Silicon Investor (SI) -- The First Internet Community

STOCKTALK

We've detected that you're using an ad content blocking browser plug-in or feature. Ads provide a critical source of revenue to the continued operation of Silicon Investor. We ask that you disable ad blocking while on Silicon Investor in the best interests of our community. If you are not using an ad blocker but are still receiving this message, make sure your browser's tracking protection is set to the 'standard' level.

Pastimes : Ethics 101 -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: coug who wrote (41)	1/23/1999 9:24:00 AM
From: Cush	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 75

Coug: I think you have raised an interesting point, if I've understood it properly. You said; "If you get an advisory service for personal use, are you supposed to spread it around after you take a position?? To deprive the publisher, of additional revenue, to take the position and then profit on additional publicity of the "spreading".. Or to take it one step further, have a concerted effort of a "pool of people" to t each take a seperate service, come up with the best and share it.. WHEN WE ARE ALL PROFESSIONAL OR SEMI- PROFESSIONAL TRADERS... It seems cheap and unethical to me...... an Indepedant Coug" Is this just further evidence of the way our society can rationalize any behaviour? I think you make a very good point. We see it all the time on threads where individuals share information in violatation of copyright contracts. The passing along of real-time and market depth information comes to mind. Perhaps there is an argument with this info that by the time someone copies and pastes info into an SI post it is no longer Real-time anyway. But that does seem like a rationalization. I think more likely we all feel like we're fighting a war here. It's us against the big THEM. We feel that the deck has been stacked against us and therefore any collusion on our part that would otherwise be clearly unethical becomes acceptable as though there's some area between ethical and unethical. Guess that's why we invented Purgatory. Cush

To: coug who wrote (41)	1/23/1999 9:53:00 AM
From: Cush	Respond to of 75

Ethics in business. When I was a young man I accepted a job as an Area Supervisor with a large soft-drink company. Up to that time, I felt like I had never told a lie. It was something I felt quite strongly about. One day shortly after I began this job, we had a truck break-down before the driver could do his deliveries. In this type of business, the stores want their stock in a timely fashion. What they don't have they can't sell. As was the custom in situations like this, we switched loads on the trucks so that our biggest, most-important customers would receive their orders. I was given the responsibility to phone the small customers who wouldn't be receiving their shipments that day. I explained to several of these smaller accounts just what had happened. The sh## hit the fan. People were really upset. The idea that their orders had been on the way and were then diverted because we needed their truck to deliver elsewhere was clearly not the message that my Manager had wanted me to convey. He explained to me that sometimes people don't want to hear the truth. Sometimes they just want an explanation they can live with. I worked in that industry for five years and then in the Medical Device industry for another twenty. Rationalizing lying is an epidemic in our society. ~a ramble, courtesy of Cush ~

To: coug who wrote (41)	1/23/1999 9:58:00 AM
From: Cush	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 75

Coug: I think I somehow managed to write and then not post the following, so if it seems out of sequence -that's why. Hi Coug: Been a volatile, gut-wrenching week with my portfolios. I'm going to comment on your post with two or three posts. First: You said "a comment.. We have damn few comments about ethics on this thread compared to all the others... It must say that making money is more important than how a person gets it.. I don't know, It's just a thot." It reminds me of that old poster; It's hard to remember that your first priority was to bail the boat when you're up to your ass in alligators. I think that's part of the reason for ethics being low on the list of what people are considering these days. High anxiety is ruling Wall Street.