Only People Have Ethics

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Inspired by a recent post Seth Godin recently published [read here]

It comes down to this: only people can have ethics. Ethics, as in, doing the right thing for the community even though it might not benefit you or your company financially. Pointing to the numbers (or to the boss) is an easy refuge for someone who would like to duck the issue, but the fork in the road is really clear. You either do work you are proud of, or you work to make the maximum amount of money. (It would be nice if those overlapped every time, but they rarely do).

Yes, Corporations don’t run themselves and guns don’t kill people, people kill people. I get it.

But the notion that you either do work you are proud of, or you work to make the maximum amount of money doesn’t sit well with me.

There are countless of examples on the web alone of people and their projects, that are doing work they are proud of and absolutely killing it in terms of sales and revenue.

The whole point of the technological and communications revolution we are living through is that it allows for people and businesses to first,

• Break perception, and second

• Break tangible limits of what can and can’t be done from a laptop on a park bench.

Economies of scale and increasing societal complexities don’t quite convince me of his argument either. You scale for two reasons,

• You want to do social good and want others to buy it, share it and talk about it … you can also make money at it.

• You don’t care so much about doing social good, you want to make money. You are not altruistic but what you are selling is not harmful, unethical or useless either.

So I don’t see why doing something you are proud of can’t overlap with maximizing profits often. If anything, we should be striving to achieve this balance.

That dichotomy does exist and it’s a powerful one, but it always has. Reaching the conclusion that they can’t co-exist and balance out however is very questionable.

I’m totally on board with taking personal responsibility. I think this was the central idea of his post. I just took a bit of issue with that one sentence in regards to “either, or” …

Thinking in absolutes is never good practice when it comes to important life-changing decisions, and forks on the road. I too learned this lesson from my Dad.