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Are business ethics or profits more important?

This Debate has 18 articles on the Ethics side and 7 articles on the Profits side. Click here to see all the articles rated and ranked by Helium members.

Ethics

Profits

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Profits

Somewhere I heard that ethics are a luxury I cannot afford. As glib as this statement seems it has a bit of truth to it. Look at fair trade in your grocery store, most of the time it is the more expensive choice. Of course this is partly due to the difference in the supply of resources that can be made into fair trade goods. After all most fair trade farms are small family owned farms with a significantly finite acreage to grow food on. It's like sports, yes the small market teams(Fair trade coffee) can put together a good group of players(beans) for short runs, but eventually they have to sell the star players(acres) to teams like the Yankees(Nabob et al). The money advantage simply becomes to huge to overcome.

Even more important though is that having profitable companies within our economy makes us capable of making those ethical decisions. Lets face it things like CO2 scrubbers cost money, whether its the companies paying for it or the taxpayers. If the companies are successful they produce at the very least good paying jobs(at least at the management level) that provide the government with good sized tax revenues. This means that the country can afford to subsidize such things as CO2 scrubbers if necessary. Also because the company is turning a larger profit it can have the option to pay for it out of their own pockets, not that they will necessarily but that they may.

What it really comes down to though is you and I. Like I said before fair trade items and other such ethical endeavors typically cost more than their unethical counterparts. The fact is that ethics are a luxury in the world of economics. The only way then that you are going to get a more ethical society is by generating more wealth, aka profit. Look at Britain, most of its labour force is involved in management of some kind. The disposable income has allowed the British citizens to become one of the main markets for fair trade food stuffs. Now granted this may partly be a result of some socio-psychological principles such as noblesse oblige, or upper middle class guilt, the fact remains that the change took place after they could afford it. So in the business world profits come before ethics because ethics are a luxury.