The function of moral utterances

Assume that Frans De Waal is correct when he writes that empathy is the foundation of morality, in that it wells up from deep in our bones and that it evolved over many years in our ancestors. What, then, are the functions of the moral rules and moral maxims (and yes, Commandments) that we hear every hour of every day? If these rules aren't the wellspring of our inclinations to be kind and decent (and sometimes violent), what function do they serve? After all, it certainly seems that we are oftentimes guided by our moral rules, even if those rules don't account for that deep empathy that fuels our conduct. Philosopher of cognitive science Andy Clark considered this issue in a chapter titled "Connectionism, Moral Cognition, and Collaborative Problem Solving," found in an excellent anthology titled Mind and Morals, (edited by Larry May, Marilyn Friedman and Andy Clark (1996). This anthology, based on a conference that occurred at Washington University, explores the interconnections between moral philosophy and cognitive science.

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Read more about the article CEOs Earn More When They Fire People
John D Rockefeller - Archetype of today's CEO

CEOs Earn More When They Fire People

John D Rockefeller - Puck Magazine 1901 The Institute for Policy Studies has just released their 17th annual review of CEO salary. It makes for scary reading. While the rest of us suffer through the double-dip-recession-that-never-actually-lifted-off-the-bottom, CEOs, who are not only some of the wealthiest people in the country but are also the most handsomely paid to boot, have seen their income rise in real terms, while their employees have seen a reduction in real income and a significant contraction of job opportunities. According to the Institute

Corporate executives, in reality, are not suffering at all. Their pay, to be sure, dipped on average in 2009 from 2008 levels, just as their pay in 2008, the first Great Recession year, dipped somewhat from 2007. But executive pay overall remains far above inflationadjusted levels of years past. In fact, after adjusting for inflation, CEO pay in 2009 more than doubled the CEO pay average for the decade of the 1990s, more than quadrupled the CEO pay average for the 1980s, and ran approximately eight times the CEO average for all the decades of the mid-20th century.
Their employees, meanwhile
are taking home less in real weekly wages than they took home in the 1970s. Back in those years, precious few top executives made over 30 times what their workers made. In 2009, we calculate in the 17th annual Executive Excess, CEOs of major U.S. corporations averaged 263 times the average compensation of American workers. CEOs are clearly not hurting.
But reality is even worse:
In 2009, the CEOs who slashed their payrolls the deepest took home 42 percent more compensation than the year’s chief executive pay average for S&P 500 companies
The market, and the embedded compensation committees, are rewarding CEOs for destroying livliehoods, for shipping jobs overseas, and for eviscerating the american workplace. These are the same people who lobby our politicians to create business friendly legislation (aka legislation that will protect their bonuses and options) and to fight against social programs (that would level the playing field a little) What was so wrong with the vibrant, growing, energetic America of the 70s and 80s? Why do CEOs hate America, so?

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Al Franken on net neutrality

Senator Al Franken is well-focused on the current threat to net neutrality:

If we learned that the government was planning to limit our First Amendment rights, we’d be outraged. Well our rights are under attack – not from the government but from corporations seeking to control the flow of information online. I believe that net neutrality, preserving a free and open Internet, is the First Amendment issue of our time. Today, a small Minnesota bookstore’s website loads just as fast as Amazon.com. That’s because right now Internet service providers don’t discriminate between different kinds of content online. So if you have something to say or a product to sell, there is currently no limit to how influential or successful you can be. But the nation’s largest telephone, Internet, and media companies have a different plan for the Internet. Instead of a level playing field, these companies have made clear they plan to reserve express lanes for their own content and services – or those of big corporations that can afford to pay a higher price – and leave Minnesota’s consumers and small businesses in the slow lane. We can’t let companies write the rules that they’re supposed to follow. Because if that happens those rules are only going to protect corporations, not the public interest.

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More quotes from Mike Baker

Mike Baker is one of our repeated visitors here at DI. He kindly sent me his long list of quotations he has been gathering. I published part of Mike's collection here. In this post, I'm published a second set of quotes Mike has gathered. I must admit many of these quotes regarding the role and power of government leave me in a dark and uneasy mood. It was oftentimes surprising when I saw the names of the well-known people who uttered these ominous but thought-provoking words. It's better to know than not know, right? With that in mind, here they are: “Liberalism is trust of the people tempered by prudence. Conservatism is distrust of the people tempered by fear.” ~ William E. Gladstone The radical of one century is the conservative of the next. The radical invents the views. When he has worn them out, the conservative adopts them. ~ Mark Twain The real rulers of Washington are Invisible and exercise power from behind the scenes. - Justice Felix Frankfurter - US Supreme Court Justice "The powers of financial capitalism had [a] far-reaching aim, nothing less than to create a world system of financial control in private hands able to dominate the political system of each country and the economy of the world as a whole. This system was to be controlled in a feudalist fashion by the central banks of the world acting in concert by secret agreements arrived at in frequent private meetings and conferences." -- Quote from Caroll Quigley's Tragedy and Hope, Chapter 20 "I am a most unhappy man. I have unwittingly ruined my country. A great industrial nation is controlled by its system of credit. Our system of credit is concentrated. The growth of the nation, therefore, and all our activities are in the hands of a few men. We have come to be one of the worst ruled, one of the most completely controlled and dominated Governments in the world - no longer a Government of free opinion, no longer a Government by conviction and vote of the majority, but a Government by the opinion and duress of small groups of dominant men." --Woodrow Wilson, 28th President ... the 20th century has been characterized by three developments of great political importance: The growth of democracy, the growth of corporate power, and the growth of corporate propaganda as a means of protecting corporate power against democracy. ~Australian social scientist Alex Carey “The two greatest obstacles to democracy in the United States are, first, the widespread delusion among the poor that we have a democracy, and second, the chronic terror among the rich, lest we get it.” [1941] Edward Dowling A nation of sheep will beget a government of wolves. ~ Edward R. Murrow When the Government fears the people, there is Liberty . When the people fear the Government there is Tyranny. – Unknown We're not a democracy. It's a terrible misunderstanding and a slander to the idea of democracy to call us that. In reality, we're a plutocracy: a government by the wealthy." ~ Ramsey Clark , former U.S. Attorney General The average age of the world's greatest civilizations has been two hundred years. These nations have progressed through this sequence: From bondage to spiritual faith; from spiritual faith to great courage; from courage to liberty; from liberty to abundance; from abundance to selfishness; from selfishness to complacency; from complaceny to apathy; from apathy to dependence; from dependency back again into bondage. Sir Alex Fraser Tyler: (1742-1813) Scottish jurist and historian [More . . . ]

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9,236 gallons of oil

I recently visited the website of Rocky Mountain Institute, where I learned that the United States consumes nearly 19 million barrels of oil per day. That sounds like a lot of oil, but how can I put it into a number that I can understand? Consider, that there are 42 gallons per barrel. I decided to calculate how many gallons American consume each second. The answer? Americans consume 9,236 gallons of oil each second. Consider that an Olympic sized swimming pool holds about 660,000 gallons. Thus, Americans use oil at such a high rate that we could almost fill up an Olympic sized swimming pool every minute, day and night, 365 days a year. Much of that oil is burned for transportation. What can we do in the transportation sector to use oil more efficiently? As individuals, we can use less by walking, biking, using public transportation, carpooling, combining trips and making sure that your engine is tuned and your tires are fully inflated. No Impact Man Colin Beavan offers a free manual full of ideas (register here). Here are 365 more suggestions. RMI suggests an additional way to cut back our use of oil: by using "feebates."

The basic idea of a feebate is simple. Buyers of inefficient vehicles are levied a surcharge (the “fee”), while buyers of efficient vehicles are awarded a rebate (the “bate”). By affecting the purchase cost up front, feebates speed the production and adoption of more efficient vehicles, saving oil, insecurity, cost, and carbon.

One form of a feebate program has been in use in France, where vehicles now have the lowest carbon emissions in the European Union. To read more about feebates, see "Feebates: A Key to Breaking U.S. Oil Addiction."

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