(Warning: Entering high density zone!!!)
This morning I read, with considerable interest, a New York Times analysis of Justice Ginsburg’s “time bomb” planted in an otherwise innocuous sentence of a recent decision. My interest was piqued by the focus on the concept of “status” in the legal realm. Put briefly, issues related to the status of an individual or group shapes and defines how that individual or group will be treated within the legal realm. To have status is to have standing when it comes to protections (i.e., rights) established in law. What is happening in the US courts at the moment related to gay rights, etc., is a reflection of efforts to establish the status of that group within the current protections of constitutional law. Once that status is established, all laws and actions by law enforcement personnel would be measured against those protections. As the article points out, it is status that is central to the quiet legal revolution now taking place in federal courts.
My interest in this question of status goes beyond the specifics of gay rights discussed in the article. It extends as well to an idea I’ve been working on when studying accountability. For the past several years I have been arguing that accountability requires the establishment of a moral community within which the accountable individual operates. Without such a community in place, accountability is merely mechanical and legalistic without any real substance. My criticism of the recently passed banking reforms (see previous post) is that they are merely regulatory and lack any substance; in other words, there is no sense of what bankers are “accountable for”. Being a banker under the proposed reforms is a morally meaningless role–it is a position subject to oversight and control rather than a status that requires responsible behavior.
Philosopher Thomas Nagel (1995, p. 85) made the point much better than I can in his discussion of moral status and relationship to personal rights:
I believe it is most accurate to think of rights as aspects of status–part of what is involved in being a member of the moral community. The idea of rights expresses a particular conception of the kind of place that should be occupied by individuals in a moral system–how their lives, actions, and interests should be recognized by the system of justification and authorization that constitutes a morality. Moral status, has conferred by moral rights, is formally analogous to legal status, as conferred by legal rights, except that it is not contingent on social practices. It is a universal normative condition, consisting of what is permitted to be done to persons, what persons are permitted to do, what sorts of justifications are required for preventing them from doing what they want, and so forth.
“The existence of moral rights does not depend on their political recognition or enforcement,” states Nagel, “but rather on the moral question whether there is a decisive justification for including these forms of inviolability in the status of every member of the moral community.” Within a moral community, status confers not merely protections and rights but also expectations and obligations. Assuming that the legal system mirrors society’s moral system, legal status will also reflect moral status. In our system of “negative liberties,” the translation of moral status into legal status typically takes the form of protections under law rather than a positive expression of role expectations.
While the the negative liberties approach is relevant as a means of dealing with potentially discriminatory actions, the approach has its limits when (1) addressing the need to prevent behaviors that the community regards as inappropriate or (2) seeking to foster what that community regards as morally appropriate behavior. In such cases, the law must provide a more positive assertion of expectations–something which our political system finds extremely difficult to do under current conditions. Until we are able to overcome our collective reluctance to articulate what it means to assume the moral status of a role. e.g. what it means to be a banker, we will have to settle for the vacuous types of reforms that Obama will sign into law this week. What passes for accountability is in fact a superficial and thin variation of what accountability ought to be….
July 20th, 2010
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There are a number of ways to view the passage of banking refom legislation. For the Obama Administration and members of Congress, it is another “victory” — a hard earned trophy to put on the mantle and which can be displayed with some pride as the midterm election parade begins to take shape this fall. For the banks, it is not so much a defeat as a setback that merely changed some of the rules of “the game” that they had mastered before — and will master again.
But for the American economy and the American people, what just passed through Congress and will be signed into law next week by President Obama was hardly more than a collection of half-baked measures that failed to deal with the core problems of accountability in the financial markets.
In fact, what we have before us is “regulatory reform,” not banking reform.
The legislation adds a couple of chairs on the Titanic’s deck, and it even repairs a couple of the old ones. But these reforms do nothing to change the ship’s course, or the fundmamental practices of the vessel’s crew.
Looking back at the rhetoric surrounding the calls for reform early in the Obama Administration, one finds lots of references to enhancing the “accountability” of Wall Street and those actors in the global financial markets whose decisions and actions brought our economy to a virtual stand still. What that rhetoric reflected was a sense of indignation at the callous indifference and irresponsible behavior of Gekko-like characters whose moral bearings were more appropriate for a casino than a financial market. From this rhetoric one would conclude that the purpose of reform was to provide the appropriate setting for more responsible behavior by those bankers and their agents. But when it came to translating the rhetoric into policy proposals, we were left with reforms aimed more at the community of regulators than the banking community itself.
The problem is, in part, the result of our ambiguous understanding of what it means to be accountable. We have lost sight of the fact that accountability means more than being subject to regulatory oversight. It also means behaving responsibly.
Historically, accountability was a means of establishing a sense of responsiblity in those being held to account. You were granted a royal or (later) corporate charter with the stipulaiton that your were expected to conduct business in a responsbile and accountable manner. That meant living up to the standards of the license (or franchise) to engage in business. Accountable behavior — conducting business in accordnace with the standards under which the charter was given — was an unquestioned expectation. In a sense, to engage in business was a moral activity for it demanded that you operate within the confines on the what was acceptable and appropriate behavior in the marketplace. It is little wonder that the individual credited as the founder of capitalism, Adam Smith, regarded himself as first and foremost a moral philosopher.
Today, we have forgotten about the “responsbile for” notion of accountability. Accountaiblity means little more than being answerable — answerable to shareholders, to regulators for following rules, and (in cases of malfeasance and fraudulent behavior) to the legal system. The package of reforms heading to the White House reflects our obsession with making bankers “answerable to,” but fails to make them morally “responsible for” something with their actions.
Which begs the unaddressed question underlying the entire reform effort: having enhanced the government’s capacity to make financial markets more answerable, what exactly are they answerable for?
There is nothing of substance in the current legislation to highlight the fact that we want a banking community that deals with more than maximizing quarterly profits. What was needed was basic banking charter reform effort — or at the least something in the order of the reforms advocated by Paul Volker. Only when we confront the challenge of delineating what it means to be a banking enterprise — one that serves the transacitonal needs of the communities within which it operates — will we have true reform.
My own bias is toward a view of banks as public utilities. The now defunct Glass-Stegall Act (as well as many pre-deregulation state laws) came close to reflecting this view by severely restricting the capacity of commercial banks to engage in high risk endeavors, and the result was a stable (if rather dull) banking sector. Real reform would not necessarily bring back Glass-Stegall, but it would certainly do more than merely patch up the regulatory infrastructure of financial markets.
July 16th, 2010
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I have been around long enough to recall that Continental Airlines (CO) was once a Denver based airline run by a powerhouse personality by the name of Robert Six. But over the years the name and management of Continental have travelled a bit, and it would probably be very difficult for any historian of US civil aviation to draw a direct line back to Six.
I can also recall some of the up and down years of Continental since it was my carrier of choice for the many years that I was making weekly commutes between Boston and New York (in pre-9/11 days). Most of the down times came to an end when management seemed to realize (sometime in the mid 1990s) that employee and customer morale was important — and they worked hard to gain the upper hand among competitors by nurturing both.
I had not traveled much during 2009, and even then I was finding myself a bit more favorable to flying on Delta or Northwest (then “partners”) than on CO. When I started my current travel binge in March and April, I tried my best to go CO since I had accumulated OnePass miles and found the access to the Presidents Club (via my American Express) really convenient.
But there is definitely something different with CO. I realize these are tough times for the airlines, but in terms of ticketing, customer service, general policies, etc., CO has become indifferent to the fact that it still needs to maintain that base it built up over the years. My recent problem with a particular trip (see previous post) is just one example, and it reflects many of the problems I see in the company.
First, it seems they have lost their sense of customer service. Contacting customer service is always an inconvenience when you have long hold times, but that is better than being told that you should call back later by a nice voice that suggests using the online site. But the online site cannot handle questions, and in fact is quite difficult to deal with if you have a really unique question or problem to del with. It may be cost effective to refuse to take calls when operators are backed up under truly burdensome call volumes during difficult periods — but increasingly this message is coming up during normal times and one can try for hours at a time without getting passed that annoying call-back instruction. This indicates to me that they have greatly reduced their phone personnel and have set the “call back later” trigger to a much lower level. Which means that they now have put cost savings ahead of customer service and satisfaction. Penny wise, pound foolish — or something to that effect….
Second, I was quite annoyed at the arbitrariness with which Continental treated my reservation. Yes, I had a trip alert and voice message from CO about cancellation, but with no explanation or apology or effort to figure out how I am to deal with the problem. All I was left with was a phone number that (see last point) kept telling me to call back later or to go online to resolve the issue. To make matters worse, there was no email informing me that they had in fact changed my reservation by shifting my flight by 24 hours — I only discovered that by carefully examining the revised ticket. Let me emphasize that there was no notification of the change , only the cancellation. They automatically assumed this change would work — treating me not as a customer, but as some piece of freight that can just be shoved onto another flight as long as I get to my destination.
Third, the telephone agents for CO are as nice as they ever have been — but you can tell they are pressured and frustrated. Amazingly, I have access to more info about CO flights than they do — something of an embarrassment to them, for it gives the impression of incompetence on their part when the problem is clearly an incoherent reservation and information system. The level of frustration reached the point that I was hearing complaints from the agents about the operations and the forthcoming merger which looks like it is a disaster in the making….
Fourth, it is now evident that CO does not seek to be competitive pricing wise, as one can see in almost any search for flights on farecast.com (now Bing travel). Delta (no longer a partner) remains surprisingly competitive, as does US Air (an airline I have avoided for years due to its reputation for poor service, but which will now take priority above CO for now — especially since they are Star Alliance members). (Charging for bags, extra legroom seats, etc are tolerable to some extent, but I noticed that while CO was asking for $50 and up, US Air offered those for $10.)
Bottom line is that the change in the management of CO is evident and proving destructive of the organization culture that served it well for several years. Clearly neither customer service nor employee morale are regarded as important enough — and it is evident that the merger will likely make things worse.
So why am I writing so much about this? For me, this is as much an example of “accountability gone bad” as it is the story of my particular problems with CO. Loyalty — whether to a merchant or a family member — feeds on accountability, for loyalty is based as much on expectations (having them and meeting them) as it is on anything else. Over the years of dealing with any person or company, one develops expectations and these eventually underpin loyalty. In this case, each of my encounters with CO became an opportunity to assess how well they were living up to those expectations. In short, I am constantly holding them accountable to higher expectations.
But now the foundations of my loyalty to CO have been reduced — to the point that I now expect problems with each encounter.
Too bad — they were once so good….
June 30th, 2010
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This is the story of how I suffered from a severe case of “jet lag” flying from BOS (eastern time zone) to Kansas City (central time) — and why I am wide awake at 1145PM on Tuesday the 29th writing this blog post.
I spent today (the 29th) — literally, all day today — engaged in traveling from Boston to Lawrence, KS. Under normal circumstances this is a trip that might take up to 7 hours — flight and drive time included. But my trip started a bit before 11PM last night (Monday) when I checked my voice mail to find that my Continental Airlines flight from Manchester (NH) to Kansas City had been cancelled — and little else by way of information other than I should contact a telephone number that (as it turns out) was not taking calls….
[There is no reason given for the cancellation -- but when checking in online on Monday morning I noticed that I had my choice of just about any seat on the aircraft for the initial leg of the journey (to Cleveland), and so I suspect they made their decision on lack of passengers. If this was the case, then certainly they could have made that cancellation call hours earlier -- but the current Continental management does not think that way. More on that below….)
By the time I reached Continental Airlines (using all sorts of other, back-door phone numbers), I am told that I had been preticketed for a flight the next day. When I said that won't do, the agent tried her best to see what was possible. As it turns out, the Continental operators do not have the same access that I have using the airline's website (very strange indeed) and I was able to find flights that would work out of Boston's Logan that would put me in Lawrence only two hours later than originally scheduled. The flights were actually United but under a so-called Continental "codeshare" number. It took a bit of work, but eventually (by about midnight) the deal is set and they tell me the revised reservation is confirmed and on its way to me…. Being a trustful bloke, I take a break from the computer and prepared to finally get some sleep….
Just before heading for bed I decide to check to revised reservation -- and of course it is wrong, and included a six hour lay over in Chicago…. Another call to Continental, and they confirm that United had rejected the requested codeshare seating, and they did not think it important enough to mention that. [As nice as the folks on the phone were, their indifference or incompetence was another indication that something is very wrong with Continental at this time…]
After another half hour of trying to come up with solutions, the folks at Continental finally declare that they are issuing me a refund of my ticket — and as nicely as this was done by the agent, it still amounted to leaving the customer out-to-dry…. [BTW, I have yet to receive email confirming that refund…]
It was now 1AM and I had not slept — and I am on “Bing Travel” (formerly Farecast.com) in search of some solution before punting altogether. Up pops a US Airways flight that is $100 more than the refunded trip, but it will get me to Kansas City by 930AM if I take a 5AM flight from BOS to Charlotte and catch a 750AM from there to MCI (the airport code for Kansas City International). The return trip would mean coming home a day earlier than planned — but that is okay. By the time I do everything I need to do to get the reservation completed and other items (hotel, car rental) adjusted, it is 230AM. To make it to Logan in time I would have to leave my house by 330AM at the latest — and I still had last minute packing (I carry some perishable meds with me), so why even bother with sleep.
Worse yet, I had to drag my spouse from her deep sleep to drive me to Logan at that ungodly hour…. [Thank you, Randi!]
Of course I am running late and barely made it to the gate (do you know that even at 430AM the TSA security lines are already backed up?), and by 10AM I am in rental at MCI and making the one hour drive to Lawrence (great to be in part of country where there is 70MPH speed limit). Caught a few minutes sleep on each leg of the trip, but crowded planes are not conducive to anything longer than 10 or 15 minutes naps….
Having neither eaten or slept much since Monday night, I made a stop at Five Guys and headed to my hotel where I decided a short nap would be refreshing before I headed up to the KU campus to meet with my colleague. Three hours later I find myself rushing to get there before the offices close — and after relatively brief meeting I go back to hotel where I fall asleep again for another three hours….
At 915PM I realized I needed some dinner, so went to the Free State Brewery in downtown Lawrence (still a great place for food and beer!) and gobbled up a terrific meal and wandered afterwards into a coffee shop for something to offset the beer….
Which explains why I am here, writing this blog post, wide awake as I emerge from jet lag — I hope it is a productive night for writing….
As for Continental, according to my OnePass records, I have flown a good deal more than 300,000 mile with these folks over the years, and the company has had its ups and downs. Lately, under a new CEO and with the merger with United pending, they seem to be on a downslide that is making it increasingly difficult to maintain any loyalty beyond the mileage rewards…. I am getting to point where flying with anyone but Continental will be my SOP…. Perhaps more on that later….
June 29th, 2010
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Read a blog post of a friend of my daughters (Ari Herzog) that has his observations from a trip to China in 2006. Hard to make comparisons, but focussing on his comments about Beijing (the only place we seemed to have both travelled), I would say there has been some changes in four short years — a fact reinforced by comments of my hosts who indicated that the last five years have been somewhat transformative for them personally.
To put things in context, Beijing in 2006 was probably one big construction site in anticipation of the 2008 Olympics. Interestingly, there was not that much construction in Beijing as I can recall, particularly when compared to Wuhan where the building of high rises and infrastructure was substantial — there were construction cranes and street digging at almost every turn. In Beijing most of the construction seemed to be taking place in the old neighborhoods where the ramshackle “houses” (that were hidden behind newly built walls high enough to hide them from street view) are clearly being torn down and replaced.
[In a way the contrast makes sense since the focus in 2006 was on getting Beijing's reconstruction done by 2008, and I suspect it is now Wuhan (and other cities) turn. In Wuhan I saw industrial parks, clearly high rent high rises and lots of mall spaces going up -- and the "ramshackle" there were not being torn down, but rather gutted and given a brick facade. There were bricks stacked high along along the roadsides, and lots of folks working on the various construction tasks.]
Getting back to Ari Herzog’s blog post, he notes that in Beijing he saw government everywhere, and makes note of red fags and state seals. I only saw that around where you would expect it — in the government ring where there are mainly government buildings. In the third and fourth ring I saw little evidence of government, and lots of evidence of retailing. He notes there are guards everywhere, and I agree — but at places where you would expect guards in the US — entrances to parking lots and limited access places like the Renmin campus. I saw none of the “green shirted” military folks until we got to the TSA-like checkpoint for entering Tiananmen Square, and once in the square there was no more evidence of them than you might find around Buckingham Palace. Saw no evidence of weapons as they marched in small group formations to their posts. As for police (clearly marked as such), only saw some around school entrances when classes were being let out — a result of a recent series of odd knife attacks on small children taking place throughout China which no one can quite explain.
If anything, I was shocked that there were not more police or other uniformed folks at major pedestrian crossings where they were sorely needed, (I had to use my New York pedestrian stare-down technique a couple of times, with good result I might add. I finally got use to how Beijing drivers operated, and after two days in Wuhan I concluded that Beijing drivers are much better; but then again, the Wuhan had to deal with “Big Dig” level construction and there was surprise around every corner…)
Ari takes note of street “hawkers” in Beijing, but with exception of food vendors (like the carts in Manhattan) I saw little of that except around the entrances to some tourist sites (e.g. Temple of Heaven; and now that I think of it, not at Summer Palace). I did experience some hawker-like behavior the moment I went into a multistory old mall where there was one floor devoted to jewelry and “craft” type stuff (I was there to find some “jade” stones for spouse who makes her own). Literally hundreds of booths selling stuff, and I got a taste of some really intense bargaining as my host graduate student guide got the price of my purchases from 2400 to 800 — really quite and experience, with lots of shoving of calculators back and forth…
Smog was not problem most days in the part of Beijing I was situated for the visit (across from Renmin) — as it turns out, one side of the city is better than the other in terms of air quality, and my hosts told me that is reflected in rental prices.
The traffic is incredible as Ari mentions, but I expected many more bikes and cart traffic. Cars definitely dominate, especially taxis (quite a few — as it was in Wuhan); and the weaving in and out of traffic makes Manhattan taxi drivers look damn good. Given how they drive, one would expect to see lots of accidents and vehicles with dents — but saw only one minor mishap and not one dented fender or evidence of sideswipe in sight….. Biggest problem as I saw it was the right-turn-on-red which not only did not require a stop, but was typically done at 30 mph at minimum….
Ari does not mention it, but the Beijing subway was quite nice. Oldest line was built in 1968 and has a look similar to DC; more recent subway lines built more like the ones you see in modern airports. I was told that the only part still under construction is an extension of the line from the airport which is already mostly built and operational….
Lots of modern shopping malls, lots of US franchises (KFC is most popular; I spent spare hours at Starbucks, which was next to the Papa Johns pizza and down the row from Subway sandwich shop) and tons of money being spent by shoppers. There was upscale department store near my hotel, and it was definitely aimed at older crowd but was not quite as busy as the mall down the road which was always busy with fairly young shoppers. What is striking is the fashion consciousness of the women, and the sports obsessions (especially NBA) of the males (reflected in their clothing).
Ari makes some comments about the degree of government control of enterprises, and I think that has lightened quite a bit, to the point that one wonders why there is not more interference. While I was there, the news carried a watershed event as a lead story: KFC had reached an agreement with the Labor Federation based on collective bargaining and with no government interference. As I understand it, this was a first for this level of employment and included provisions to assure job security, advancement, and adherence to minimum wage laws. Union-like organizations were not allowed to develop before the current reforms (for fear of the emergence of a Solidarity-like movement that might compete with the Party), and so collective bargaining has never really been part of the system. This KFC deal is a big deal in that regard….
In another news item of historical note, the death of an American expat who had lived and worked on China’s farms since the late 1940s offered a view of how agriculture had changed. Over the years this expat and her husband (also US citizen) had developed a dairy farm with government support that became a model for others; but with the withdrawal of government support from farming in recent years, the farm became part of Kraft Foods — but not until she got commitments about how the farm would be run. The story is more complicated, but that withdrawal of government from the farm and other enterprises I think is really a major change that reflects the current reality, and it turns up in all sorts of narratives about the economic changes over past twenty years….
Then there is the limited internet access and the Google fight. Interestingly, Google Hong Kong (which is where they moved their operations after the fight with the Chinese government) is one of the biggest advertisers on the bus ads and other prominent billboards. Gmail was easy, and even google buzz and my google voice access. Blogspot sites would not be accessed (unless I used my VPN access). Other things were cut off, and there was no way to access Twitter or Facebook — well almost. I am no hacker, by any means, but it did not take long for me to figure out how to access the blocked sites by using VPN and some tools built into my blog site. I could basically access almost any site I tried without those “hacks” (made lots of use of skype); and my impression is that China’s homegrown social media operations are no problem to use — if you read and write Chinese. As is the case everywhere these days, people of sending messages and doing all sorts of other things on their cell phones — which seem to be everywhere….
In short, even assuming the biases of two different observers, the comparisons of Beijing 2006 with Beijing 2010 is striking….
June 22nd, 2010
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accountabilitybloke |
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A blog focused on things related to accountability, governance and all sorts of other ideas that I might want to share.