CB: There is the One Commandment: "Thou shall make money".
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Your right Charles. There are business ethics. This commandment proves it. I was wrong to be so cavalier.
It was helpful to me in understanding business ethics to take the first and only commandment Thou shall make money, and apply it to Kant's Categorical Imperative, `to act as if the maxim of your action was to become through your will a universal law of nature.'
I think I can safely conclude Business America has certainly pursued that imperative to its fullest extent. On the other hand, Business America is a tad weak on the second part, `to act in such a way that you always treat humanity, whether in your own person or in the person of any other, never simply as a means, but at the same time as an end.'
Now, I think Business America has gotten itself off the hook by their substitution of Money for Humanity, as per the One Commandment. The second part now reads, `to act in such a way that you always treat Money, whether on your own person or on the person of any other, never simply as a means, but at the same time as an end.'
Which reminds me of this question. How can you teach business ethics or medical ethics or legal ethics for that matter, if students have never taken a philosophy class in the first place? In fact is it even ethical to teach a business ethics, medical, or legal ethics class, without a general introduction to Ethics as a prerequisite? In other words, how would the students know, their teacher was not lying to them?
Getting back to the problem of business ethics and corporate America...but wait. Business is Good and Problems are Bad. Business is against the Bad. Merits are Good. Business is for Merits. Let's re-state...
Getting back to the Merits of business ethics and corporate America we can see that the first and only commandment to make money is a substitution were pursuit of happiness has been replaced by the pursuit of money. So, business ethics is a slight modification of Aristotle's ethics, where money is made equivalent to happiness. It then follows that since business is totally devoted to the making of money, that is creating happiness, business is the ultimate noble act and therefore the ultimate public good.
Then in the natural Aristotelian business hierarchy of the noble, the happy and the good, only the rich can the most noble, the most happy and the most good, since they have the most money.
CG