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The death of truth
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Several days ago I found this small news item about Bristow Group, Inc., a helicopter transport services firm whose affiliate paid bribes to the Nigerian government in return for tax reductions. What struck me was the wording of the company’s settlement with the Securities and Exchange Commission: “Bristow neither admitted nor denied the charges but agreed to stop violating federal anti-bribery laws.”
In the same article, a Bristow executive takes credit for reporting the bribery, engaged in by people on the company’s payroll in Nigeria. Now, to be sure, no company can police all of its employees and contractors, all of the time. And there is something to be said for the fact that Bristow reported the violation to the SEC. At the same time, this legalese sticks in the craw, especially when it’s followed by self-congratulation for admitting the non-admission. I’m not saying I did it, your honor, but I promise to stop. And hats off to me for being so forthcoming.
It set me to wondering how often this happens. I did a Google search of the terms “admitted nor denied” and “stop doing,” and found plenty of reading material. There is the group of hospital executives who formed a company to sell “marketing advice” to the vendors who sought their business. Title insurance companies that secretly set up payments to real estate agents who steered business their way. Executives who establish shell companies so they can receive unreported income from the companies they are supposed to be stewarding. A company that sold life insurance to U.S. soldiers by promising a “savings fund” component that, when you read the fine print, barely rose above their premium payments. Once they were exposed, all had the same response: We’re not saying we did anything wrong, but we promise to stop now that you’ve caught us.
To be fair, we’ve seen cases of governments bludgeoning companies with overblown charges, until the targeted company finds it’s better off settling than fighting back. At times it seems our nation’s politicians are leading businessmen, lawyers, journalists, politicians, real estate agents, and other professions in the race to see who can be perceived as the least trustworthy. Perhaps this is what unsettles me about events like the Bristow Group’s non-announcement of a non-act that they promise to stop non-doing — the fact that it doesn’t draw laughter, or outrage. It’s just one more small news item in a world that no longer cares to pretend that truth matters. A company can simultaneously admit wrongdoing and deny wrongdoing, all while promising to stop doing what it won’t admit it ever did in the first place, and this is a commonplace.
It makes you think, doesn’t it, about how much of our everyday life is consumed by half-truths and small lies.
Yes boss, I think your strategic vision makes sense.
Nice sermon today, Reverend.
Kids, I’m working these long hours because I want to give you everything you need.
I don’t know about you, but sometimes I feel no different than a politician on the stump, promising everything to everyone, because while we have less and less grace for liars (as witnessed by the success of “gotcha” journalism), we have even more disdain for anyone who tells us the ugly, unglamorous truth. Truth was crucified on Golgotha, and we murder it again every day in our business, our politics, our personal lives.
Here’s a thought experiment: what would happen if, just for one day, we all of us told the truth? Would it be heaven, or hell?
Or consider a wrinkle on that scenario: what if we all stopped lying? No more white lies, no truth-shadings, no self-deception. There would be nothing on television. Politicians would have to shelve their speeches. Corporate annual reports would be reduced to postcards. The magazines in your grocery store checkout line would just have menus, and articles on how to cut an onion without crying.
Things would certainly get a lot quieter. Maybe we all ought to give it a try.
Not that I’m admitting or denying that I’m a liar, of course. I’m just saying that I’d like to stop.
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Soul searching
Good article. I’m less interested in “the little lies we tell” and more interested in economic philosophy.
I’d class myself as a libertarian with doubts. Stories like this make me question whether trusting the free market to come up with the best solutions to any problem is wise. I sometimes wonder if free market optimism isn’t a decidedly pre-industrialization idea. Laisse Faire economics is great for the private shopkeep in his small Enlightenment city, but throw in large corporations and laisse faire economics gives you 8 years olds spending 12 hours a day crawling through coal mines, Standard Oil owning a 95% monopoly, a life insurance company shamelessly ripping off soldiers, Halliburton completely fleecing the U.S. taxpayer, etc.
What say you, comrades?
but if we all stopped lieing would civilization be possible?
I am reminded of the dinner party story. Churchill is at a dinner party and getting quite lubricated. The matron beside him says “Mr. Churchill you are drunk”.
Churchill apparently responds:
“I may be drunk madam, but you are ugly, and I will be sober in the morning but you will still be ugly.”
or words to that effect.
I am not sure we need this kind of honesty.
We — all of us — often shade our comments to make a point or to hide one. When does this become lying? In the end, that is between the speaker and God.
There is great wisdom in the Biblical admonitions about silence. Keeping our mouths shut may be the only ultimate defense against our tendency to speak untruthfully.
If so, Tony says, “Things would certainly get a lot quieter.”
But then Tony, what would happen to this blog site and your own job? The debates would fade away and you would have to do something else I guess.
A day without lies? I work with politicians. It would indeed be a quiet day.
I would have hundreds (thousands?) of questions I’d like to ask them on that day though!
Seriously on point though, the anti-bribery laws with regard to the conduct of forieng business might better serve us with some refinement (or translation of common foriegn customs into a “this level of backshesh is OK - this level crosses the line”). Some countries work as a matter of common practice with a bit of greasing the skids for every transaction.
#1
jjf,
Free market economics depends on buyers having adequate information about available products. Monopolies are a separate issue, but companies ripping people off only succeed when people don’t know about it. So the need is to figure out what makes it easier or harder for companies to hide the truth about their business practices.
Sometimes that means government regulation, and I don’t have a problem with that. Unfortunately I suspect that sometimes governments are very much involved with helping a company hide the truth.
Sometimes the free market would work well but the government (not necessarily federal, sometimes it’s the local government) is involved and skews the situation in ways most people don’t realize (e.g. by limiting licenses to operate a certain kind of business, which not only stifles competition but offers lots of temptation to govt officials who issue the licenses to help out their friends or supporters).
On the subject of truth and lies and trying to tell the truth for a day, that’s exactly the premise of the movie “Liar, Liar” starring Jim Carrey. It’s really hilarious, as this guy who is used to lying all the time is suddenly unable to say anything but the truth.
Of course, Carrey’s character ends up not only not lying, but saying what he’s thinking but would ordinarily not say, along the lines of the kind of thing musing brings up in #2.
Telling the truth does not have to mean saying everything we are thinking. If I think your hair looks lousy today, I don’t have to lie and say it looks good, but I don’t have to express my opinion of it either. If I want to mention your appearance maybe I can tell you instead that I like your shirt. And if you ask me about your hair, it’s probably an indication that you’re not too sure about it yourself. If I am your friend then I will be honest and suggest trying to do it differently. And try to use some humor to lighten the situation and let you know that a bad hair day is not a disaster. (Unless you’re a model, and I don’t know any.)
I don’t happen to have a big problem with this myself. Partly because I’m not particularly talkative, so it’s easy for me to follow the advice “if you can’t say something nice, don’t say nothing at all.” Partly because I am by upbringing and personality a very honest person, “honest to a fault” according to my husband. But I generally know when not to say something that would be hurtful, and because I don’t generally speak without thinking I can speak the truth without being rude.
FYI - this is known as the Glomar defense from the CIA’s response to the exposure of the 1974 Glomar Explorer incident (the recovery of a sunken Soviet sub) - we will neither confirm nor deny
Another thing - the Glomar defense was invented to avoid a lie. It was a way of saying no comment, none of your business, I refuse to answer the question, the matter is secret, end of discussion. You will never know the truth, but I won’t lie about it either.
Not saying the truth is not necessarily a lie. It may just be silence. We are not obliged to answer every question put to us.
re: 5. KRM, it’s interesting that generally accepted accounting principal (GAAP - the legal standard for the accounting profession) recognizes the difference between a bribe and a grease payment. I’m not sure if this is the case elsewhere in law, though.
For the uninitiated, GAAP says that if you’re doing business operations in a culture where you just can’t get anything done (say, imports or exports) without payments to every customs official, policeman, or petty bureaucrat who gets between you and what you’re trying to do, you can include those payments in your cost of doing business. This is considered distinct from offering a payment to a government official in order to gain business, i.e., a bribe.
As I muttered today, it seemed to me that the situation is more complicated than it might seem.
Indeed there are cases (Pauline’s hair example) when saying nothign avoids a lie.
There are cases, however, where the failure to speak is itself a lie. There are a number of criminal situations where this is true.
My inclination is that the key is to tell the truth that needs to be told.
Further we need to understand that all communication is raltively imprecise. We need to tailor our communication to get across the “true meaning”. At times this may not be the literal truth.
And at the end of the day, I use the shaving test. If I can tolerate looking at myself in the mirror in the morning while I shave, then I am not in too much trouble.
I laughed my head off during the “Liar, Liar” scene with Carey in the office meeting telling the truth about everyone.
Bribes occur where money replaces principles/morals. We see a lack of principles in multinational corporations as well as nations. Politicians are the worst…perhaps the voter is the worst. Really, who’s bribing and who’s receiving the bribe. It’s just one big bribefest.
“The pen is blue!”
Well, after reading this article, I have decided to stop beating my wife. If that made no sense to you at all, then my dodge is that I apologize for your inability to laugh at my terrible jokes. At this time, I’d also like to shift the blame to RandomName and Drill, with whom I’m apparently trying to compete with wackiest poster of the day. They made me do it.
Our hearts - deceitfully wicked.
It’s so grievous when you catch your children or grandchildren in a lie - takes the blinders off! Some kids seem to have more of a problem with this than others - is it a male/female thing at all - one being more apt to lie? Both my son and grandson were/are more upfront about their actions, while my niece and granddaughter tend to be more sneaky and deceptive.
At least you’re not blaming Bush, Zanzibar.
#14:
Ah! VS, I forgot the usual suspect! Yes, I’m afraid it’s Bush’s fault as well. *All* Bush’s fault, come to think of it.
And ZZ, wherever he is, it’s his fault too. He should have jumped at that opportunity, and he didn’t, so now he’s to blame.
I kinda thought you might be ZZ, Zanzibar, just based on the name.
Anyway, I thought your comment on the http://www.worldontheweb.com/2007/10/05/audio-pick/ (Head vs. Heart) thread was right on.
Test.
Head vs. Heart
Yeah, that’s what I did - thinking Zanzibar was ZZ.
JJF, just to add to Pauline’s comments… Besides accurate information, market success also depends on the rationality and morality of the actors. If information on products is available and people know that they’re being produced by child labour but are nonetheless happy to have their coca-cola salt and pepper shakers made by ten year olds then a perfectly functioning market won’t do you any good. Or, if you have some semblance of morality and possess all the necessary knowledge but lack the reasoning skills necessary to understand the situation at hand, you’ll find the market paralyzed, since free market theory depends on the presumption of rational actors.
*Hopefully continued in a second comment below, if it posts…*