Peter W. Morgan and Glenn H. Reynolds does a part genealogy and part recent history of the ethics wars, and how they have effected government, business, and society. While some of his conclusions are disagreeable, it's obvious that it's a well thought through book that is an easy, enjoyable read.

The Focus

The focus of the book, not surprisingly, is on how ethics rules and regulations have been more of a band-aid type fix for larger structural and political problems. Instead of finding true clear ethical boundaries, we as a society have chosen to go for wishy-washy regulations and policies that are both sword and shield against 'political' enemies in any sphere.

Morgan and Reynolds tended to break ethic issues into different spheres of government, business, scientific, and, journalism. Yet, these ideas are inevitably linked, and he demonstrates throughout the book. The book fails to explicitly link the problems in government to the in the scientific community. There are some interesting parallels to this book and some philosophical material by Focault and Marcuse, but this book is a much easier read.

Through out the book, it takes a concrete look at the problems of ethics, exploring it with contemporary examples. He shows how ethic rules are abused and misused for political gain, and then there wishy-washy nature is used to remove them from responsibility.

They give 5 solutions to escape the negativity that the growth of the ethics industry has done to society:

1. Acceentuate the Negative
2. Keep It Crunchy
3. Keep Your Eye on the Ball
4. Responsibility is for Everyone
5. Don't Call Virtuous People Chumps
6. If You Focus on Appearances, You Will Fail Even at That
7. Cultivate Virtues, Rather than Appearances

Certainly all of things can apply to the problem of bureaucratic-rationalism, that is so dominate in modern state. The book notes such things are harder to do then may appear at first.

The Problems

I find it hard to recounsil the book's notion that the fundamental problem with American society today is our superfiscal focus on appearance, and not real problems. Certainly the question of appearance dominating substance has been around for a long time. Many writers were troubled with this in the 1950s and 1960s, when the bureaucratic state first started to explode into the massive beast that is today.

The book argues a new kind of appearance over substance has been created, one of formal rules and regulations, spawning in a post-Watergate world. But such laws have existed on the books for centuries: when the going gets tough, bullshit and create an appearance that is attractive. Notions of independent counsels, other government organizations, and NGOs existing solely to muckrake is particularly concerning, but nothing new, in the sense that in the past there have been procuters that are totally bent on destroying certain individuals they don't like.

Laws are always going to exist, that only are enforced for prosecution of political opponents, in all spheres of life: you don't like your competition, charge him or her with some kind of violation. Most likely this will be ethics violation or some other minor infraction. With enough work, you can put anybody in jail or scare them away from their current actions.

That's the nature of the politics. No constitution or laws stand in the way of a determined individual. Individuals are autonomous, and they can do whatever they truly want if they put enough effort into it.