Commerce by Any Means?

Sheryl Sandberg has been a darling of the evangelical community, speaking at several Christian leadership conferences. She has a compelling story regarding grief and ‘leaning in’. However, as COO of Facebook, you wonder why she’s a darling in spite of the multiple scandals related to data privacy. What are her values? How true are the public statements being made about Facebook ‘doing better’ at protecting users’ privacy when it’s her responsibility to implement policies and policy changes?

Wired noted 21 scandals in 2018 alone. It wasn’t just Cambridge Analytica at the heart of them. or the 2018 revelation of stuff happening in 2015 about a bikini photo app. And Facebook continued to sell data long after they promised to change. The most recent scandal is the transmogrification of Onavo, who paid users—many underage—to bump up usage and access their phones’ data in order to bypass Apple’s prohibition of putting the app on their App Store.

How much is Sandberg responsible? An early investor, friend of Zuckerberg and former board member, Roger McNamee put her right in the midst of everything positive and negative about Facebook for a Time cover story. So it seems rightly so that Sandberg is tarnished. In fact, the Buzzfeed article by Anne Helen Petersen says this:

The reality of Silicon Valley is that it’s commerce by any means necessary. And the reality of Sandberg is that she’s excellent at it.

So, it seems that the value of making money is more important than any other ethical considerations, including promise keeping. If an organization’s goal is to increase revenue and (positive) notoriety, they could use Facebook’s standards...and then end up as a paraphrase of the Babylon Bee’s satirical headline—“Majority of Evangelicals Would Support Satan If He Would Run as a Republican Candidate”—“Majority of Evangelicals Would Jettison the 10 Commandments If They Could Get More Donations to Their Church”.

A recent Intelligence Squared debate—“Has Silicon Valley Lost Its Soul?”—during the debate seemed to imply that Silicon Valley never had a moral soul. From the beginning, tech startup founders were always trying to make money. Facebook’s Zuckerberg and Sandberg are no different.

Coal Miners’ Daughters Living on Welfare?

Overall, employment has been increasing since October 2010. The employment numbers have had a net positive change since that time. But not in coal mining...

Despite President Trump’s campaign pledge to bring back coal, demand has dropped and mines have been closing, especially in those Appalachian states of West Virginia and Pennsylvania. Forty percent of US coal production is in Montana and Wyoming (Powder River Basin) because they have the ‘right kind’ of coal. Coal industry employment peaked in February 2012. You’d think that the nice long economic recovery since 2009 would jump demand for coal and that would require more people. It hasn’t. It’s the lowest in 39 years. More than half of the coal mines have closed in the last 10 years. Though there was an increase in production during 2017, demand was down so that may have created a surplus and that may have contributed to the less efficient mines closing.

What has happened is that more BTU’s are being produced through natural gas and petroleum products than coal—by a wide margin. Unless that changes, the coal industry is stuck.

The lesson in this is not campaign pledges but watching overall economic and market trends. Government policy can only influence but not change what’s happening. Tax law changes in 2017 created a windfall in cash for corporations last year. It did not spur the expected boon in employment and capital good investment. It spurred stock share repurchases. Companies are not going to hire or build production lines with new equipment if the demand isn’t there. The coal industry didn’t see an uptick in demand; there was no reason to hire more workers. If your industry has indirect competitors (e.g. all beverage suppliers, not just soda producers), you definitely want to watch the macro-trends in your marketplace. Take care and keep an eagle eye: maybe do the 50,000-foot view instead of the 30,000-foot strategic plan. Royal Dutch Shell famously does longer plans than 5-10 years...and despite continued competition from alternative energy sources (and coal), it’s doing well.