Re: DB and App Agnosticism on the iSeries (thinking about:Questionabout UDB on iSeries)

On Wed, 1 Dec 2004 07:08:24 -0600, Jones, John (US)
<john.jones@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> Joe,
> 
> Sorry to drift OT a little...
> 
> Businesses are not ethical beings.  While in the US businesses have the
> same legal rights as citizens, they are not bound by either ethics or
> morals.  Their sole reason for being is to produce profit for their
> owner(s).

True enough.  However, a corporation cannot act, only people can act,
on behalf of a corporation.  And those people have to decide if their
actions are ethically acceptable.  To act unethically on behalf of a
corporation is no less wrong than acting unethically on one's own
behalf.

> Now, hopefully they will be run in an ethical manner and if so, one
> would hope their customer base would approve of and support such
> behavior.  However, some companies find they can profit while behaving
> unethically for a while, sometimes quite a long while, and have no
> problems doing so (insert looooong list of examples).

Again, it is not the companies behaving unethically, it is people
acting on behalf of the companies.

> I'm not sure I can truly fault companies for not behaving ethically.
> Well, I can, but given they are purely bound by profit motive, I can
> understand it.  What I cannot understand is why customers reward
> unethical companies with their business.  

The issue is unchanged; it really has little to do with the companies
and everything to do with the individuals undertaking the actions on
behalf of the companies.

> In the long run, I think that
> says more about us as a culture than the behavior of the businesses
> themselves.  If people and other businesses compared ethical behavior in
> addition to price, features, etc. when shopping or evaluating vendors,
> the less ethical firms might have a harder time making a profit.

Certainly.  I have found that my corporate life has been made easier
(and more productive) when I restrict my dealing to companies with a
history of ethical behavior.  Generally, when I knowingly deal with a
company that has behaved unethically in the past, they come back to
behave unethically with me.

An excellent example of this is "upgrade extortion"  that has become
rampant in the iSeries world.  It is in my opinion unethical to
require additional charges when the machine changes and no additional
function is delivered, but they do it anyway.  The "company" sees an
opportunity to move money from our pockets to theirs.  The agents of
the company who implement and enforce these policies are behaving
unethically.

> 
> John A. Jones, CISSP
> Americas Information Security Officer
> Jones Lang LaSalle, Inc.
> V: +1-630-455-2787  F: +1-312-601-1782
> john.jones@xxxxxxxxxx
> 

-- 
Tom Jedrzejewicz
tomjedrz@xxxxxxxxx