Business Ethics – Page 8 – education and deconstruction.com

Chasing Chaos

The Book of the Week is “Chasing Chaos: My Decade In and Out of Humanitarian Aid” by Jessica Alexander, published in 2013. This is the career memoir of an aid worker who found her calling in helping refugees of war, natural disasters and anti-government uprisings.

She interviewed the victims, wrote reports on their living conditions, pushed paper, attended meetings and held meetings, among other bureaucratic tasks– doing two-month to seven-month stints in The Sudan, Rwanda, Sri Lanka, Liberia, Sierra Leone and Haiti. “The martyr complex permeated my psyche, and although I desperately needed a break, I felt negligent when I left.”

In Darfur, the author learned of the pitiful situation in education by visiting a “school,” which consisted of a tent, a blackboard, benches and prayer mats. Teachers who had been working without a salary for two months told her that the ratios: of children to teachers was one hundred and fifty to one; children to notebooks was three to one, and children to lesson books was eight to one.

Alexander recounted a bizarre scene in which airport security left a lot to be desired. “The security men were looking at a blank screen. And the metal detector? It wasn’t plugged in. The airport had no power. But they put on a good show anyway…”

In recent years, Hollywood celebrities’ jumping on the international-charity bandwagon has meant a tremendous boost in the flow of money to various humanitarian causes. People have thus acquired the misguided notion that throwing money at the problems in Third-World countries, or a week-long visit to them during spring break to shovel some dirt in an attempt to rebuild, or donating old clothes to their hapless citizens, is actually what they need or want.

Read the book to learn:

why the author became frustrated and felt powerless when she was stateside again, working at the corporate office of a non-governmental organization (NGO; non-profit humanitarian aid group);

how the media do their part to raise awareness of suffering in the world;

and her course of action when she was forced to choose between her career and her life’s romantic subplot (i.e., settling down in a stable lifestyle as a member of a community).

Fake

The Book of the Week is “Fake” by Kenneth Walton, published in 2006. This book’s author tells a suspenseful story about his 2003 eBay activities that were deemed a crime.

A friend who was well-versed in the business, sparked Walton’s passion for hunting for paintings at antique shops, thrift stores and flea markets, and reselling those paintings at a profit on the online auction site. However, as Walton honed his entrepreneurial skills, he got greedy and began to collude with his friend, using deception to make more money.

Read the book to learn of what happened when Walton found himself in serious trouble, and how he realized he could make money honestly through a different pursuit for which he had natural ability, and for which he developed a passion.

Running with the Kenyans

The Book of the Week is “Running with the Kenyans” by Adharanand Finn, published in 2012. This ebook is a personal account detailing the author’s quest to find out why Kenya’s runners have developed a reputation in the past decade for winning so many races around the world.

Finn, an English journalist, moved his family to Kenya for several months to observe firsthand how the Kenyans do what they do. He himself jogs as a hobby, and while there, trained with many world record holders for his first marathon, in Lewa.

Iten is the small town where many Kenyans reside– in one of two major upmarket athletics training camps, where athletes, who get free food and lodging, do nothing but run, eat and sleep. The groups train daily in all kinds of weather, starting at 6 or 7am, braving “…potholes, cows and bicycles.” The camp manager decides who will run in races outside Kenya, and gets a percentage of the monies won.

The author notes that a Kenyan reports his or her age as significantly lower than it really is when signing up for a race. He couldn’t learn the real reason why. Also unexplained, is why, at the time the author was running with the Kenyans, they did not have big-money sponsors, like Adidas or Nike.

Another Kenyan cultural trait– that prompts competence at running from a young age– is that school is usually one to five miles from home, between which the kids run, so as to minimize transportation time. There are neither buses nor chauffeuring parents. At the time of his writing, the author had heard from various sources that Kenyans, counterintuitively, actually had high reverence for the British, who “… had brought civilization to Kenya.” So when Westerners were wearing shoes specially designed for running, the Kenyans thought they should wear them, too. This is in spite of the fact Kenyans run faster barefoot because most of them spend their lives barefoot, growing up on rural subsistence farms, and have won more races barefoot than not.

When Kenyan runners achieve fame and fortune, they return home to a village asking for a piece of them. This becomes a distraction and kills their careers if they, as many of them do, divert time and resources from their hours-long training every day; like, if they want to build a school for their village. This is not necessarily a bad thing– if they make a conscious choice to give back to their community, and they want to retire.

Read the book to learn more about other aspects of Kenyan culture plus other factors conducive to fast running, and how the author fared in his first marathon, before which, helicopters had to scare lions away from the course.

A Death… – Bonus Post

This blogger skimmed the ebook, “A Death in the Lucky Holiday Hotel” by Pin Ho and Wenguang Huang, published in 2013. This is a story whose details get tiresome after a while, about the downfall of two powerful politicians in China in 2012.

One politician was Wang Lijun. To compensate for his lack of a college education, he added laughable lies to his resume, such as the entry for “a master’s degree in business administration through a one-year correspondence education program at something called ‘California University.” This blogger recalls that that was the fictional school attended by the characters on the late 1980’s American TV show, “90210.”

Wang Lijun also purchased an eMBA from the diploma mill of China Northeastern Finance University. During a ceremony, the president of Beijing University of Post and Telecommunications publicly announced that Wang held a PhD in law. He was frequently called professor, and certain media disseminated propaganda that he was a researcher, author, inventor and fashion designer. His real job was police officer and later, police chief.

In addition to his making myths about himself, Wang used the usual techniques of dictators to amass a tremendous amount of power. Unsurprisingly, “…Wang had gone through fifty-one assistants during his two-year tenure in Chongqing…” He wrongly accused businesses of engaging in organized crime, used illegal surveillance techniques, denied suspects due process in the extreme, and embezzled public funds. You get the picture. Bo Xilai was Wang Lijun’s rival. According to Bo’s intimates, as of March 2012, Bo’s family had larcenously obtained 100 million yuan; in April 2012, that figure was 1 billion yuan.

“Suicide from depression is common among leaders at all levels of the Chinese government” especially when they are “…under investigation on corruption related charges.” Read the book to learn: whether Wang Lijun used this way out, and about the international incident that he staged; what prompted Bo Xilai to act similarly to Richard Nixon in delivering a “Checkers speech;” about the governmental infrastructure in China that provided the means for Wang’s and Bo’s outrageous conduct; and here and there, about Chinese history– such as Mao Tse Tung’s anti-intellectual campaign of May 1966.

The Billionaire’s Apprentice

The Book of the Week is “The Billionaire’s Apprentice” by Anita Raghavan, published in 2013. This ebook describes the investigation into the activities of a few Wall Streeters who were accused of insider trading in the past several years. Most of the accused happened to be of South Asian descent–from Sri Lanka and India.

One concept the book conveys to readers is that it is unknown how many American securities-industry professionals are benefiting from insider trading, but the people in this book just happened to get caught because there was sufficient evidence against them to prompt the SEC, US Attorney’s office and FBI to go after them, rather than other possible offenders. The departments involved included the SEC’s Market Abuse Unit and the Department of Justice’s Securities and Commodities Fraud Task Force in the legal jurisdiction of the Southern District of New York (covering Manhattan and the Bronx, according to the author).

Another concept is that the investigating organizations and the securities industry are staffed with many people who, during their careers, switch allegiances. They might go from being a prosecutor to being a defense attorney, or from brokerage executive to government regulator, or vice versa. In this book the “old boy network” is alive and well. Arguably, conflicts abound.

Read the book to learn, among other extremes, about wiretapping (not the NSA’s), about one of the accused who “had several phones– at least thirteen– and he used them all” and a $30 million legal bill.

Island Practice

The Book of the Week is “Island Practice” by Pam Belluck, published in 2012. This ebook discusses in detail, the life of a doctor who has been practicing general medicine and surgery on Nantucket for decades. He is a colorful character: having no qualms about cursing when providing psychotherapy (without a license); making house calls and treating patients at his own house; allowing patients to pay their bills through bartering; not charging indigent patients at all; treating animals as well; maintaining an extensive collection of operative firearms; occasionally allowing a needy person to live with him, his wife and three kids; and engaging in other offbeat pursuits.

Nantucket, a less-than-fifty-square-mile island in Massachusetts, is a socially isolated summer vacation destination for many wealthy celebrities. However, its year-round residents also need medical care, frequently for three serious tick-borne diseases, on which Dr. Lepore is an expert. When a patient has a life-threatening condition that requires immediate treatment, the doctor has them airlifted by helicopter to a hospital in the Boston area. In times of severe weather when aircraft are not flying, he must try to save the patient himself, by doing a Caesarian section or sewing up a hole in a duodenum in a case of pancreatitis.

The author portrays Dr. Lepore as similar to the fictional TV character Dr. Gregory House in that he is often diagnosing “zebras” (rare medical conditions) rather than “horses” (common ailments) through his intuition and then heroically curing the patient while bucking hospital rules.

Read the book to learn of the doctor’s highly irregular approach to practicing medicine, the difficulties and controversies he and his family have faced through the years, and the precarious future that medical professionals like him face, with the introduction of Obamacare.

As an aside, it appeared that this book’s thesis, stated toward the end, is that Obamacare would force doctors such as Lepore out of business. This blogger thinks that that will not occur. The wealthy will always seek out the best medical care, and pay such doctors under the table if necessary, to obtain it. They will find the loopholes in national healthcare to avoid a bad HMO. They would gladly pay the fine for not signing up for Obamacare because the fine will never be sufficiently high to be a deterrent for making their own private arrangements for medical treatment. A major argument some people– not just the wealthy– have against national healthcare– is that it is unfair to make the healthy people pay the high medical bills of the people who knowingly engage in risky, self-destructive behaviors (smoking; poor eating habits, lack of exercise) that result in preventable medical conditions or that exacerbate certain conditions (cancer, obesity, diabetes, etc.) that require expensive medical care. [By the way, this blogger’s medical bills were $0 last year and have been $0 so far this year (this includes out-of-pocket expenses)– for you curious readers.]

Apologies to My Censor

The Book of the Week is “Apologies to My Censor” by Mitch Moxley, published in 2013. In this ebook, the author, a Canadian journalist, describes the six years he spent in Beijing.

Moxley arrived in Beijing the spring of 2007 to work at an English-language state-owned newspaper. The reporting was limited to upbeat topics. Articles on Taiwan, Tibet or the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre contained propaganda rather than true statements. Ironically however, in everyday conversation, the Chinese people were brutally honest.

Many foreigners– who were paid triple the Chinese natives– worked at the paper at the time. In order for any native to prevail at a journalism career, joining the Communist Party was mandatory. This involved attending Party conferences on some weekends. For a short while, the author played basketball with his colleagues. When the Chinese players took a breather, they smoked courtside.

While in China, Moxley did various kinds of labor, more than just journalism. Most were unfulfilling for him. He engaged in the lucrative trades of: reading while having his voice recorded for the creation of English-language education-materials; posing as a foreign businessman working for a Chinese company for public relations purposes; and acting, dancing or singing in various videos to be broadcasted on the internet or TV.

Read the book to learn about the author’s life in Beijing– his workplace, living quarters, recreation, social life and romantic pursuits, and half-hearted attempts to learn Chinese– and his ambivalence about returning to Toronto.

The Big Rich – Bonus Post

“The Big Rich” by Bryan Burrough, published in 2009, is a long ebook that details the lives and times of the four Texas families who became extremely wealthy Americans from the oil business in the first half of the twentieth century. “They… became the country’s first shirt-sleeve billionaires… accumulated every toy of their age…” including lavish residences, private jets, boats, fancy cars and politicians (when they got into politics).

The editing of this book is a bit sloppy in spots. Nevertheless, according to this book, oil was first discovered in Texas in a well that was later named Spindletop in Beaumont, around 1901. The abundant quantity of oil found there caused a price drop that prompted a conversion from coal to oil among railroads and steamship companies. Suddenly, thousands of people sought to get rich quickly from oil, similar to the way people wanted in on the California Gold Rush. The nineteen teens saw a proliferation of automobiles requiring oil.

Read the book to learn all the details about the people, places, politics and peripheral issues (such as professional sports) associated with the oil industry in Texas over the next ten decades.

Radio Congo – Bonus Post

This blogger skimmed “Radio Congo” by Ben Rawlence, published in 2012. It is an autobiographical account of a 2007 trip to still-dangerous regions of the Congo adversely affected by the the country’s four recent wars– in 1964, 1977, 1996 and 2002; the second of which saw eight national armies and twelve armed groups fighting. The author resented having to hand over his “…precious francs to the insatiable Congolese bureaucracy” to interview, among many others, the non-refugees– people who stayed put during the violence.

Two major causes of all that strife is that 90% of the world’s mineral deposits are in the Congo– making it ripe for exploitation, and the fact that various regional ethnic groups hate each other.

Other bad situations the author heard about included: the spewing of lava on Goma in 2002, the demand for higher bribe amounts among local court judges due to economic recovery, and the fact that the incidence of rape in eastern Congo was the highest in the world. There were protection monies paid to soldiers by ten to fifteen thousand miners (in the amount of about $10,000 daily), and by poachers of antelope (whose meat was cheaper than goats’). Animal-park rangers also collected from the latter.

It behooved the local thugs to continue the hostilities. “Peace would mean the unwelcome attention of the government, the advent of commercial mining operations, taxation and the end of their private income… The usual tools of wartime– men and guns– are the deciding factor in most business arrangements and the colonel has the most in the region.”

The author spoke with all walks of life during his travels via hired vehicles and boats. “Each of these towns is a little island community unto itself, with its own radio, market and military command.” In Bujumbura, he encountered Americans whose U.S. government contract called for training the Burundian military. When Rawlence told people his main goal was to visit Manono, they thought he had a death wish. On the way, he ate chili, goat stew and tea in Walikale before he was told to leave, as foreigners were banned from that area. He was shoved onto an airplane loaded with tin ore to be smuggled back to Goma.

“Often the best way to solve a difficult problem in Congo is to get drunk.” The author went to a night club whose door sign proclaimed the wearing of vests, sandals and guns to be banned. In Magunga, the author was obligated by his hosts to attend Christian mass on Sunday morning, as all villagers did. It was a multilingual service; in Swahili, Kibembe and Kinyamulenge. The music ranged from drum and choir to car-battery powered electric piano.

Read the book to learn about the lives of the numerous refugees from Congo’s neighbors and about a boatload of other distasteful circumstances to which the author became privy– glutton for emotional trauma that he was.

The Outsider

The Book of the Week is “The Outsider” by Jimmy Connors, published in 2013. This is the autobiography of the American tennis Hall of Famer.

Born in 1952, Connors grew up in Illinois. His mother and grandmother were instrumental in turning him on to tennis. He started playing in junior tournaments at twelve. However, at that time, there was no money in tennis, so he played to try to get a scholarship to college. That turned out to be a moot point, as his grades were poor, partly due to an undiagnosed learning disability.

Connors was left-handed, and a two-handed-backhand player. Like John McEnroe, he was a hothead on the court and launched profanity-laced tirades when he thought the line judges were making bad calls. He became an “outsider” when he hired a litigious, greedy manager who shook up the then-professional tennis organizations of the early 1970’s.

Read the book to learn about the people who influenced his personal and professional life, and the people who shaped his generation of tennis players.