I am Lucifer DeMorte

What I Take to be Carr's Thesis

So, I have a number of thoughts about what Carr is actually saying.

He gives lots of examples of business people lying, and doing other horrible things to other people, so his thesis could be that lots of businessers are really horrible people.

He also mentions that these horrible things are seen as part of normal practice, or all part of the "business game", so his thesis could be that lots of businessers think that they're somehow morally allowed to be really horrible people.

furthermore, he seems to approve of this reasoning, using turns of phrase indicating that those who "know" that these dishonest practices are part of the game are smarter or better informed than those who feel that hurting people is bad, so I'm leaning to the idea that his thesis is "business lying is always morally okay".

However, he does use the word "bluffing" rather than "lying", so maybe he's just talking about bluffing, which is the practice of letting an opponent think that one's position is stronger than it is, or otherwise faking out a competitor. But no-one thinks that businessers are morally required  to share all their secrets with competitors, so this would not be a very controversial thesis. And he lists several examples of dishonesty that go beyond bluffing, including at least one example that is likely to cause harm to innocent people, so I think it's more reasonable to interpret him as supporting lying rather than merely supporting bluffing in the strict sense.

He keeps talking about morality as something preached in churches, so I think he confuses morality with religion, but none of the things he says to support the idea that "bluffing" is okay refer to religion, so I'm leaving that point aside for now.

He also says bad behavior by business is okay as long at it's legal, but I think that this may be because bad behavior that is also illegal is more likely to lead to negative consequences that bad behavior that's legal. (It's depressing to realize that it's legal to kill people so long as you do it by tricking them into buying and using a defective product.)

Based on the above, I think Carr's thesis is:

Lying is Always Morally Permissible in Business

Which means his antithesis is:

Lying is Not Always Morally Permissible in Business

(Note: as a matter of logic, proving that an argument fails does not automatically prove that its conclusion is false. If we show that Carr fails to prove his thesis, that won't by itself mean that his antithesis is true.)

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