low on tests measuring their ability to focus on tasks and suppress strong desires to act impulsively.”

One psychologist interviewed for the piece noted that research shows guilt focused on bad behavior can be productive, while shame — the feeling that you are a bad person because of bad behavior — is not.

Incidentally, Tierney notes, the psychologists who conducted the experiment concluded it by saying that the toy could be fixed easily, leaving the room, and returning with an exact, intact replica, with the experimenter taking the blame for having caused the damage — a ritual intended to absolve the children of angst.

“No harm, no foul, no guilt,” Tierney concludes. “If only the rest of their lives were so simple.”

Source: New York Times, Aug. 28.

For more information, see: Related Newsline story, Aug. 3 — Related Newsline story, July 27 — Related Newsline story, July 20 — Related Newsline story, Mar. 9 — Related Newsline story, Jan. 26.

Bomber’s nation, Libya, viewed as U.S. enemy by nearly a third of the public, poll finds

From Rasmussen Reports:

“Eighty-two percent (82%) of Americans disagree with the decision to release the terminally ill terrorist convicted of blowing up a Pan Am jet over Lockerbie, Scotland, so he could return home to die in his native Libya.

“A new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey finds that just 10% agree with Scotland’s decision to release Abdel Basset Ali al-Megrahi, the only person convicted in the incident in which 270 people were killed. Eight percent (8%) are not sure.

“Sizable majorities in every demographic category disagree with the decision to return the convicted Libyan terrorist to his own country.

“Many U.S. politicians are now questioning the decision, charging the British government may have been seeking lucrative oil deals with the Libyans and pressured the Scots to release the terrorist. The British have insisted that the terrorist’s release was for humanitarian reasons only.

“Thirty-one percent (31%) of adults view Libya as an enemy of the United States, while only two percent (2%) view the North African Arab country as an ally. For 52%, Libya falls somewhere in between an ally and an enemy….

“Libya’s population is overwhelmingly Islamic, so these findings are perhaps no surprise since Americans still see more enemies than friends among the Islamic countries in the Middle East.

“By comparison, 70% of Americans view Iran as an enemy. Libya falls much further down the list of those countries Americans view as enemies — between Venezuela (34%) and Russia (27%)….”

For more information, see: Full press release from Rasmussen, Aug. 24 — Related Newsline story, Aug. 31 — Related Newsline story, Aug. 24.

“The best portion of a good man’s life is his little, nameless, unremembered acts of kindness and of love.”

– William Wordsworth (English poet, 1770-1850)