Chapter review: Moral Money

Introduction & context 

Moral Money is chapter 10 of Gillian Tett’s 2021 book, Anthro-vision: A New Way to See in Business and Life. Tett is an anthropologist by academic training and an influential financial journalist and editor at the Financial Times by profession. One of the things anthropologists key on is areas of silence about things that groups, tribes and people do not talk about.

The message here is generally positive. But the good news is packaged with cautionary observations about human nature that most readers here will be familiar with by now. The good news is that concern in American society for dealing with climate change really is beginning to influence the business community in beneficial ways. Some people may be aware of that, but I wasn’t. The caution is that humans will be human, even in the face major threat. The threat turns out to be what is useful here, but it isn’t concern for the climate. It is concern for power and wealth.

On August 19, 2019, I raised the matter of business morals in a post entitled Big Business Morality: Considering More Than Just Shareholders? That post was triggered by a letter that CEOs of ~200 major companies signed, e.g., Walmart, United Airlines, Amazon, Apple, Dow, Exxon Mobile, BP (British Petroleum), etc. These people are members of a powerful but quiet organization called the Business Roundtable. 

On its face, the letter seemed to be a repudiation of Milton Friedman’s narrow ideology that CEOs with a social conscience were “subversive” and a threat to the only moral imperative any company should have, namely profit. But because the language of the letter was both non-binding and hopelessly vague, I concluded it was just an empty PR stunt. I read the intent as only to try to make businesses look like they cared about something meaningful other than profit and not a meaningful expression of  something else. The open letter is here -- see the “Statement on the Purpose of a Corporation.” The five business principles the CEOs claimed to want to follow seemed to repudiate the idea that social conscience is subversive and bad for economic markets. Instead of a statement of worship of profit, they expressed some form of a social conscience.

 

Moral money

Tett starts by pointing out that in general and for a long time, companies and economic markets have largely ignored the costs of dealing with externalities, including various kinds of damage to the environment and society. That makes sense because ignoring those costs generally increases profit. Exceptions arise when government passes laws that make companies deal with externalities. The corporate attitude was to let society and government deal with the damage companies leave in their wake as they generate as much profit as possible, as fast as possible. The belief was that whatever damage companies create is more than offset by the social good and wealth the companies created. 

The Business Roundtable letter linked to above expressed what is now commonly referred to in the business community as ESG, environmental, social and governance, principles. Tett described what drove the CEOs to write and sign that letter:

“.... investors were shunning fossil oil and gas stock because they feared that the sector would not be as profitable in the future as it had been in the past, because governments were clamping down on the use of fossil fuel, and consumers were agitating over climate change. That had created anxiety about ‘stranded assets,’ shorthand for the idea that the oil and gas reserves that fossil fuel companies owned might turn out to be worthless, making the company less valuable than investors had assumed. Or to put it another way, issues such as the environment has previously seemed to sit outside investors’ and economists’ models. They were called ‘externalities’ and often ignored. Now the externalities were threatening to become so important that they were overturning the models. The idea of keeping them ‘external’ looked increasingly ridiculous --- as any anthropologist knew it was.

The way that most investors framed this dramatic shift in attitude was in terms of the rise of the ‘sustainability’ movement or ‘green finance’ --- or with reference to [ESG principles]. Another frame that was also used was ‘stakeholderism,’ or the idea that people running companies should not simply aim to produce returns for shareholders --- as men such as Milton Friedman .... had once argued .... but to protect the interests of all stakeholders: employees, the wider society, suppliers, and so on.”

Tett described the mindset change that the Business Roundtable CEOs were expressing as one of changing from a narrow tunnel vision lens to a wider lateral vision lens that anthropologists try to view the world through. Tett takes this as evidence that the lateral vision mindset has gone a long way toward shifting attitudes in the business community, and on balance the change is for the better.

Tett admits that when she first saw the Business Roundtable letter and a hoard of emails from businesses about their commitment to ESG, her silent response was “ESG should stand for eye-roll, sneer and groan.” She didn't buy it.

Since Tett is influential and a well-known journalist, she was given direct access to some of the CEOs who signed the letter. Her interviews with them convinced her that their mindset change was real and there was more substance to the letter than she initially believed. She keyed in on key words and phrases, ESG, sustainability, green business, etc., and probed their real meanings in all of her areas of major contact. She found the same thing she saw in the CEO world in the financial sector and in the government and philanthropy sectors. Many investors were looking to finance companies with a broader mindset than just brass knuckles profit. 

There was a major convergence of thinking going on that she was unaware of until she opened her mind (applied lateral vision) to the possibility that ESG stood for something other than eye-roll, sneer and groan.

Over time, Tett kept listening and refined her understanding of what was going on as she learned more. She describes it like this:

“But do people like [USB Bank chairman Axel] Weber really believe this stuff? .... The idea that banks were selling ESG products seemed a little like priests in the medieval Catholic church selling ‘indulgences’ .... the noise in the system [ESG, sustainability, green, etc.] was concealing a more important area of silence.

The issue at stake revolved around risk management. If you listened to the noise around ESG, it seemed that the movement was all about activism: vocal campaigners were calling for social and environmental change, and companies and financial groups were shouting about what they were doing to support this. But if you looked more closely at ESG, with an anthropologist’s lens, it was clear that there was a second factor at work that was less openly discussed: self-interest. A growing number of business and financial leaders were using ESG to protect themselves. The activists who had initially launched the EGS movement a decade or two earlier usually did not want to admit this.

But while activists who wanted proactively wanted to change the world had started the ESG movement, by 2017 it seemed that many investors has the less ambitious goal of simply avoiding doing any harm to the wider world. ‘That’s the sustainability crew,’ I told colleagues. Then there was a bigger --- and even less ambitious --- cohort who were primarily interested in ESG because they wanted to avoid doing harm to themselves. That category included asset managers who did not want to lose money on fossil fuel stranded assets, or invest in companies that faced reputation risks, be that around sexual abuse inside the office .... or human rights abuse in the supply chain or racial issues .... Similarly, corporate boards did not want to be tripped up by nasty surprises, or see shareholders flee or scandals erupt that might cause executives to lose their jobs.

Did this make the whole venture hypocritical? Many journalists thought so. However, I saw it as a victory of sorts for the original founders of the movement. History shows that when a revolution takes place, it tends to succeed not when a tiny minority of committed activists embrace a cause, but when a silent majority decide that it is too dangerous or pointless to resist change. ESG was nearing this tipping point since the mainstream was starting to be pulled along by the tide, even if they did not want to define themselves as activists at all.”

Tett speculated that by 2017, there was enough worry among CEOs that there was too much uncertainty and instability. At the 2017 Davos meeting, business leaders expressed the realization that progress could go in reverse and history seems to go in pendulum-like trends. The 2008 financial crisis obliterated the previous rock solid belief that financial innovation was always good. The crisis was caused by financial innovations, CDOs and the like, that most people did not and could not understand. That undermined the rock solid belief that free-market capitalism could solve all problems.

So, the corporate and finance worlds embraced ESG. Tett estimates that by the autumn of 2019, at least $32 trillion had been invested by ESG standards. Some estimates were higher. But ESG wasn’t based only on concern about people or the environment. As Tett put it, “there was a more negative, less discussed incentive too: a fear of metaphorical pitchforks.” 

For moral authority for ESG and a social conscience, and in opposition to Friedman’s assertion that social conscience is subversive, Tett points to Adam Smith’s second book published in 1759, The Theory of Moral Sentiments. There, Smith argued that markets and commerce could work only if there was a shared moral and social foundation among the business sector, government and the rest of society.  

A last point: a comparison with Christian nationalism 

It took Tett a combination of (i) her open-mindedness, life experiences, intelligence and academic training, (ii) a lot of time and persistence, and (iii) access to high level executives in business and finance, to finally arrive at this description of the motives behind the mindset change from narrow to lateral. She admits that her story faces a lot of disbelief and misunderstanding:

“.... journalists faced a story that was developing in a slow-moving, elliptical trend because of clunky acronyms and technical jargon that alienated outsiders. [the same thing that led to the 2008 financial disaster] .... The EGS sector was also opaque and fragmented, since it had been run in a cottage-industry style: .... It was tough to get an overarching picture of what was underway. .... ESG was everywhere but nowhere.”

IMO, that description of ESG sounds a lot like Christian nationalism. Powerful, fragmented, hard to see in clear detail and everywhere but nowhere. There really are complex things in our society that are hard to see and understand, and thus easy to dismiss as a mirage.

Questions: Has public agitation about climate change had an impact on the development of ESG, or is the business community just spewing deceptive public relations to minimize losses and lawsuits? Is it possible to be both cynical and not-cynical about ESG, i.e., to have mixed and maybe even contradictory motives? 

Do you care??

                                

Mike Barnicle, a frequent guest on MSNBC’s Morning Joe, said this morning that he thinks the biggest problem with our U.S. society is “apathy” … or what I always sarcastically refer to as people being “At the Mall©.”  In other words, people in general have more mundane interests versus those nasty politics.

But I think Barnicle is absolutely right.  Our population is rather ignorant of and apathetic to the U.S.’s political state of affairs, the greater worldly state of affairs, and governmental operations in general.  My guess is that at least half the adult population (over 18) would fail a general civics/politics test.  I have no hard stats to back that up, but just a gut feeling from watching and listening.  So, when I hear a politician say “the people are smart,” I cringe. I know it’s just pandering and isn’t, can’t be, the unvarnished truth.  The general public is not politically smart, but rather more self-absorbed within their limited bubbles.  That’s been my observation anyway. 

What’s even more remarkable to some of us is, the something they can know about (i.e., the here and now) is trumped, in many cases, by the something they can’t know about (i.e., the there and later).  I refer to religions now.  God, et al., seemingly takes up more of their attention-span than politics.  Don’t get me wrong, I understand the appeal of religions.  They are a believed way, though unknown, to self-preserve, which normally would take up most everyone’s attention priority. 

I don’t know, maybe politics is just too frustrating or even too complicated for people to get.  It does seem like this far, far away “thing,” many times removed from their everyday lives.  So why worry about it or waste their time on it?  “Que Sera, Sera (Whatever Will Be, Will Be)."

Now the questions:

-Do you agree that the U.S. has an apathy problem, when it comes to politics?  If yes,

-Do you think politicians take advantage of the nation’s apathy (to advance their own agendas while apathetic people are not looking)?  “While cat’s away, mice will play Syndrome.”

Discuss. 

Thanks for posting and recommending.

Federal government fails to protect itself against hackers

In another dismal report on failings in government, a new report indicates that federal bureaucracies are unable or unwilling to be competent. The Washington Post writes:

A blistering Senate report in 2019 found dangerous cybersecurity lapses at eight government agencies, including unpatched computer bugs and citizens’ personal information left vulnerable to hacking.

Two years later, things are barely any better.

A 2021 update released this morning by the Senate Homeland Security Committee found seven of the eight agencies had made only minimal improvements during the past two years. Only the Department of Homeland Security, which includes the government’s lead cybersecurity agency, is doing substantially better.

They paint a picture of a government that, despite years of warning shots, is ill-prepared to withstand hacks from Russia, China and elsewhere.

“It is clear that the data entrusted to these eight key agencies remains at risk,” the report states. “As hackers, both state-sponsored and otherwise, become increasingly sophisticated and persistent, Congress and the executive branch cannot continue to allow [personally identifiable information] and national security secrets to remain vulnerable.”

• During a hacking exercise, investigators were able to access hundreds of documents containing people’s personal information from the Department of Education, including 200 credit card numbers. The department’s IT staff didn’t block them or even notice.
• The Transportation Department inspector general found nearly 15,000 IT devices, including more than 7,000 phones, that were being used by employees and contractors for which the department had no record.

That speaks for itself.

Questions: 

1. Who or what is mostly responsible for the federal failure to protect against hackers, e.g., failed congressional oversight (too gridlocked and busy doing partisan bickering and crackpot propagandizing?), failure of federal agency leadership to follow advice, failed presidential leadership (too busy propagandizing and attacking opponents and government?), decades of vicious Republican Party attacks on the federal government and competence itself, voters electing incompetent federal politicians, the Christian God's righteous punishment of America for being too secular and accepting of the LGBQT community and racial minorities, lead in the drinking water, increased consumption of organic food by federal employees[1], etc.?

2. Who or what comes in 2nd?

Footnote: 

1. 

Wot??

What just happened? Was that a Biden/CDC coverup?

(Note: I apologize for the absence of paragraph breaks in this post. I typed with plenty of space between paras, but they do not appear on the preview.) I know it's important, and for some people also fun, to talk about the worst elements of the GOP. I do plenty of that myself regarding domestic terrorists,Christian Nationalists etc. But though it's important to discuss those threats to democracy, the Biden admin's handling of Covid has been confused, confusing, full of rosy-eyed but factually incorrect propaganda, and most recently, it would seem a cover-up of the extent and significance of outbreaks of Covid (Delta) which only reached the public this past Friday after a whistleblower leaked internal documents to the Washington Post the preceding day. https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2021/07/29/cdc-mask-guidance/ 

CDC director, Rochelle Walensky has been a rather mercurial communicator throughout her tenure so far. At present she, like President Biden, is laying the blame for the current, game-changing Delta surge on the unvaccinated alone. Now, I'm the last person to deny that those who actively oppose vaccination and masks, then go out to crowded venues with impunity, are significant drivers of the surge and should be subject to mandates. They are more dangerous than drunk drivers, because 1 such person can infect multiple others with a deadly virus. But this is not the big story this week. It is NOT the reason for the reversal of CDC guidelines which is what has spurred a rash of new mandates, and led to Ms. Walensky's announcement of the reversal of policy guidelines on Tuesday, July, 27. It isn't what caused Joe Biden to make a 1/2 hour speech to the nation two days later. So what just happened? We were told by Walensky and Biden that unfortunately it turns out that it turns out that fully vaxxed folks can act as vehicles of transmission for Delta after all. But no data was put forward, though Walensky mentioned that these conclusions were data-driven. Many scientists and citizens alike asked just what data she was referring to. She had stated in her comments that we are "at a pivotal point" because of the situation, but had not shared any empirical information. The coverage was a bit surreal. Suddenly, the NY Times reported that New Yorkers were "scared all over again," though I noted with cognitive dissonance that they were out and about unmasked on the Upper West Side as if nothing had been said by the CDC. It had only been a few days since the last of the store signs mandating masks came down, and people were jazzed about the new "post-pandemic" vibe in the city. ( https://www.nytimes.com/2021/07/28/nyregion/new-york-masks-virus-mood.html?action=click&module=Top%20Stories&pgtype=Homepage) 

The Times article didn't shed much light on what was so new and urgent:

For a fleeting moment, New York was a city reveling in itself. Just a month ago officials declared it fully open for business; masks slipped to chins and restaurants packed in customers as vaccines rolled out. The virus seemed to be losing. Today, the coronavirus has crept back, in a new, more infectious form that has driven up cases and hospitalizations, primarily among those still refusing vaccination, sending a city just staggering back to life into a tailspin.

Didn't we all know this? What did it mean to say that "today" the virus crept back in "more infectious form?" Weren't the newspapers filled with articles about Delta for months before that? Were we not warned in early May when the UK classed it as a "Variant of Concern," and delayed all reopening? Did we not follow the news from Israel which was warning us that they were seeing many breakthrough infections in late June? The Wall ST. Journal reported this on June, 25 and it certainly got my attention:

About half of adults infected in an outbreak of the Delta variant of Covid-19 in Israel were fully inoculated with the Pfizer Inc. vaccine, prompting the government to reimpose an indoor mask requirement [my emph.] and other measures to contain the highly transmissible strain. Preliminary findings by Israeli health officials suggest about 90% of new infections were likely caused by the Delta variant, according to Ran Balicer, who leads an expert advisory panel on Covid-19 for the government. Children under 16, most of whom haven’t been vaccinated, accounted for about half of those infected, he said. https://www.wsj.com/articles/vaccinated-people-account-for-half-of-new-covid-19-delta-cases-in-israeli-outbreak-11624624326?mod=article_inline

In mid July, Israel found that one reason for breakthrough infection (though not the only) was the "waning efficacy of Pfizer vaccine." Surely, one would guess the US gov't was taking these alarming reports and warnings seriously. On August 1, in the wake of a CDC leak (I'll get to that) Bloomberg News and the Boston Globe published the following grim report:

Half of the infections in Israel now are among the fully vaccinated, and public health officials are beginning to see signs of more serious disease among them, said Sharon Alroy-Preis, the nation’s Director of Public Health Services. She said that infections for people vaccinated in January are double those vaccinated in March, an apparent decrease in effectiveness over time that has led Israel to begin booster shots. She said infections were particularly problematic for people 60 and older. “It’s not just the fact that we’re seeing more disease, but they’re getting to severe and critical conditions,” she said... ( https://www.bostonglobe.com/2021/08/01/nation/israel-sees-waning-coronavirus-vaccine-effectiveness/?p1=Article_Recirc_Most_Popular )

Today, Sharon Alroy-Preis was interviewed on Face The Nation, after weeks of almost no coverage of this critical information in the US media (The Wall ST. Journal being an exception). During all these reversals of fortune in Israel, the UK, France, Indonesia et al., what was the US doing to prepare for the inevitable? How did they respond to the warnings based on alarming statistics and facts? Well, on July 4th, Biden declared "Independence from Covid" for the nation, stressing only the need to continue getting Americans vaxxed. This was consistent with his messsaging starting in mid-May, when the CDC advised all vaccinated Americans to discard their masks for almost all situations (including around their own unvaxxed children) and to stop social distancing."“Anyone who is fully vaccinated can participate in indoor and outdoor activities, large or small, without wearing a mask or physical distancing,” CDC Director Rochelle Walensky declared in May. This decision was made at the same time the UK was delaying reopening and reimposing mask mandates due to Delta, about which they warned the US gov't. But to make matters even worse, the guidelines specifically stipulated that there should be no system for requiring proof of vaccination, but rather, the CDC expected the unvaccinated to continue wearing masks on the basis of what was called an "honor system." 

Gee, do ya think folks who plot the kidnapping of a governor over mask mandates would "honor" any CDC system that they keep masking up? All those who had demonstrated, all the Republican politicians who had equated masks with "slavery" and the vaccine with a gov't conspiracy, they were to wear masks on scout's honor? A pathetic mistake, and one that was not conceded or reversed until now-- sort of. What was Biden saying during the intervening months in his statements to the press? In May, announcing the unmasking of America, he thanked all the American "patriots" who had been called by him and the admin to roll their sleeves up, and had responded definitively. Of course, this was an odd moment to be so grateful. After all, back then something like only 40-45% of eligible Americans were fully vaccinated. Instead of reinforcing vaccinations with the effective protocols of social distancing (esp. for the majority of Americans who were not vaccinated) and face coverings, that opportunity was squandered on a feel-goood anouncement. "Take off your mask...go and live your life again." Though many private companies and stores did not immediately make such a transition, over weeks the masks came off vaccinated and unvaccinated alike, mass-gatherings resumed, and talk of the "post-pandemic" era was ubiquitous. 

Again, in June, Biden stated, "Take off your mask. You've earned the right." On July 22, "“You’re not going to get COVID if you have these vaccinations." But by July 22, anybody living near Provincetown already knew that to be false if they followed local news or the Boston Globe. A significant outbreak among the unvaccinated had been occurring following July 4 celebrations in Cape Cod. The result was harrowing, and a shock to those vaccinated persons who became quite sick. It is truly astounding that not only did the government not issue a statement on the outbreak of Delta among mostly unvaccinated people in Cape Cod, but the mainstream media outlets somehow found it unworthy of their attention. Indeed, most of the country found out only after a whistleblower in the CDC, it is unknown who, leaked an internal document which revealed that the outbreak in Massachusetts was the main cause of the CDC's reversal of policy guidelines, along with the ungodly transmissability-- "more contagious than the common cold.. as contagious as chickenpox." The power-point document also stated that unvaxxed persons infected had as much virus as vaccinated cases, implying the ability to shed the virus just as easily as them. It should have been an embarrassing and disgraceful moment for the administration. Yet Walensky released the document the following day(just Friday), as if she had planned to do so all along, and she spun the report until it somehow fit back into the narrative that the only problem we face is the unvaccinatmed. That is absurd on its face as she conceded that the outbreak in Cape Cod was the decisive catalyst of the CDC reversal, and that event was about anything but the "unvaccinated." Let there be no doubt that unvaccinated people are getting sick and transmitting covid to others-- in some cases their own children or elderly parents. This is an outrage. It would be otherwise had the CDC cautioned parents to wear masks around unvaccinated children and their grandparents. Some data from the state of Massachusetts may help us to imagine the true situation. The Boston Globe reports:

In the most recent tally, 6,373 Massachusetts residents have contracted so-called breakthrough cases of COVID-19 — an infinitesimal percentage of those who have been vaccinated but still a source of anxiety for many and heartbreak for the families of 91 who have died. https://www.bostonglobe.com/2021/07/29/nation/this-is-what-its-like-have-breakthrough-case-covid-19/

What has Ms. Walensky got to say about this? In an interview with McCatchy Press she stated that:

“Our guidance in May said that fully vaccinated people could take off their masks safely, and that unvaccinated people should continue to wear them. Unfortunately, that’s not how it played out,” Walensky said in a phone interview with McClatchy. “Unvaccinated people took off their masks as well. And that’s what led us to where we are today.” https://www.mcclatchydc.com/news/coronavirus/article253156748.html

The May, 13 "Honor System" guidance had prompted almost universal abondonment of masking in the US by early Summer, yet the leaked CDC document stated in bold red print that "universal masking is essential to reduce transmission of the Delta variant." (see p. 21 of leaked document here: https://www.washingtonpost.com/context/cdc-breakthrough-infections/94390e3a-5e45-44a5-ac40-2744e4e25f2e/ ) 

Clearly, one of the main drivers of the surge of infections in the US has been the consequence of dismissing the need for such masking, and neglecting to reccomend, at the very least, some system by means of which the unvaccinated would be prevented from mingling with the vaccinated in crowded places. No such mistakes were conceded. "The science had changed," Walensky stated on Fox this AM. What science? The CDC did not uncover the outbreak in Cape Cod. Citizen journalists and scientists in that highly vaccinated and health-conscious community brought their findings to the government. As for the CDC, on May 1, it incautiously stopped collecting information on the spread of covid with the exception of cases that ended up in the hospital and recorded covid deaths. It was all rather strange, as Walensky had just recently teared up on national TV and warned Americans (in mid-March) of "imminent doom" due to low vaccination rates. However, the majority of Americans were still unvaccinated, and Delta was on the rise when contact tracing was abandoned. The failure to admit that the Biden Admin/CDC took their eyes off the ball, preached a rosy but empirically false story of "post pandemic America/Independence from Covid," did nothing as unvaccinated teens and young adults went out to reopened bars and clubs, frat parties, etc. and are now among the most prevalent victims found in hospitals across the country, and repeatedly claimed that "you can't get covid if you're vaccinated" despite evidence from other countries and our own to the contrary-- the fact that no admission of error is made, and that mainstream media indulge the fantasy of a diligent and empirically-based thinking process in the CDC, all this should arouse confusion and perhaps indignation among citizens who have suffered profoundly due to bad advice and misinformation. 

 Yet still, the official line is that "breakthrough cases are extremely rare" (Fauci on Face the Nation today). Since the CDC stopped looking at breakthrough cases on May, 1, except in cases of hospitalization, one wonders just how these unequivocal statements are supported. Given what we know about Israel, the UK and now our own country, it seems that we should look first and speak later about the prevalence of breakthrough. Similarly, Fauci stated that among the breakthrough cases, symptoms are "either none or minimal." (ibid) . Really? Maybe he should read accounts of the illness published in thee Boston Globe last week where many discussed illnesses with high fever, no sense of taste or smell, loss of appetite, inability to think clearly, etc. (see: https://www.bostonglobe.com/2021/07/29/nation/this-is-what-its-like-have-breakthrough-case-covid-19/ ) 

One of the victims profiled who was in her 90s-- but had been healthy before the covid bout-- died . Perhaps Fauci can console the family that their loss was "minimal." And others in Massachusetts have met the same fate. The Boston Globe reports:

In the most recent tally, 6,373 Massachusetts residents have contracted so-called breakthrough cases of COVID-19 — an infinitesimal percentage of those who have been vaccinated but still a source of anxiety for many and heartbreak for the families of 91 who have died.(ibid)

Today, I saw many fellow New Yorkers in the park with masks. In particular, and with great concern, I noted almost everyone with toddlers and children wore a mask. Only last week such was not the case. The CDC in May told us that if we were vaccinated we could hug and kiss our unvaccinated children; invite members of other vaccinated households in for meals sans masks, and go into crowded places unmasked with impunity. As punk singer Johnny Rotten once asked an audience famously, "Ever get the feeling you've been cheated?"

Book review: Anthro-Vision

The 2021 book, Anthro-Vision: A New Way to See in Business and Life, was written by Gillian Tett an anthropologist (PhD, anthropology, University of Cambridge, United Kingdom). Tett is a journalist at the Financial Times, and chair of the editorial board and editor-at-large. The book is non-technical, easy to read and written for a general audience. This is a good book for understanding how to open one's mind to new perspectives. For example, it got me to reassess and change my prior understanding of  relationship between business and how social concerns for the environment are affecting it. There's a lot more complexity in it than I thought.

Tett argues that we live in a time of intensifying global volatility, uncertainty, complexity and ambiguity (“VUCA” in US military jargon). Because of that and the nature of the environmental, social and governmental problems that humans face, societies, governments, businesses and individuals need to change the way they view the world, other cultures, their own culture and themselves. The point of adopting a different mindset is to better see, understand and adapt to problems, human needs and social changes as pressures from VUCA intensify.

Tett argues for what she calls anthro-vision. It amounts to trying to see the world through the lens of anthropology. The case she lays out looks pretty solid. In the last ~20 years most major businesses have gone from being hostile to anthropology and social science generally, to a mindset that now embraces an anthro-vision and social science generally. Even crusty old engineers and nerdy computer programmers have come to understand that they need to understand humans, human behavior and societies much better than they did in the past. The anthro-vision mindset, i.e., pro-social science, including pro-anthropology, is becoming more influential in governments too.

The business community did not adopt anthro-vision willingly. Business adopted anthro-vision because of painful economic losses and catastrophes that came from ignorance about the human condition and societies and their traditions. Huge companies and banks such as GM (General Motors), BP (British Petroleum) and HSBC learned the hard way that they ignore humans and human behaviors at their peril. In the process of learning their peril, big companies also learned two other extremely valuable lessons. First was some humility about the arrogant illusion of their own infallibility. 

Second, and most importantly, was some empathy for various things, traditions, groups of people and recently, business externalities, that seemed strange, not worthy of consideration or irrelevant. Turns out that sometimes even little things can be critically important in human behavior, commerce, global geopolitics and war and peace. On first look, those little things usually look to be so trivial that even thinking about them at all appears to be a waste of time. That can occasionally be a fatal mistake for a company or a catastrophe for a country or the entire human species.

Tett raised a point about the business community's mindset. It strikes me as important to mention. Specifically, what drove businesses to even look to anthro-vision? Profit and risk. Some huge companies were suffering crippling losses and the executives didn't have a clue about why. Some looked and looked and looked but found nothing. Some big companies were dying but executives did not have a clue why. Out of sheer desperation, a few major companies started by hiring an anthropologist or two, asking them if they could see what was wrong. It turned out that over time they came to see what was wrong. The problems were grounded in a combination of things like corporate tribalism, tunnel vision, complexity and reliance on economic ideology that was not working. All that made the company dysfunctional, inefficient and/or misguided in its product development and performance. There was too much blind arrogance and too little understanding and empathy. That was hurting or even killing companies.

What is anthropology? 

Tett describes it as an interpretative science, not an empirical one. The classical anthropological methodology was to plunk an anthropologist down in a tribe or ethnic group somewhere and then quietly watch and listen for a long time, months or years, not weeks. Over time, the things that are discussed and not discussed become apparent. Relations and traditions between families and groups start to appear and make sense in the local context. Even strange local music starts to feel normal to the quiet observer and their body instinctively reacts just like the rest of the tribe or group. 

It is not a matter of “going native.”  It is a matter of coming to see reality through the eyes and minds of the strange people and their strange behaviors. Empathy and acceptance tends to arise from the visions and understanding. Tett repeatedly emphasizes the empathy-inducing aspect of keeping quiet, listening and asking open-ended questions. 

In complex industrialized and technological societies like the US, modern anthropology is now focused on plunking an anthropologist down in a company or a group of a company's customers, then quietly watching and listening for a long time, and then etc. In other words, the main thing different between classical and modern is where the anthropologist gets plunked down, an exotic milieu or an apparently non-exotic one. Turns out that the non-exotic sites in big companies or banks are just about as exotic and weird as the exotic locations. They are about equally tribal and siloed in their respective cultures. The siloing tends to blind people and groups to a broader, more nuanced and accurate vision of reality, including misunderstandings, opportunities and threats.

An example helps clarify some of this.

The Ebola epidemic

Human diversity makes tolerance more than a virtue; it makes it a requirement for survival.

Rene Dubois, Celebrations of Life, 1981

In 2104, the Ebola virus was tearing through Sierra Leone, Liberia and Guinea. Western aid groups and governments sent in help to contain the outbreak. The mortality rate was about 50%. Despite Western expertise and help, the epidemic was spinning out of control and killing a lot of people. Reports were coming out of the region that local people who were infected with the virus were engaging in what appeared to be bizarre behavior that was likely to kill them. Specifically, people were running away from Western medical facilities and aid workers, sometimes killing them. Just as strange, at funerals of people killed by the virus, mourners were touching and even kissing the dead bodies, which were known to be highly contagious. Westerners on site kept warning the people there not to do these things, but they kept doing them. The Westerners especially disliked getting killed. 

The chief science advisor to the British government asked some anthropologists why modern science was failing so badly in Western Africa. One of them had spent 40 years studying the Mende people in the forest regions of Sierra Leone, one of whom he married and was also an anthropologist. She was at the meeting. She angrily told the British government science guy that Western science was failing because it was looking at the problem through Western eyes and minds. In her mind, the problem was blatant and obvious. But the Western experts were dumbfounded. They had no idea of what she was talking about.

Without empathy for the local people and their strange behaviors Western medical advice was sometimes useless because it ignored the cultural and social context that Ebola was rampaging through. The cultural and social context did not matter to Western experts but it sure did matter to the locals. One problem was local tribalism. Tribes in the affected region were attuned to threats from outside their own tribe, but not to ones from inside. The Western experts spoke in terms used in the West, but meant nothing to the locals. Also, Western computerized disease monitoring using cell phones was misleading people in the West, while a medical anthropologist in Liberia, Susan Erikson, saw a different reality on the ground.

The problem with Western monitoring of cell phones in Africa was that Westerners failed to understand that a cell phones was usually used by a family, group or whole village, not an individual person. Because of that misunderstanding, the data flowing into the West was based on far less information than what tracing cell tower pings would reveal. A cell tower ping was not a person, which is what the Westerners falsely believed. 

Another problem was grounded in language. In villages where the chief spoke English and BBC broadcasts reached local radios, there was much better compliance with Ebola protocols. In villages where the chiefs did not speak English, Ebola was attributed to witchcraft or to government plots, and Ebola abatement measures tended to be ignored with predictable bad consequences. African traditions in the region were to keep dead bodies in the house for several days to pay proper respects and to hold a funeral with the body to keep the dead person and everyone around them from going to hell. This was a critically important part of life for those people. 

The anthropologists who understood the nature of the problems in Western Africa were somewhat paralyzed by their own tribalism. Anthropologists tended to be shy about intruding into events. Tett writes:

“‘I had an American journalist call me up and ask why the Africans kept behaving in this barbaric and stupid way,’ [an anthropologist commented]. .... Until the early decades of the twentieth century, American had routinely kept the bodies of deceased family or friends in their houses after death ....Yet Western journalists, doctors and aid workers were now decrying the West African’s ‘primitive’ rituals and claiming (wrongly) that Ebola was caused by strange ‘natives’ eating ‘bushmeat.’ .... A lack of empathy was quite literally killing people and fueling the spread of the disease.” 

In time, advice from anthropologists got Western aid and communications efforts to align with local customs and culture. Once that mindset had set in and began to operate Ebola patients stopped running away and killing aid workers. The people were taught that hazmat suits could be made of materials available to the local people. Within a period of months, the epidemic and been contained.

Tett goes on to assert that some of the Ebola mistakes have been repeated with COVID-19. She cites the example of the ex-president blaming the pandemic on China and closing the border there. That tended to blind the US response to the threat from Europe. That's tribalism again. Threats from outside the tribe are seen but not ones from inside. She argues that public health is generally better served when medical science includes consideration of social science or cultural concerns. 

 Conclusion

Tett cites other examples of where anthropologists have been able to shed light on problems in an effort  to try to avoid making the same mistakes more than once. She described the 2008 financial crisis in detail. It was an example of a tribe, financial experts, living in their silo and unable to see threats and a broader context for what they are doing. Tett writes:

“... one problem was that many people who worked in the world of money assumed that money was the only thing that made the world ‘go round’. That was also wrong. ‘Bankers like to imagine that money and the profit motive is as universal as gravity .... They think it’s basically a given and they think it’s apersonal. And it’s not. What they do in finance is all about culture and interaction.’” 

Tett’s argument that we live in a time of intensifying VUCA is persuasive. Her goal for the book is simple. “The core message of this book: we find it hard to see what is really happening in the world around us today and need to change our vision.” Tett argues that adopting anthro-vision involves at least five beliefs or behaviors. 

• Recognition that we are creatures of our environmental, social and cultural environments
• Human existence is diverse and there are multiple social cultural contexts
• We need to repeatedly try to enter the minds of others who are different to foster empathy
• We need to try to see our own reality and society from the lens of an outsider
• We need to listen to and see what people say, including what they do not say (their social silence) 

The fascist propaganda machine remains unfazed by, and unashamed of, contrary reality

The New York Times writes: 

In the hours and days after the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol, rattled Republican lawmakers knew exactly who was to blame: Donald J. Trump. Loyal allies began turning on him. Top Republicans vowed to make a full break from his divisive tactics and dishonesties. Some even discussed removing him from office.

By spring, however, after nearly 200 congressional Republicans had voted to clear Mr. Trump during a second impeachment proceeding, the conservative fringes of the party had already begun to rewrite history, describing the Capitol riot as a peaceful protest and comparing the invading mob to a “normal tourist visit,” as one congressman put it.

This past week, amid the emotional testimony of police officers at the first hearing of a House select committee, Republicans completed their journey through the looking-glass, spinning a new counternarrative of that deadly day. No longer content to absolve Mr. Trump, they concocted a version of events in which those accused of rioting were patriotic political prisoners and Speaker Nancy Pelosi was to blame for the violence.

Their new claims, some voiced from the highest levels of House Republican leadership, amount to a disinformation campaign being promulgated from the steps of the Capitol, aimed at giving cover to their party and intensifying the threats to political accountability.

This rendering of events — together with new evidence that Mr. Trump had counted on allies in Congress to help him use a baseless allegation of corruption to overturn the election — pointed to what some democracy experts see as a dangerous new sign in American politics: Even with Mr. Trump gone from the White House, many Republicans have little intention of abandoning the prevarication that was a hallmark of his presidency.

Rather, as the country struggles with the consequences of Mr. Trump’s assault on the legitimacy of the nation’s elections, leaders of his party — who, unlike the former president, have not lost their political or rhetorical platforms — are signaling their willingness to continue, look past or even expand his assault on the facts for political gain.

The NYT quoted one expert, Laura Thornton, director of the Alliance for Securing Democracy at the German Marshall Fund of the United States, as saying “this is happening all over the place — it is so much linked to the democratic backsliding and rising of authoritarian movements. It’s about the same sort of post-truth world. You can just repeat a lie over and over and, because there’s so little trust, people will believe it.”

Not surprisingly, the fascist ex-president blames Pelosi for his coup attempt. He asserts that Pelosi should “investigate herself.” The fascist liar and traitor continues to insinuate that (i) BLM and antifa extremists caused the 1/6 coup attempt, and (ii) corrupt Democrats stole the 2020 election from him. Fascist GOP leadership supports the lies. Although Mitch McConnell once condemned the riot and the ex-president's role in it, he has made no effort to contradict or reduce the lies. 

Other Republican fascists pretend that the propaganda will have no effect on public opinion. For example, Senator John Cornyn (R-TX) said “I don’t think anybody’s going to be successful erasing what happened. Everybody saw it with their own eyes and the nation saw it on television.” If that is true then why is the fascist Republican Party's propaganda machine all in on repeating whoppers over and over and over? Obviously someone influential in the FGOP must believe that repeating lies, e.g., BLM and antifa did it, is an effective propaganda tactic when applied to at least some people.

In view of the evidence in the public record so far, it seems reasonable to estimate that the chance that American democracy and the rule of law will fall to some form of plutocratic or autocratic-kleptocratic fascism in the next 5 years is about 42%. In view of how high the states are, that estimate ought to be terrifying to most people who accept it as a reasonable threat estimate. For most people who don't see that level of threat, the estimate is just not believable and thus not as concerning.

Question: How likely is it that American democracy and the rule of law will fall in the next 5 years to some form of autocratic-fascist dictatorship-kleptocracy, optionally tinged with bigoted Christian nationalist theocracy, ~0%, ~5%, ~25%, ~50%, ~70%, etc.?