Moral Creatures?

I have titled this blog as being dedicated to excellence. Over the past nine entries I have asked you to endure a paper that I wrote that lays out what I believe constitutes morality. Why?

Because we are moral creatures, we humans.

How so?

We have rules for everything. Standing in line - no cutting. Robert's Rules for legislatures. Right hand over the heart for the Pledge of Allegience. Humans expect other humans to act in an appropriate fashion whenever we get together. Manners. Rules of the road.

Most of these rules were established to identify and correct misbehavior. Shouldn't we also concentrate on how we can interact to produce advancement rather than limits?

That is what I want to focus on from now on. I must apologize for how this blog has been handled since the beginning of the year. Disjointed and inconsistent would be nice ways of describing my efforts so far. But something clicked ON when I saw my book for sale on Amazon. I realized that that book was merely a start. Whether it will be a good start or a bad one will depend a lot on how I work this site. The first step, I felt, would be to map out for you why I believe in establishing communities of excellence, and then working to add members to those communities, is the most Moral of human activities. This blog will now seek out a topic and offer you examples of that topic in action, one excellent and one not.

Today is business.

The communities I am focusing on today is how companies interact with their customers. The focus will be oil companies and airlines. The fact that I flew cross country yesterday brought these two industries into focus.

What has changed so drastically in the last two years to cause the price of a barrel of crude oil to increase in price by over 300%? The oil companies will cite political unrest in minor oil producing countries, emerging super economies in China and India, increased demand for European diesel, Hurricane Katrina, and expenses for oil deposit exploration as key factors in oil inflation outpacing overall inflation by 100 times, or by 10,000%!!!! I've been around for 52 years and I can't think of a time when third world politics, growing demands, and natural disasters all had their say in the pricing of oil. What other factors have been at work?

Well having the friendliest of American administrations is definitely helpful. An administration whose policies also oversaw the California energy crisis in its first few months of its tenure. You remember, energy companies manipulated the price of electricity by buying and selling it to each other on a grid, or exchange, that was closed to everyone but those energy companies, adding price increase with every sale that was not a sale. The same inventory at a higher price without anything being expended except computer entries. This followed by the collapse of Enron, one of the energy companies involved in this "business." Success breeds boldness. I can't help asking - They got away with price manipulation in a 'test state' are we now seeing what happens worldwide?

One of the industries most negatively affected by the "Energy/Oil Crisis" is the airline industry. Increase their fuel costs by 400% and you've destroyed their profit. As a matter of fact, I think an increase by some factor a lot less than 400% would have been just as effective in destroying their profits. But what did airlines do? They got more efficient. Union contracts were reworked. Food and beverages now have to be paid for. Flights to semi-popular destinations had to be curtailed. Pensions went unfunded. Fares had to be increased, or did they? Airlines may have raised prices for some trips, but we flew to California from New York by cashing in miles, or credits, given to us by our carrier for using their services in the past often enough to amass a certain amount of credits to pay for a trip by four adults. The flight attendants were amazingly professional and welcoming. Or were they merely great as the are every day.

Airlines have had to change the way they do business but not by foregoing VALUE. They never forgot that you need to earn what you receive. They understand that we are all in this together, passengers and carriers. They have had the courage to do many things to earn the right to transport those passengers. They understand that valueless service is suicide in the long run. They have found profitable niches among themselves to allow for profitable activities. They offer credits as a way of thanking the passengers who chose them so as to inspire them to fly with them again.

I hope you see the diametrical difference in the value driven approach the airlines use compared with the greedy, siphoning ways of the oil industry. The technologies that will replace oil are now appearing on the market. Thirty years ago, the first time we had to deal with an oil 'crisis' nuclear, solar, wind and other alternative technologies were stomped on to prevent them from usurping oil's protected position as energy source for the world. I pray, hope, and expect that things will be different this time and we can remove the yoke of greed that this industry has slapped on mankind, stifling our development.