How Low Can Our Culture’s Ethics Sink Before They Hit Bottom?

If you could take all the bank robbers, stick-up artists and con men of the last century and put them in a room together, do you know what you’d have?

Pikers, says ethicist Michael Josephson of Marina del Rey. They were low achievers compared to the cabal of corporate thieves who have recently fleeced investors and ravaged the American economy.

If you’ve got a 401(k) or other retirement fund, chances are you’ve had your pocket picked.

“This is a watershed time,” Josephson said when I checked in with him to ask when and how we became a society without scruples. “It’s huge, and it’s still unfolding.”

I met Josephson in the mid-’80s and have listened since then to his do-the-right-thing radio commentaries, which end with a line that seems inspired by the straight-and-narrow dad on “The Brady Bunch”: “This is Michael Josephson reminding you that character counts.”

I always picture an entire nation of people jerking their hands out of cookie jars when they hear Josephson’s voice. But apparently the commentaries are blacked out in the boardrooms of WorldCom, Xerox, Enron, Rite-Aid, Adelphia, Global Crossing and Arthur Andersen.

Every day, a new chapter in the Book of Lies.

Last week in The Times, we had a developing scandal involving allegations that the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power drove up prices with an illegal trick that’s used so routinely, it’s got a name--ricochet.

We had a report that Warner-Lambert Co., maker of a diabetes drug that has figured in the deaths of dozens, pushed the drug on Latinos in part because “the Hispanic patient is easy to intimidate.”

And we had hospital officials awkwardly attempting to explain why they didn’t bother to tell relatives of two patients, who both died, that their loved ones had Legionnaires’ disease.

The name of the hospital?

Good Samaritan.

I’ve written fiction, but I’ve never come up with story lines this creative. How could anybody make up anything more absurd than real life at a time when Catholic bishops and cardinals are taking management tips from the tobacco industry?

Major league baseball players are launching home runs over the moon and telling us they’re not on steroids, and we’re about to go on another bombing-for-oil mission that we’ll call a blow for democracy.

“Asking when it all started is like asking the causes of the Civil War,” says Josephson. “Everyone wants one coherent theory.”

Of course we do. And I’d like to blame it on the ‘80s.

Milli Vanilli and REO Speedwagon were hit bands, yuppies became the standard bearers for human achievement, and not only did President Reagan promise prosperity without sacrifice, but he preached family values while estranged from his own children.

Of course it’s just as easy to blame our current mess on President Clinton, who taught us you weren’t guilty of anything unless you got caught, and even then, you could probably weasel your way out of trouble, depending on your definition of trouble.

But Josephson says it was more complicated than any of that. He points to a time when the dreaded phrase “cost-benefit analysis” became the driving force behind every vital decision. That was when principle became considered too expensive a luxury and had to be let go.

“A huge contributing factor was a change in the standard of accounting ethics. It became a bottom-line mentality that says whatever works is right,” Josephson says.

“Everything is gamed now, and the challenge is, ‘How do I beat the system?’ Tax evasion is a crime, but tax avoidance isn’t. We have learned to avoid laws by finding ways around them, and paying people lots of money to tell us how to get it done.”

At some point, that ethic moved beyond boardrooms and wormed its way into the culture, and we all danced on the edge of a slippery slope. When the average Joe became an investor, for instance, did he care what the company stood for, as long as it was returning 20% profits?

More students are cheating on exams and college applications, Josephson says, but no one is all that worked up about it. Certainly not anyone whose kid got accepted to a good school.

NBA teams pull their own “ricochet” scams with rosters, shuffling players onto the reserve list with bogus injuries. But if the team is winning, who cares?

“Why is it that people don’t even get offended when they know top basketball teams are totally willing to sign a document that’s a lie?” Josephson asks in the incredulous tone of the last honest man on the planet.

“We’re [in trouble] the moment we start making it look like there are shades of gray when telling little lies, because why shouldn’t it be that way for big lies too?”

Fair enough, we’re all in on it.

But I’d like to make a distinction between the small lies we average folks tell ourselves, and the act of making billion-dollar accounting “mistakes,” running a corporation into the ground, costing thousands of people their jobs, and wiping out pensioners’ savings.

Besides, you cook the books on your personal income tax returns, and you’re in deep trouble. But the CEO just flashes his Get-Out-of-

Jail-Free card, walks away with $200 million in bonuses, and remodels the 45-room mansion.

Josephson says we can’t sink too much deeper before we hit rock bottom.

And the good news is that some accounting reforms and beefed-up regulatory scrutiny may be on the way, now that CEOs--and the pols who let them get away with grand larceny--have become objects of public ridicule and contempt.

I’ll believe it when I see it.

Until then, this is Steve Lopez for Michael Josephson, reminding you that character counts.

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Steve Lopez writes Sunday, Wednesday and Friday. Reach him at [email protected].