Sherron. L. Moore
Professor Diane McGeehan
Business Ethics
February 2, 2013
Occupy Wall Street is a movement that started in New York in 2011. The movement was started as a means to rise up against political and economic corruption and injustices. There slogan “We are the 99%” refers to how the rich are the 1% and everyone else is paying the price for the mistakes and selfishness of the 1%. Some of the moral and economic implications are fairness, care and loyalty. Fairness in that the Government should be run by the people instead of being influenced by the big corporations. I saw a sign from one of the Occupy Wall Street protesters that said “Private Ownership of Industry is Theft”, that is an example of the fairness the movement is fighting for. The lack of proper education and healthcare, the bailout of the banks and the mortgage crisis are all examples of some of the economic implications of the Occupy Wall Street Movement. The Occupy Wall Street Movement seems to support the utilitarian theory. Utilitarianism is the moral doctrine that we should always act to produce the greatest possible balance of good over bad for everyone affected by our actions. (William Shaw, Business Ethics, pg. 53) Utilitarians assess the rightness or wrongness of an action. They aren’t saying all corporations are wrong in what they do, they are saying Corporations should look at their operations for the greater good of the people. Not operate based on greed and getting rich while the people buying your products and supporting your businesses get poorer.
You May Also Find These Documents Helpful
-
a. Breach of a warranty of merchantability and breach of a warranty of fitness for a particular purpose. Both are based on the allegation that the coffee was too hot to consume.…
- 844 Words
- 3 Pages
Satisfactory Essays -
Ethics play a role in everyday business. Many company executives in an attempt to build a profitable organization and build individual wealth are confronted with ethical decisions daily. Penn Square Bank and Dow Corning have both made decisions in their business that started out making millions of dollars but ultimately cost them more than could have been imagined. Unethical decisions cause more than just cash to an organization, the loss of reputation could be even more detrimental.…
- 850 Words
- 4 Pages
Good Essays -
Thoreau, a Harvard philosopher, wrote in 1849 an essay explaining himself, who spent a night in jail to protest taxes that funded the Mexican-American War. Likewise, Tim Dechristopher, an environmental activist in 2008, disrupted the bid for oil drilling leases, to hinder and protest the destruction of the environment. Thoreau explains his antithesis, “If [U.S. Citizens] pay the tax from a mistaken interest in the individual taxes, to save his property, or prevent his going to jail, it is because they have not considered wisely how far they let their private feelings interfere with the public good” (Thoreau 3, 10). Hence, he states that doing unjust and illegal activities is justifiable, if it boosts public welfare. Similarly, Dechristopher’s illegal act of fraud is justified in the New York Times article, “Activist said the sale would threaten Utah’s wild lands and spoil the view from some of the state’s spectacular national parks with drilling rigs” (Associated Press 11). As many environmental activists agree, the public welfare of the people relies on the health of the environment. Seeing Dechristopher verbally support his own act of civil disobedience, and in like manner, Thoreau justifying his act and accepting it, it is deducted that they are both embodiments of civil disobedience. If civil disobedience was construed, Thoreau and…
- 530 Words
- 3 Pages
Good Essays -
The Occupy Movement, created in 2011 and is in full motion today, is an economic inequality and social protest worldwide. This march is one of the only marches to come after Coxey's that is specified as being an economic inequality march. Without the success of Coxey's army, some of these marches would not have happened, due to the underlying fear and frustration people had in the government at that…
- 554 Words
- 3 Pages
Good Essays -
The Occupy movement is against corporate greed (Wood, J.). Both movements are unsatisfied with the government and the institutions because each has been said to have exceeded their bounds. Both the Tea Party movement and the Occupy movement have a large gathering of people to express this frustration. They both…
- 253 Words
- 2 Pages
Good Essays -
Occupy Wall Street was a protest movement that took place in Zuccotti Park in New York City’s Wall Street financial district. “we are the 99%” was their slogan, they believed that the wealthy few should no longer decide the future of the country as a hole. One of their believes was that every person should be involved in the decision making and for this reason the movement never achieved the necessary organization to establish a good list of demands. Every person affiliated with the movement had different believes and aspirations for the result of the protest. Two weeks passed by until the movement really picked up, that was, until abuse and mass arrests from the New York Police Department attracted media attention. Liberal groups, students, unions, and organizations all over the country began to join the Occupy movement making it a Nation Wide protest.…
- 712 Words
- 3 Pages
Good Essays -
African Americans were tired of fighting to earn a job in a community where they were unwanted. To conquer their issues they believed they needed to separate themselves, more than they already are separated to create a stable economy for themselves. The second idea the activists came up with is to stop buying goods from the businesses that refused to hire African Americans. The idea behind this one is the economy of those businesses and people running them would fall greatly. This would then, force these companies to hire African Americans get business back and to stop their collapsing economy.…
- 640 Words
- 3 Pages
Good Essays -
Capitalism is a system that forces the individual to play by its rules. These events or public changes to society are challenges that either help or hinder a group, a society or the individual. Events reinforce a person’s survival instincts and the capitalist is always in the middle trying to figure out how they could make money off of these events/challenges. Capitalism existence is inevitable but we allow it to further take advantages of the struggling and the greedy, the spirt of capitalism. This has been emphasized and drilled into the individual to believe they have a “duty” to this capitalism- to be rich and find riches at all cost. “…many diffuse, discrete, more or less present and occasionally absent concrete individual phenomena, which are arranged according to those one-sidedly emphasized viewpoints into a unified analytical construct (p.274).” This is simply one sided, in which it enriches more of the 1 percent. This is where the “ideal types” become the influenced objective causes of actions. We work harder for the idea that we will rise only to indebt ourselves more and to…
- 781 Words
- 4 Pages
Good Essays -
6: Conflict theorists contend that social institutions and practices persist because powerful groups have the ability to maintain the status quo.…
- 1533 Words
- 7 Pages
Powerful Essays -
When in the course of events involving the 99% it becomes necessary for a people to advance from the subordination in which they have hitherto remained, and to assume among the powers of the earth the equal and independent station to which the laws of the communist manifesto and the president of the United States has promised us.…
- 511 Words
- 3 Pages
Good Essays -
The Gilded Age had protests over the huge gap between the rich and poor people. Right now we are having lots of protests over the fact that 1 percent of populations have 40 percent of the money in US known as the occupy movement or the 99%. I think that if the rate of the police crackdowns should increase the protests will turn into riots and maybe open rebellion. I can see why people are protesting, I support them I think there is something the government should do about a broken system that we in place right now.…
- 317 Words
- 2 Pages
Satisfactory Essays -
In the turn of the twentieth-century, progressive reform was at a heightened level of action, and change was abundant. Reformers were committed to social justice and wanted to introduce and enforce laws for many things in society, including many of the working class standards. Reform movements involving widespread child labor—especially in coal mines, textile mills, and department stores were among these progressive movements made. As with other progressive crusades, the exposé was a favorite tool used to expose the truth. One of the most influential and certainly the most widely read of the Progressive-era exposés of child labor was John Spargo’s The Bitter Cry of the Children (1906). Spargo was a British granite cutter who became a union organizer and socialist and gained his formal education through extension courses at Oxford and Cambridge. In 1901, he immigrated to the United States where he became a leader of the conservative wing of the American Socialist Party. In his writings, he witnessed and how young children were exposed to the horrific working conditions of coal mines. This was one eye witness account that uncovered the truth and forced Americans to deal with the shameful way its businesses were abusing children and robbing them of their childhood.…
- 836 Words
- 4 Pages
Good Essays -
The story of the Populist movement is both ideological and economic. Can they be separated? Please respond to the following:…
- 326 Words
- 1 Page
Satisfactory Essays -
Occupy Wall Street began on September 17, 2011, in Zuccotti Park, Located in New York City's Wall Street Financial District, which received Global attention and spawned the Occupy Movement against social and economic inequality due to…
- 869 Words
- 4 Pages
Good Essays -
I believe that peaceful civil disobedience is beneficial to society. The main reason I believe this is because it brings issues to light that the public would not have known about otherwise. It makes headlines, and if it is truly an issue worth changing then the public will make their opinion known and, if things work out, the underlying issue will be solved. The downside being that the civil disobedience may have harmed business or government briefly by breaking the law. I think that the trade off is worth it, even if nothing gets changed the public is still more aware of what is going on in their government, and that is always a good thing. However, if the civil disobedience becomes violent, it basically always has the opposite effect, and…
- 533 Words
- 3 Pages
Good Essays