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A few months ago, I mentioned taking the free Yale University online course The Science of Well Being taught by Professor Laurie Santos.

Before jumping into the substance of the course, I wanted to talk a bit about the format. The course was likely filmed with better equipment than most of us will have in the fall. The videos were mostly under 15 minutes each, and the videos usually had quiz questions to keep you engaged. Then there were longer quizzes at the end of sections and discussion boards.

Even though this was a Yale course, on an interesting subject, with a gifted professor, I probably would not have paid even $1 for this course. The material was surely worth more than $1, but there is simply too much good free information online, in this format, for me to pay anything for it. This fact is sobering to me as a professor, given that at least some of my students will be online-only this fall. The real value, I think, springs from interaction – between professor and student, and between the students themselves. As such, I need to plan my courses with a fair bit of this interaction.

Moving…

Recently, I listened to the NPR Hidden Brain’s podcast titled “Playing Favorites: When Kindness Toward Some Means Callousness Toward Others.”

This podcast hit on topics that I have been thinking about a good bit lately—namely selfishness, giving, poverty, family, favoritism, and a culture of “us against them.” This post only has the slightest connection to business, so I will include the rest of the post under the break.

I’ve finally gotten around to updating my SSRN page.  I would love to hear any comments you might have.

1.  Corporate Governance and the Omnipresent Specter of Political Bias: The Duty to Calculate ROI

2.  Totalitarian Nudges, Illusory Externalities, and Utopian Benefits: Reflections on the 34th Economics Institute for Law Professors

3.  Killing Corporations to Save Humans: How Corporate Personhood, Human Rights, and the Corporate Death Penalty Intersect

4.  The Helper Therapy Principle: Using the Power of Service to Save Addicts

As recounted by Jeff Edmonds, our high school’s track coach, Van Townsend:

would train runners from all the schools in the region over the summer, then relentlessly compete against them in the fall, then bring them back together to train in the winter. His world was the runner’s world, in which your rival is your greatest friend.

At the time, I did not really care much for training; I just liked winning. Van was easily the most knowledgeable coach in our region, and I remember being somewhat frustrated that he would share his expertise with our competitors.

With winning races as my ultimate goal, any assistance to other runners was counterproductive. For me, competition was zero-sum; if someone else won, I lost. Van saw competition differently. Van saw competition not as the end, but as a means to the greater ends of self-discipline, community, and true excellence.

Cormac McCarthy, in his 2007 Pulitzer Prize winning novel The Road, explores these competing views of competition. In this post-apocalyptic novel, an unnamed man and his son travel south over an ash-covered road, trying to outrun the harsh winter. Resources are scarce and many of the survivors have resorted to…

After finishing Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World, I devoured Neil Postman’s Amusing Ourselves to Death. Published in 1985, Postman’s thesis is that Huxley in Brave New World, not George Orwell in his dystopian novel 1984, more accurately predicted life in the modern United States. In the forward to his book, Postman writes:

Contrary to common belief even among the educated, Huxley and Orwell did not prophesy the same thing. Orwell warns that we will be overcome by an externally imposed oppression. But in Huxley’s vision, no Big Brother is required to deprive people of their autonomy, maturity and history, As he saw it, people will come to love their oppression, to adore the technologies that undo their capacities to think.

What Orwell feared were those who would ban books. What Huxley feared was that there would be no reason to ban a book for there would be no one who wanted to read one. Orwell feared those who would deprive us of information. Huxley feared those who would give us so much that we would be reduced to passivity and egoism. Orwell feared that the truth would be concealed from us. Huxley feared the truth

…

I would have thought that eliminating my commute during the pandemic would have meant more time to read, but those of us with young children seem to have significantly less free time during all of this. Nevertheless, my neighborhood book club prompted some reading, and I squeezed in a few others. Always open to suggestions. 

Atomic Habits – James Clear (2018) (Self-Help). Didn’t think there was much novel here, but I did like his suggestion to start small with habits (create some 2-minute habits and build from there). This podcast with Donald Miller on writing and exercise habits prompted me to read the book. 

The Ruthless Elimination of Hurry – John Mark Comer (2019) (Religion). “The modern world is a virtual conspiracy against the interior life.”

A Lesson Before Dying – Ernest Gaines (1993) (Novel/Historical Fiction). Story of family, humanity, race, teaching, and belief. 

Talking to Strangers – Malcom Gladwell (2019) (Pop Psychology).  Book club (and he spoke at Belmont on this book). Basically, Blink Part II. Challenges our judgment of others, especially those we do not know well.  Liked this note of humility and willingness to be corrected at the end of the book. “Instances where I am plainly …

In a reflection on the meaning of career success, a majority of my business ethics students mentioned happiness as a barometer. 

“Happiness,” however, is an incredibly imprecise term. For example, here is over seventy-five minutes of Jennifer Frey (University of South Carolina, Philosophy) and Jonathan Masur (University of Chicago, Law) discussing happiness under two different definitions. 

Frey, in the tradition of Aristotle and Aquinas, considers happiness not as a private good, but rather as the highest common good. Happiness is enjoyed in community. True happiness according to Frey, is bound up in the cultivation of virtue and human excellence. Under Frey’s definition, happiness makes room for sacrifice and suffering as beautiful and awe-inspiring. 

Masur, a self-described hedonist, seems to have a more psychological, subjective view of happiness. Masur defines happiness as positive feelings, and unhappiness as negative feelings. Masur acknowledges that happiness–maybe even the deepest happiness–can arise from relationships and altruistic behavior. Unlike Frey, however, Masur includes positive feelings that are artificially produced or arising from unvirtuous behavior as part of “happiness.” Masur sees happiness and living a good, moral life as often overlapping, but as not necessarily intertwined. 

These are two different conceptions of happiness. I think we need …

What’s the #1 new release in Banking Law on Amazon?  I’m glad you asked!  It’s Professor David Zaring’s first book, The Globalized Governance of Finance (Cambridge University Press).  In 2008, Zaring joined Wharton’s Legal Studies and Business Ethics Department as an assistant professor.  At the time, I was a PhD student in the Department and also focused on banking law.  So, it was really exciting for me to have a banking law scholar join us and I’m thrilled to now have a chance to highlight his new book.  My copy is on its way from Amazon, so for now, I’ll share Zaring’s description of his book and my own thoughts with BLPB readers soon!

The book pulls together work I’ve done on the regulatory networks – the Basel Committee, IOSCO, IAIS, e.g., – that have become the global taste for harmonizing financial regulation.  I think the regimes, and their relative bindingness (especially Basel), are interesting in their own right, and they are also an interesting way of doing global governance, where the sine qua non is often thought to be a treaty enforced by a tribunal, a la the World Trade Organization. 

But in finance, you see neither of those…

I promised to check back in after negotiating The House on Elm Street (here).  I’m checking in!  We negotiated this exercise – which contains both legal and ethical issues – in my MBA Business Ethics/Legal course this evening.  It proved to be a great learning experience.  My previous post mentioned that Professor Siedel had made its use easy by creating thorough teaching notes.  And as I suspected, while it might be ideal to have students read a negotiation text or have a full 75 minutes to debrief the exercise, neither proved essential to a valuable learning experience.  It also provided a great segue into agency law, another of tonight’s topics.

During our discussion of ethical issues, I mentioned Professor Clayton M. Christensen’s How Will You Measure Your Life?  This past week, this question became particularly poignant.  Christensen, one of Harvard Business School’s leading lights, passed away at the age of 67.  Several years ago, BYU Law School Dean Professor Gordon Smith and I started “The Business Ethics Book Club for Law Professors.”  The wonders of technology enabled several of us business law professors from all over the country to gather virtually about once a semester…

This fall semester flew by. Hoping to make time to read and listen to more good content next semester. Always open to suggestions, especially podcasts because my commute is now about 30 minutes each way. 

Books

A Guide to the Good Life: The Ancient Art of Stoic Joy – William B. Irvine (Philosophy) (2009). Review of stoicism and an attempt at modern application. “Unlike Cynicism, Stoicism does not require its adherents to adopt an ascetic lifestyle. To the contrary , the Stoics thought that there was nothing wrong with enjoying the good things life has to offer, as long as we are careful in the manner we enjoy them. In particular, we must be ready to give up the good things without regret if our circumstances should change.” (46).

Utilitarianism – John Stuart Mill (Philosophy) (1863). Reread before my spring business ethics class. “It is better to be a human being dissatisfied than a pig satisfied; better to be Socrates dissatisfied than a fool satisfied. And if the fool or the pig think otherwise, that is because they know only their own side of the question. The other party to the comparison knows both sides.” (7). “Next to selfishness, the …