JPBlog

I'm one of those people that tries not to be judgmental. As the Good Book says "Judge not that ye be not judged" (Matt. 7:1). Nevertheless, there exist human vermin and there is no point in pretending otherwise. Among the most despicable of those vermin are creditors and collectors that prey on the weak and the elderly.

Social Security benefits are protected by federal law from almost all form of garnishment, but many elderly are discovering that their directly-deposited checks disappear through garnishment or by a trick called "setoff," whereby a creditor bank simply claims that it is exempt from the law when the account holder owes it money.

Social philosopher Amitai Etzioni has written an angry diary in the Daily Kos on the practice, and the practice ought to make us angry, as well:

Federal law says Social Security can't be taken to repay debts. Section 207 of the Social Security Act reads, "none of the moneys paid or payable or rights existing under this title shall be subject to execution, levy, attachment, garnishment, or other legal process, or to the operation of any bankruptcy or insolvency law." However, banks claim the federal ban on capturing Social Security benefits to repay debts doesn't apply to them. They cite the doctrine of "set-off," which says banks can collect money that customers owe them by taking it out of customers' accounts.

Are we returning to the world of Charles Dickens? Sometimes it seems so.

Amitai Etzioni: Where is the voice? First shoot the debt collectors

Perhaps I'm naive, but the corporate treatment of brands as commodities fills me with loathing. The name of the manufacturer and the brand of the product should mean something. It should stand for the people who made the product and the company that manages its production, distribution and marketing.

In our market-driven society, however, brands mean nothing. Shedd's Spread was not made in a shed. Nothing advertised as homemade is actually made in a home. Log Cabin syrup is not made anywhere close to a log cabin, nor is it the kind of syrup that used to be made with a press powered by a donkey going round and round and then boiled to the proper thickness. Most syrup sold at the store uses corn syrup, flavored with a tiny bit of maple syrup. The name itself is basically dishonest.

Walk the rows of a modern supermarket. The brands almost invariably attempt to endow the product with an aura of genuineness. This is particularly true of highly processed or particularly unhealthy foods.

It's like the concept of credibility. There was a time when a person's word was his bond; that "a great name is to be better chosen that great riches." Credibility, on the other hand, is a commodity that can be used up, like money in the bank. Or it might be considered a capital good, that, like a factory machine, can be depreciated over a period of time, after which it is worn out and needs to be replaced.

Credibility is consumed by telling lies. A name associated with integrity and trustworthiness has more credibility to expend than a name not so well-regarded. Accountants and economists quantify credibility when they place a value on corporate "good will."

So if your corporation has a reputation for hucksterism and dishonesty, the solution is not to stop cheating and deceiving your customers but simply to acquire a corporation with a positive balance in its credibility account.

I went to Sawmill Mall in Laurel today to purchase some walking shoes, and was pleased to see that there were at least three stores that sold the kind of shoe I was looking for. I walked into the first store and began looking at the merchandise without the slightest idea of how to choose a shoe. The labels on the boxes were no help at all. After about ten minutes of examining virtually all the shoes on display and receiving no offers of help, I walked out. The girl at the checkout counter saw me leave but showed no interest in why I was leaving without buying.

Perhaps the next store would be more accommodating. I walked in and started looking at shoes, much like I did at the first store. After five minutes of being tortured by loud music without my presence being acknowledged, I walked out of the second store. Again, no one seemed concerned that I didn't purchase anything. The clerks continued socializing with each other on the other side of the store.

Maybe the third time would be a charm. Guess what? Exactly the same experience as the first two.

Retail merchants pay onerous rent for a good retail location; why are they ignoring customers? Perhaps someone can explain how these people stay in business. I sure can't figure it out.

It is estimated that up to 13,500 vehicles flooded in Hurricane Katrina have entered the used car market in other states, many of which have been retitled and do not reflect that they are salvage vehicles, according to an article on the web site of the Center for Auto Safety. The article further listed the states which do not retain the "salvaged" notation when titling vehicles from another state, and Mississippi is one of those states.

In other words, watch out if you are buying a used auto, even from a state far away from New Orleans or the Mississippi Gulf Coast. It is easy nowadays to obtain a VIN check and record summary, and the price of such a report is well-worth the minimal investment

I have always been fascinated by the conflict in U.S. business between long-term organizational cultivation and making a quick buck. Today, the dominant philosophy is the quick buck or the overnight millionaire, and I suspect that the incentives are structural, which is a subject for another time. The result, however, of this mindset is not pretty: infrastructure decay, downsizing, unemployment, underemployment, and the rise in stress-related disorders such as depression and eating disorders, all forms of externalization of costs by corporations pressured to maintain the bottom line and the price of their stock.

It was therefore of particular interest that one European business school teaches its students how to run a business for the long haul, the University of Navarre's business school, Instituto de Estudios Superiores de la Empresa (ISCE). The school was established by Opus Dei, of Da Vinci Code notoriety.

ISCE is ranked by the Economist Intelligence Unit (part of The Economist Group) as the number one business school in the world. It's philosophy is in many respects the opposite of the U.S. model. Loyal employees are the most valuable asset of a firm. Turnover is costly. Employees are people, not merely "resources." Running a business ought to be for the long term and not the quick buck. Jeffrey Pfeffer, the Thomas D. Dee II Professor of Organizational Behavior at Stanford University's Graduate School of Business, writes:

Why a caring culture makes sense for IESE is pretty apparent: Emphasizing the long term, the school is interested in the personal transformation of its students and building closer relationships with them, and is willing to make the difficult economic trade-offs to convert noble sentiments into reality.

The school caps enrollment in its senior-level programs at 35 students, a remarkably low figure compared with most American schools. Forty percent of the alumni are alumni association members, even though Europe has less of a tradition of private philanthropy and provides fewer tax advantages for giving.

There are big lessons in this for U.S. companies, which have long resisted allowing more of their workers' lives inside their boundaries. Our CEOs pay lip service to the importance of both customer and employee loyalty, but they frequently overlook the importance of personal relationships and connections, and rarely consider the idea of doing more for people than what is formally expected.

Take, for instance, U.K.-based Innovation Group, a 1,000-employee, publicly held insurance software company. During the 1990s, executive board member Ed Ossie rebuilt MTW - now a subsidiary - increasing sales from $8 million to more than $40 million in about four years.

During this same time, annual employee turnover fell from an industry-typical 30 percent to just 4 percent. Ossie credits much of that to a culture of community he built among employees.

—Management Tips from Opus Dei (CNNMoney.com)

Although companies can succeed in the present monetary, economic and regulatory climate by long-term thinking, the pressure and temptations of our contemporary business culture make it very difficult for a CEO to do so. This situation can only be remedied by structural change that eliminates the incentives to make a quick buck and rewards management that builds an organization for the long-term.

Wikipedia on ISCE

Via the Poynter Institute, The Miami Herald has featured a series of deeply-researched stories on the air cargo industry, a business that has remained below the radar of public consciousness, but forms the backbone of the overnight delivery industry. Without significant oversight by the FAA, the industry employs young pilots (called "freight dogs" in the trade) to fly marginally-maintained planes far too many hours a week, often in bad weather at night for very low pay. The result is the loss of one pilot per month on the average. So far, a cargo plane has not crashed into a hospital or a hotel, so a crash usually involves the death of only one or two people. Sooner or later, however, a cargo plane is going to kill several hundred people in a single crash, at which point the public and Congress will demand stricter oversight, and Congress might possibly appropriate enough money to enable the FAA to perform the inspections it had the power to do all along. Until then, overworked, exhausted pilots will be flying old, questionably-maintained planes right over our homes every night. That ought to be enough to gain our attention.

Deadly Express: A Miami Herald Investigation Team Exclusive