The Business Ethics Blog

The ALS Ice Bucket Challenge has been mind-blogglingly successful, raising tens of millions of dollars and becoming a bona fide internet phenomenon. But it has also garnered considerable criticism. So, are the critics right? Is the Ice Bucket Challenge really an example of a terrible approach to philanthropy?

I took the ALS Ice Bucket Challenge last week, after being challenged by a Facebook friend. As part of it, I also happily donated money to the cause. ALS (the neurodegenerative disease Amyotrophic Lateral Schlerosis) is a good cause, and I had fun doing my bit. I encouraged (and encourage) others to take part.

But many people have found the Challenge off-putting, and the criticisms are worth considering.

So OK, to begin with: yes, an internet meme is a pretty silly way to decide which charities to support. If the only thing that inspires you to support a good cause is the fact that Leonardo DiCaprio dumped water on his head, you might want to rethink your priorities.

Critics have in particular focused on the fact that it’s far from clear that ALS, currently enjoying the limelight, is the world’s most important charitable cause. After all, the number of people suffering from ALS pales in comparison to the number of people who die from cancer or heart disease. True, but that’s not a reason not to donate to it. There is no “most worthy” cause. Charities vary along many dimensions, and there’s nothing wrongheaded about donating — even collectively donating lavishly — to help cure a disease that afflicts relatively few in a relatively tragic way.

Other critics have lamented more specifically the fact that the ALS Challenge is—gasp!—taking money away from other charities. And there is some evidence that that’s true. Money is finite, and presumably many people will donate less to other charities if they have donated to ALS. But this applies to any charity’s fundraising efforts. If the Canadian Cancer Society or the Heart and Stroke Foundation has an especially successful fundraising year, it likely means some other charity (or perhaps a great many small charities) will have had comparatively miserable ones. There’s no special reason to single out the Ice Bucket Challenge in this regard. As for me, like most people I know, I dug out an additional $100 out of my pocket—$100 I was liable to spend on dinner out, or on iTunes—and donated it to ALS Canada. I made a donation in addition to the other causes I regularly donate to.

And consider this: Most of the criticisms launched against the Ice Bucket Challenge are ones that apply to your local 10k Fun Run in support of cancer research, too. Or the dance-a-thon to raise money to feed the hungry. Focused on me and myaccomplishments, rather than on the charity? Check! Pressuring your friends into donating or sponsoring, independent of their own priorities? Check! Environmentally wasteful? Check! A non-thoughtful way to select a charity? Check!

One of the best things to come out of the Ice Bucket Challenge has been the vibrant discussion and the range of creative responses it has engendered. A friend of mine dumped water on her head (thus contributing to keeping the meme going) but donated to her own favourite charity, and in her video encouraged others to do exactly the same thing. Charlie Sheen dumped $10,000 in cash on his head, symbolizing the amount he was pledging to donate to the ALS Foundation. Matt Damon (co-founder of Water.org) dumped icy toilet water on his head, to draw attention not just to the stunt but to his own favourite cause, namely the provision of clean water.

In the end, the creativity and even the critical comments are good. It’s good for people to be talking about charity, and which charities to give to, and how to do it. Yes, the ALS Ice Bucket Challenge has faced considerable criticism. And that’s a good thing.

What makes a Canadian company Canadian? What is it that makes an American company definitively all-American? Is it a matter of where the company is legally registered? Where it earns the bulk of its profits? Who its CEO is? Who owns its shares? And what about companies that have offices in multiple countries? Should companies have to swear allegiance to one flag or another?

The question of corporate nationality has arisen recently, in relation to the matter of corporate “inversions,” or “transactions in which American corporations [for example] move their tax residency abroad by being ‘bought’ by smaller foreign firms, in order to reduce their [for example] American corporate tax bills.” Not surprisingly, perhaps, such inversions are controversial. The notion of an American company (and so far all the controversy I’ve seen has been about US companies) abandoning the homeland to put down roots in a foreign land offends more than a few. For some, the act in itself amounts to a kind of treachery. For others, it has to do with the fact that because inversions allow a reduction in taxes paid, they might (or might not) imply big losses to particular national treasuries.

Naturally, rhetoric on the topic is in full bloom. US Treasury Secretary Jacob J. Lew has apparently said that inversions do violence to what he refers to as “economic patriotism.” And US President Barack Obama has waded into the debate, referring to inverting firms as “corporate deserters.”

On the other hand, the practice has its defenders. If the US corporate tax rate weren’t so high, US companies wouldn’t feel the need to find creative (and ostensibly disloyal) solutions. And inversion is perfectly legal, explicitly allowed for example but the U.S. tax code. Not that legality settles the ethical issue, but it’s odd to call something unpatriotic — disloyal to your country — if your country’s law explicitly allows your behaviour.

To me, rhetoric laced with words like “patriotism” and “deserters” seems hopelessly parochial in a global economy. It rings of jingoism. People want free markets — and the free flow of goods and services across borders — but they don’t want to be told that other places are better places to do business, and they don’t like the idea that another nation might grab a bigger share of corporate tax revenues.

But there’s also a point to be made here about corporate personhood. As I’ve pointed out before, corporate personhood, properly understood, is absolutely essential to modern economies and hence to modern societies. Personhood simply consists in the fact that courts identify corporations as having bundles of rights and responsibilities separate from the people who in some sense make up the corporation. That’s what lets corporations sign contracts and own property and honour warrantees and be sued. Without personhood: no corporation.

Despite this fact, many people claim to be opposed to the very notion of corporate personhood. But that leads to a problem with regard to inversions. If you think you’re opposed to the notion of corporate personhood, and additionally find inversion distasteful, you need to ask yourself: just who is being unpatriotic when corporate inversion happens? Because if you are skeptical about personhood, then it can’t be the corporation that is deserting its country. Is the Board being unpatriotic? Even if their decision is consistent with their legal duty and arguably their ethical duty to do what’s best for the corporation?

As one commentator put it, “Corporations aren’t people, so it’s a lot to ask for them to be patriotic, especially when they operate all over the world.” No, they’re certainly not people, but they are persons. As long as you accept that fact, you can then talk seriously about just what bundle of rights and responsibilities corporations ought to have — that is, what form their personhood should take.

If a corporation is a person in this sense, is it then a thing that is capable of having a nationality? Can it have duties of citizenship, as Lew and Obama seem to imply? This isn’t a metaphysical question, but a practical one. Are the duties of citizenship duties that it would make sense to attribute to a corporation? Would that be conducive to important human ends? And if so, are the humans whose interests matter just the ones who happen to liver where you do?

Tel Aviv is not a place for the faint of heart to fly into, these days. Should Canadian and American and European airlines go back to avoiding the place, or should they bravely continue flying there? The conflict between Israelis and Palestinians along the Gaza-Israel border is, tragically, showing no signs of letting up, and the result is real risk to commercial aircraft.

Back on July 22, Air Canada briefly cancelled flights betweenTel Aviv and Toronto, and in the US the Federal Aviation Administration issued an order banning U.S. carriers from flying in and out of Tel Aviv’s Ben Gurion International Airport. The European Aviation Safety Agency, on the other hand, merely issued an advisory recommending caution.

Then, after a few days, the FAA lifted its ban on flights, but the trouble is far from over. There was news in late July that rockets had been fired at the Tel Aviv airport as an Air Canada jet was preparing to land. Flight AC85 was forced to abandon its initial attempt to land, and to circle the airport while waiting for confirmation that landing was (reasonably) safe. Reports suggest that the airline is nonetheless going to continue flying to Israel.

Is that the right thing to do? How much risk is too much? With regard to the company’s own calculations, a spokesman for American Airways was quoted as saying “Nothing matters more than keeping our crews and customers safe.” OK, fair enough. But how safe is “safe”? No one in the post-9/11 world thinks air travel is perfectly safe, although it is still in general the safest way to travel. But is flying into Tel Aviv sufficiently dangerous (beyond the minimal dangers of “normal” air travel) to make it unethical for airlines to fly there?

One way out would be for airlines to defer to the relevant federal regulations and edicts. But laws and regulations only sets the minimum standard. Airlines are free to opt not to fly into Tel Aviv, even when legally allowed to do so, so they still have a decision to make.

Some people will immediately say that yes, of course, airlines should avoid taking the risk. After all, every life is precious — you can’t put a price on a human life. Except, of course, you can, and we do it all the time. If every life was literally priceless, we would spend even more on air safety (not to mention auto safety) than we already do.

Another option would be to say, hey, it’s a matter of “buyer beware.” Airlines can fly into Tel Aviv, ethically, as long as their customers know how dangerous it is. And what passenger contemplating flying into Tel Aviv these days wouldn’t know about the dangers? But then, being aware of the conflict there doesn’t imply having a good understanding of the precise risk involved in flying there. Recall that just about everyone was surprised when a Malaysian passenger plane was shot down over the Ukraine back in July, killing nearly 300 people. Everyone knew about the armed conflict going on there, but no one apparently thought that it constituted a serious risk to air travel. So it is unrealistic to expect the average passenger — one without a fine appreciation of the precise geographical location of the latest round of skirmishes and not tutored in the capacities of the latest ground-to-air rocket technology — to make this call. Passengers rely on airlines to engage in reasoned risk assessment, and to keep them reasonably safe.

In the end, commercial airlines should err on the side of safety. After all, even if (let us suppose) all the passengers on a given flight into Tel Aviv are Israelis returning home, ones who are happy to thumb their noses at Palestinian rockets, the airlines still have a duty to their employees — in particular to the pilots and flight attendants who make up their flight crews. Those flight crews accept, as do passengers, that flying implies certain risks. But no one on the plane, whether passenger or pilot or flight attendant, has the information required to make a rational decision about flying into Tel Aviv, and so they shouldn’t be expected to do so.