Whilst poking around the blogosphere in my jammies (I'm between work gigs at the moment.), I came across this review of a new book by Brian Tracy called, Something for Nothing: The All-Consuming Desire That Turns The American Dream Into A Social Nightmare.  While the author, Rebecca Hagelin, provides a nice overview, I think there's more to be said.

For those who don't know, I believe the first priority in any review is to provide readers with a read or don't read recommendation.  Hagelin's recommendation was a very enthusiastic read!, and mine is no different.  This is an excellent book.  In fact, as I was reading the first hundred pages of the book, I kept thinking that Tracy had somehow surreptitiously gained access to a dozen or more ideas that have been floating in my head for some time and corraled them into an excellent treatise on human nature, one fit for the masses.  There's nothing like some good confirmation bias to get you into a book.  Anyhow, by the end of the book, I concluded that there are good things and bad things to say about this work.  First the good.

Tracy's underlying premise is that all humans are hardwired to be lazy, greedy, ambitious, selfish, vain, ignorant, and impatient.  I agree completely.  In fact, were I in a more theoretical mindset, I would probably take on the task of connecting the dots between these attributes and our caveman heritage.  (It'd be pretty easy.)  But I'm about practicality these days, so I'll stick to clarifying what this means.

To say that we're all naturally lazy is not a criticism of our species; it's a value-neutral statement of fact. Indeed, Tracy's larger point is that what matters is how we translate these natural proclivities into the way we think and act in the world.  I, for example, am one seriously lazy bastard.  I absolutely abhor wasting time on fruitless activities, but this is a good thing.  My disdain for waste drives me to innovate, to get every ounce of productivity out of the time I spend doing what's necessary in life.  I am, therefore, using my laziness in a positive way.  But not everyone does, and this is where the concept of something for nothing comes in.

Tracy argues that an environment that allows people to get what they want/need without actually doing anything for it breeds the worst of all possible responses to inherent human laziness - the drive to get something for nothing.  And, just to keep the human generalizations ball rolling, Tracy provides a list of the basic wants/needs of all humans.

All of us are motivated by an intense desire to achieve safety, security, comfort, leisure, love, respect, and fulfillment - in that order.  The key is that these needs are arranged in a heirarchy - we pursue the first ones until they are satisfied, and then we pursue the next ones until they are satisfied.  This is why humans for most of history have had little time for contemplation - the activities associated with finding survival and security consumed all moments.  But we are now living in a time when survival and security are pretty much a given for most people in the US.  And given may just be the operative word there.

With the constant expansion of social entitlement programs, the possibility of getting something for nothing is less and less difficult.  If your choices are a painful minimum wage job or a free check at the beginning of every month, the human tendency for laziness says that you'll choose the latter.  This is because of what Tracy calls the Expediency Factor (or E Factor) -

"People continually strive to get the things they want the fastest and easiest way possible, with little or no concern for the secondary consequences of their behaviors."

Humans are expedient in their use of their natural tendencies to acquire the things they need and want.  But wait, wait, wait, you may be shouting.  This is all nonsense, you might say.  I'm not like that, you'll bristle.  Okay, fine, you're different, but not because you're not wired this way.  You're different because the tendency to ignore secondary consequences has been trained out of you at some point in your journey through life.   Maybe you had good parents who taught you that thinking short term is a recipe for disaster.  Or maybe you learned the hard way from making bad decisions.  Whatever the case, the fact is that had you not been taught otherwise, you would be a short-term thinker.  That's the human animal.

And you might also take issue with Tracy's list of human characteristics.  You might say, "I'm not lazy!!"  Bullshit, I'd say.  If I give you a choice between a handsaw and chainsaw to cut down abig tree, you'll choose the chainsaw (unless you're a luddite puss).  Same thing with greed.  As Tracy points out, when people are offered $100,000 or $95,000 to do the same job, all people choose $100,000.  The point is that our genes have been carefully crafted over the eons to make us into a species with these basic drives.  This does not mean that our behavior is always malevolent.

It is possible to channel these human tendencies into positive behaviors that are beneficial to ourselves and others.  Indeed, this appears to be Tracy's mission - to help us recalibrate the way we approach life so as to take full advantage of our nature while simultaneously helping ourselves and the world around us.  This is why I really like this book.  He's singing my tune, and I'm loving his rendition.  But all is not roses and sunshine in Something for Nothing.

Brian Tracy is a guru in the personal and business self-improvement world.  He's been around for a long time doing seminars and writing books.  He's traveled the world, and his insights are evidence of a very centered and humanitarian kind of guy.  Alas, even though he gets the big picture completely right, his solutions for the masses are a bit too idealistic for my taste.

The first four chapters of the book lay down the basics that I've described above.  He explains his claims as to human tendencies and human needs, and he goes into how character is the key to meeting our needs in positive ways.  All good stuff.  But then Tracy turns to the current situation in America.  He talks about the role of useless politicians in ushering in the era of something for nothing and the damage that mentality does to people who hold it and to society at large.  Again, all good stuff.  But then, our esteemed author strays into fantasy land.

First Tracy offers advice on how to avoid falling victim to the something for nothing disease.  He provides a pledge that you can take that entails promising to never take something for nothing and to never abide people or organizations that do.  I'm on board with committing to do never taking something for nothing, but the idea that we can simply turn our noses up to those who do is a mistake.

Yes, I get just as disgusted as the next guy when I see some welfare queen in line with food stamps buying prime rib as she chats on her cell phone.  I'm not looking to buddy up to her anyway.  But what about the workplace?  Tracy devotes a whole chapter to how to fix the workplace.  Were I to buy into the whole pledge, I'd have very few options in terms of employment.  (Assuming I were employed, of course.)   The fact is that most companies have plenty of folks who do almost nothing and collect paychecks.  This fact seems to elude Mr. Tracy.

Well, actually, he mentions it, but his solution is just to get rid of these people.  Oh yeah.  Sure.  And his solutions for government are much the same.  How do we stop the entitlement mentality?  Do away with programs that give something for nothing.  Genius.  How do we get rid of politians who foment resentment of the rich to garner cash for their consituents?  You got it - replace them with statesmen who have a longer term and less selfish view of public policy.  Yes, that's it!!  We'll just get rid of the assholes, and when we do, all the people who are currently afflicted with the something for nothing disease will slowly begin to be productive.  Wow.  I found myself wondering how a guy who clearly has such a good feel for human nature could come up with so asinine a solution.

Let me just say that I wholeheartedly agree with the spirit of Tracy's arguments.  There's no question that eliminating the possibility of getting something for nothing will spur the vast majority of humans to start taking steps to meet their needs productively.  But I'm afraid we're at a point where we simply can't get there from here.  Ironically, Tracy explains why this is so.

The author says that studies have been done showing that fear of losing met needs is 2.5 times more powerful than the desire to meet them.  (I should point out that the book has no footnotes, so we believe at our peril.  However, my experience shows this to be basically true.)   If this is true, then we should expect it to be nearly impossible to do what Tracy wants done, especially in our sound-bite driven, biased-media world.

So what are we to make of this book?  It's good because it explains in very clear terms what we're about as human beings.  It's also good because it reminds us that we are responsible for our lives, and that our success depends upon the decisions we make and the actions we take.  And it's even good that it provides a lot of basic historical and economic information that lends credence to the overall thesis.  That's enough to justify the cost of admission - by a long shot.  But I think we have to be wary of pie-in-the-sky solutions to problems like this.

If we're really going to make progress - for ourselves and the world around us - we have to take the situation as it is and find ways to navigate through it.  Sure, there are changes we can make that can be very beneficial.  For example, if we all get serious about making the Fair Tax a reality, many of the problems in our society will dissolve before our eyes.  (He doesn't mention it.)  But the larger point is that we have cards in our hand, cards that we have to play.  Tracy would have us discard until the cards come up all aces.  Unfortunately, the deck's not that big.  In the end, there's useful information in this book, but it's up to us to figure out how to use it to get what we want out of life.  Tracy has given us a clear picture of the stage upon which we act.  We now have the task of writing the script.

Original Post (with comments)

That word is simple - work. Yes, we've heard it a million times, but that's because it's true far more often than it is not. Maybe people get confused by this because they think in snapshots instead of movies. If you take a snapshot of your romance or friendship or family relationship when things are going well, it'll be hard to reconcile the idea that relationships are work with the picture you get. It's the not-so-great times that drive the point home. A good example in my own life is raising my son.

I'll admit this, even though I know some folks will shudder - I wasn't paricularly into my kid for at least the first fifteen or so months of his life. Now, don't make too much of this. Of course, I loved him in the way that nature programmed me to love him - I would have gladly thrown myself in front of a bus for him, even when he was a cute little eating, shitting, sleeping, crying bag of fat. What I'm saying is that I didn't get much out of the beginning of his life. Yes, I'm a selfish bastard - just like everyone. The point is that, despite the fact that the personal benefit balance did not seem to be tipped in my favor, I clocked in.

I changed my share of diapers, and I spent as much time with my son as my life would allow. It was hard, especially since he cried incessantly for the first three months of his life. Nevertheless, as I am a long-term thinker, I knew that the work would pay off, and it has, like nothing I could have ever imagined. What I have now is a 24-month old son who absolutely loves his daddy. Now I can't get enough of him. Have I transitioned into the blissful part of relationships? Was it just a "pay your dues" and then reap the benefits situation? Yes and no. Things have changed, but they're still tough.

One thing that Brian Tracy talks about in Something for Nothing (see my review) is the idea that we should place the people we care about most in the center of our lives. We should build our worlds around them, placing the highest priority on spending time with each and every one. In fact, Tracy said something that I had never heard and is perhaps one of the most prescient statements in the book - How does a child spell "love"? Answer: "T-I-M-E!" How right he is, but there's a bit more to it.

In some ways, my relationship with my son is the simplest, most wonderful thing in my life. But, it's still work. You see, just spending time with a child isn't really enough. You have to actually interact with them. You have to engage them on their level, and that's not easy if you're used to multi-tasking and thinking about all manner of complex philosophical and occupational subjects. Even now, I think of my time with my son as work, but it's truly a labor of love.

I so look forward to the time we have together, but I have to admit that I find myself watching the clock after a while, looking forward to when I'll be "off-duty." How crazy is that? Just when I think I'm a good dad, I take a glance at my watch and then cringe at what a loser I am. Then, I take a step back.

I used to feel unbelievably guilty about this, but not any more. The fact is that raising my child is not unlike many of the other types of work I engage in - even though the good things outweigh the bad, the unpleasant or difficult parts are still there (That's why it's called work, right?), and they still have to be dealt with. I'm just fortunate that child-rearing gets more and more enjoyable as time goes on. The key is that the focus is on interacting with my son so that I can teach him how to be a well-adjusted little person.

How many people pay lip service to the idea that we have to spend time with our loved ones to keep the relationships producing that ever-important two-way flow of love? Maybe they think proximity equals spending time. This would explain the ever-present DVD players with screens aimed at the backseats of SUVs and mini-vans. Now, I'm not judging here - all kids are different, so who I am to say when the "mesmerizer" is or is not justified during travel times? But there's no question that when the little ones are absorbed in a video, they are not interacting with anyone else in the vehicle. They're locked onto Bob the Builder or Winnie the Pooh to the exclusion of all other stimuli, including the words of the folks in the front seats. This, to me, is not spending time. It's sharing time, and in investment terms, the contributions are pretty much nil, which means the payoff is inevitably similar. Same thing with daycare, nannies, and on and on.

Of course, I understand that we all have to do what we have to do when it comes to raising our children. As the child of a single mother, I was in full-time daycare from week seven of my life. There was simply no other way, but when mom got home, it was all about me, and I knew it. This is what matters. Surprising as it may be, one of the best concepts about children that I ever heard came from Bill Clinton. It was somewhere around 1995, and Bill was in the midst of one of his classic "it's about the chiiildren" speeches. He said, "More than anything else, every child needs to know that he or she is the center of someone's universe, that there is nothing more important than him or her to that person." Wise words, indeed. Now let's place that idea right next to the idea that time interacting spells love to a child.

If kids interpret their importance in the minds of their parents or primary care-givers in terms of the amount of time they spend interacting with them, then the inescapable conclusion is that people who have children have an obligation to clock in. There's no other way. If what you want is a great relationship with your kids, then it's going to cost you. You're going to have to suck it up and get down on their level for extended periods of time. The good news is that once they get to a certain age (18 months or so, for most), the rewards are intoxicating.

When my son wakes in the middle of the night and cries out for daddy and not mommy, I stagger to his room with the biggest smile on my face. Interestingly, it only happens when I've spent the whole day with him. If I've been traveling or have been too busy to spend more than a couple of hours with him, it's all mommy. Simple things like that have a profound effect on how I plan my schedule. Mind you, it's not a competition. I just know that mommy is his number one person, so any time I'm top of mind, I know I'm doing something right. My investments are paying off in the kind of love that I could never have dreamed of three years ago, but they are investments all the same.

In the final analysis, the conclusion is clear - relationships are like everything else - there is no free lunch. There is no something for nothing. So if your relationships (with your kids or otherwise) are not what you'd like them to be, it's time to take stock. It's time to honestly evaluate how much time you spend with them. More importantly, it's time to evaluate how much time you could spend with them, but spend doing other things that maybe aren't as much work. If you're honest, you'll find that you could be giving more.

Lest I come off as one who stands on the high ground shouting to my lessers, I'm no different. My life is a constant struggle to stay focused on what's important, and like everyone else, I fail on a regular basis. But these are what I like to call personal best-practices - the things we know are right and strive to do at all times. What matters is that we recognize what we need to do - spend quality time with our loved ones - and we commit to sacrificing whatever we have to to do it. It's work, but nothing is more worth it.

In the category of stupid shit you can make at home to make your life easier, I submit the following. The first is a solution to a problem that has plagued multitudes for several years - the Red Bull koozie. That's right folks. Who among the Red Bull addicted has not cursed the Swiss jerk who came up with the mini-can? I mean, it's bad enough that the damned thing costs two bucks or more for half of what you get in a normal drink, but they at least could have made it the standard width so as to accommodate drink holders. Europeans. Les Idiots. But, ever the tinkerer, I have the solution. Here's the finished product...

Yes, simple, I know, but very effective. To construct one of these yourself, you'll need scissors and some duct tape. First, you remove the bottom of the koozie. This can be delicate, so have a couple of extras on hand. Then, cut the cylinder of the koozie. Next you wrap the koozie around a Red Bull can - preferably full - the empty ones can give a little too much during the measurement phase. You stretch the koozie a bit and mark where you need to make the next cut. The stretch assures a snug fit in the finished product - a loose koozie, I cannot abide. Then you cut off the extra, making sure to cut at somewhat the same angle as the first cut. Obvs.

Next comes the duct tape. Applying the duct tape properly is the key to the longevity of your new koozie. You first apply a strip on the outside, being careful to keep the seam as close to the middle as possible. Then, and this is a tip I learned the hard way with my initial prototype, you place a strip of tape on the inside with enough extra to fold a little over onto the outside at the top and bottom. When you only tape the outside, the tape has a tendency to give over time, resulting in a loose and sticky koozie. (No, thanks!) And it's key to apply the inside strip last so that the overlap is on the outside. This eliminates the can's getting hung on the excess while it is on the way in or out of the koozie. Good design is about subtlety. That's it.

You can now slug Red Bulls going down the highway knowing that you'll never spill a drop. And if you happen to get interrupted before finishing your Bull, you know it'll be nice and cool when you get back to it. Incidentally, I gave a few of these away as Christmas gifts. Smiles for miles.

***

Next up is a little more sinister, but every bit as useful, device. I call it the HOV Dummy. This one is for those "emergencies" when you just have to drive in the HOV lane but you don't have a passenger. For you country folk, the HOV lane is the lane for High Occupancy Vehicles. While the rest of the one-passenger vehicles are standing still on the interstate, vehicles with multiple passengers are cruising along in their own linear oasis of constant movement. I came up with this one after I read Malcolm Gladwell's, Blink, and I realized that cops looking to bust HOV offenders are thin slicing. They're glancing at cars as they go by, looking for broken silouettes above the front passenger seats. If they see one on the passenger side, they move on the next car. Here's the finished product...

Yes, I know, brilliant. And Rudy is not chosen arbitrarily. Should I get busted with my HOV Dummy (yeah, right), I'm hoping the cop has a good sense of humor. And what cop doesn't like Rudy Giuliani? You see, even in my dastardly pursuits, I'm leveraging what I know about human nature. Anyhow, making this one is fun for the whole family.

First, you pick your companion. This has to be done carefully. As a married guy, I can't pick someone like Pammy - what if someone I know saw me? The wife would object. No, it has to be a guy. And it can't be some young kid, cause then I'm up to no good. I'm left with middle aged men. In that case, Rudy is the natural choice. Plus, he and I can talk politics and whatnot. Good stuff.

Aaaanyway, with your companion chosen, go to Google Images and type his or her name in. Be sure to choose the "Large Pictures" option so you get one with some decent resolution. You then find one the one you like and save it your computer. From there, you'll need some kind of image processing software. There are free ones that will do what you need. You just want to adjust the size of the image so that you can get a good 8x10 print out of it - color is preferred, though not mandatory. You should, however, try to use some thicker paper, like photo paper - it holds up well over time. Then comes the fun of cutting out the head. Man, it takes me back to the gun ranges in the Army. Ahh, memories.

Anyhow, you have a couple of options for the final step. You can simply affix a piece of duct tape to the back, a piece curled around on itself so as to be sticky on all sides. With that, you just smack it on whenever you need it. Just be sure to keep an eye on your stickiness factor. There's nothing worse than an HOV Buddy that won't stick in a bad traffic jam. Trust me. Or, you can get a little more sophisticated and get yourself some elastic string and affix a loop to the sides of the back of the head - a la your typical Halloween mask. Then, you just wrap it around the seat back. It's a tradeoff, really.

With the first, you get optimum silouette breakage; with the second, you get worry-free durability. In the end, it comes down to personal preference. Finally, I should mention that I'm working on some improvements with this one. Currently, the design is effective in head-on and from-the-rear scenarios. However, the side view is still problematic. For this, I'll be incorporating a profile component. This will be a bit tougher design-wise, due to the need for some sort of structural piece jutting out from the seat back to hold the profile in the proper position. I may use cardboard. I'll keep you posted.

So there you go - two items you can make right in your own home that are guaranteed to improve your life. Enjoy, and let me know how you like them.

This happens to me from time to time.  Over a span of no more than a few weeks, without any preconceived agenda or plan, I come across several disparate pieces of information (books, articles, movies, websites, etc.) that all inadvertantly conspire to solidify concepts that have previously been loosely floating around my brain.  The last time it happened was when I started getting the feeling that evolutionary psychology was approaching a tipping point on its way to becoming a set of ideas that would have applicability beyond the walls of academia. This time, the focus is on capitalism - specifically, whether it is possible to have a long-term capitalist system that does not ultimately cause more problems that it solves.  To start with my conclusion, the answer is a resounding yes.

As the ten or so folks who visit this site regularly know, I've suffered some painful disillusionment recently with respect to America's behavior on the international stage over the last few decades.  (See this and this.)  That was the start.  Then, I saw the documentary, Enron: The Smartest Guys In The Room, which essentially explains the whole debacle from Enron's inception to its eventual demise.  Not pretty, to say the very least, and as the trial of Ken Lay and Jeff Skilling gets underway, it would be very easy to look at all this and come away with the feeling that capitalism is just another band in a spectrum of insidious human institutions.  However, it's tough to square that with the irrefutable fact that those populations that have embraced free market capitalism have, on pretty much any measure you care to examine, enjoyed more prosperity than they did under any other system. Still, there must be something going on here.  That something is the constant of human corruption.

I think it's critical to recognize that some systems, such as communism, are inherently flawed, which is to say that no cadre of saints could ever wring success from them.  Even if you were to hypothetically (read: impossibly) factor out all manner of human corruption, the result would be the same - mass suffering and a general decline in overall prosperity.  In the case of communism and its cousin, socialism, the culprit is the necessary role of information in the execution of decisions regarding the means of production and the distribution of that which is produced.  As Friedrich Hayek tells us in, The Fatal Conceit, it is simply impossible for a centralized authority to have the information it needs to make good decisions across a panoply of individual situations.  That's how you end up with a surplus of plates, but a shortage of forks.  But capitalism is not one of those institutions.

Capitalism, as an institution, is perfectly sound.  It works with human nature, which is why it works at all.  But like all other institutions that involve our species, it is always at risk of being corrupted from within.  As Brian Tracy so clearly writes in, Something for Nothing, all humans are hardwired to be lazy, greedy, ambitious, selfish, vain, ignorant, and impatient.  In addition, all humans have the same basic heirarchy of needs - safety, security, comfort, leisure, love, respect, and fulfillment - in that order.  The question is how we get from our inherent attributes to the satisfaction of our needs.  It would be easy to say that good institutions are the answer.  In a sense, they are, but I think we're now seeing that our good institutions could still use some work.

Is capitalism bad because big oil has enough money and enough influence to push our leaders to embrace wholly unethical practices when dealing with underdeveloped countries?  After all, it was capitalism that made it possible for big oil to get where it is today.  Is capitalism bad because a few nefarious fellows (like Lay, Skilling, and Fastow) can conspire to plunge California into an energy crisis and hoodwink Wall Street and the rest of the world into losing billions of dollars on a house of cards?  No and no.  The problem is ethics.

I have recently come across a company called LRN.  Here's what they do:

LRN helps leading companies around the world inspire do-it-right cultures. We provide everyone in the enterprise with the legal and ethics knowledge needed to make better decisions and take appropriate actions.

The founder and CEO of the company is a guy called, Dov Seidman.  He's a Harvard Law grad (The company has its roots as a legal services provider.), and it appears that his mission in life (and business) is to bring ethics to the forefront of corporate American culture.  What intrigues me is that it appears that the business environment in this country following all of the scandals of late is becoming more and more receptive to this.  Sounds good, right?  So how does it work?

The basic idea is that companies, especially large ones, have to embrace a culture of ethics.  That means they can't just look at regulatory and legal issues as hindrances to business as usual.  They, meaning the employees at large, have to internalize what it means to operate ethically.   Again, it sounds great, but how do you make it happen?

It takes a commitment from the very top to instruct every member of the organization on what it means to do business ethically, and it takes a system that is designed to penalize unethical behavior, and, more importantly, to reward ethical behavior.  The idea is not to determine some universal set of ethics across all industries and then chip away at getting more and more companies to buy into them.  It's about getting each and every company out there to settle on a set of values and then implement systems that ensure that they are observed at all levels.  This is no easy task, but it can happen.

Up until summer of 2005, I worked for IBM.  One thing that I really appreciated about working for Big Blue was the fact that every employee had to commit to a set of Business Conduct Guidelines.  Every year, we had to login to the IBM intranet, read the guidelines, and acknowledge our commitment to them.  Though I can't speak for everyone, I can certainly say that I took those guidelines seriously.  They meant a lot to me, and I was all too happy to share them with customers.

As a business development professional (read: sales guy), I was constantly competing with other big names for business.  I often emphasized the fact that IBM is an ethical company with a commitment to doing the right thing by its customers.  To some, this no doubt came off as standard sales fluff.  However, given the fact that no complex business relationship is hiccup-free, savvy customers are comforted to know that when things go wrong, the company on the other end has a policy of being on the up and up.  Culturally-speaking, we at IBM believed we held the moral high ground, and I can tell you that we were often rewarded for it.  This is what Seidman envisions for corporate America.

In fact, in 2004, Seidman testified before the United States Sentencing Commission.  Here's the deal with the commission:

The United States Sentencing Commission is an independent agency in the judicial branch of government. Its principal purposes are: (1) to establish sentencing policies and practices for the federal courts, including guidelines to be consulted regarding the appropriate form and severity of punishment for offenders convicted of federal crimes; (2) to advise and assist Congress and the executive branch in the development of effective and efficient crime policy; and (3) to collect, analyze, research, and distribute a broad array of information on federal crime and sentencing issues, serving as an information resource for Congress, the executive branch, the courts, criminal justice practitioners, the academic community, and the public.

At the time of Seidman's testimony, they were considering the role of ethics in determining how to handle legal infractions by business, large and small.  Here's a link to the whole transript.  It's a bit long, but Seidman's arguments are really compelling.  Here's a snapshot:

Compliance is about self-governance by its very nature. And therefore, if we believe that the most powerful form of self-governance is further down the spectrum of culture beyond mere acquiescence with law, then only ethics can get us there. I'm also rejecting as unfeasible in today's world is that a set of corporate mechanisms and bureaucracies can be created, indeed pure compliance programs that attempt to ensure that everyone acquiesces and complies with the law. Instead, I believe that compliance with law is, in fact, an outcome - an outcome of a true self-governing culture.

Quite right.  In terms of Tracy's basic human attributes, we can say that the system that positively harnesses our inherent greed and selfishness in the pursuit of our aims is ethics.  And when the right ethics are in place, we find that our needs for love, respect, and fulfillment are more easily satisfied.  You see, as social animals, we thrive on the acceptance of others.  Having a common set of values and a system that illuminates breaches in those values is the key to keeping the dark side of human nature in check.  It's a kinder, gentler version of the public hanging.

If, during my says at IBM, I had chosen to do as many competitors did, offering kick-backs to decision-makers for choosing IBM, I would have been met with raised eyebrows at the very least (and, more likely, disciplinary action).  My colleagues would have thought less of me for taking the easy wrong over the hard right.  Though we were co-workers, we were also competing with one another in some ways - in terms of quota attainment and such.  By operating unethically, I would have given myself an edge, which was tantamount to cheating.  Yes, I lost deals to competitors who delivered big screen TVs to CIOs who bought their wares, but I could always hold my head up, and that was ultimately more important to me than getting the deal or my acknowledgement of the IBM Business Conduct Guidelines.  That's an ethical culture, and it came about because I was working within a system that would not allow me to overly satisfy my needs for security and comfort (by way of sales commissions) without jeopardizing my need for respect.  A good ethical system creates checks and balances between human attributes and human needs - breaches mean that needs don't get met.  Simple, and completely consistent with human nature.

The bottom line is that the solution to the problems of capitalism are out there.  They're not easy, and they have costs, but the benefits far outweigh them.  Indeed, as Seidman says, compliance with the law is an outcome of an ethical culture.  But there are many others, the best of which is the value of being known for doing the right thing.  That means that we have to reject the understandable, but intellectually lazy, conclusion that capitalism in itself is the problem.  As always, it is our implacable human nature that poses the challenge.  Fortunately, just as the invisible hand co-opts our nature to produce the best of all possible environments, so can ethics keep the invisible hand from reaching in the cookie jar when no one is looking.