Compromising Public Health for a States' Rights Ideology: The Governor of Arizona Nullified a Federal Law during a Pandemic

On October 27, 2021, I rode on two mass transit buses in Phoenix, Arizona. Both drivers were knowingly and willfully violating the federal regulation (42 CFR sec.s 70-71), which requires transit operators to wear masks during the pandemic even when they are situated behind a plexiglass barrier. One of the drivers, whom I had twice before seen not wearing a mask, again had lowered the plexiglass window pane between the driver and customers paying.  The first time, I had asked her to put a mask on, given the federal regulation and her proximity to the passengers boarding. Replying as if making an announcement, she said, “If anyone feels unsafe on the bus, they can get off and wait for the next bus.” That prompted a passenger to insult me. The company subsequently backed up the driver's refusal by saying that the federal law doesn't apply to buses in Arizona. It did, so the company violated federal law with impunity.

 

I reported this incident to the regional bus authority and the city of Phoenix. Nevertheless I saw her maskless more than a week later and then during the following week. I did receive a voicemail from TransDev, a bus-operating company contracted by Metro Valley, informing me that regardless of the federal law, the company policy does not require bus drivers to wear masks. In fact, a representative from Metro Valley defiantly declared on a subsequent phone call that drivers can let maskless passengers board—again, in violation of federal law. Company policy apparently can nullify federal regulations in Arizona, a U.S. state with special needs. 

Even though the FBI told me that it looks to local law enforcement agencies to enforce federal regulations, a supervisor at one of the police sub-stations told me that his department would not enforce the regulation. “Oh, so they want to dump it on us,” he said. Astonishingly, he claimed that only law passed by his state’s legislature is “real law in Arizona.” About a week later, a police transit supervisor told me that the chief of police had told the non-supervisory patrol employees not to enforce the federal regulation, and this directive had come down from the governor.

As shocking as such corruption is, the immature, even pathological behavior of the second maskless bus driver I witnessed on the morning of October 27, 2021 told me after I had asked her to put on a mask that she didn’t care if a federal regulation requires drivers to wear masks. “I don’t care. Go ahead, call the FBI,” she said with a daring tone of presumed impunity. She also encouraged me to call the local police after I said I would contact them too. “They don’t wear masks either,” she shouted. Yes, shouted. I replied that I was ending the conversation, which she ignored until I went to the back of the bus. She then accused me of threatening her. “Get off my bus!” she exclaimed angrily even though she kept the bus in motion. She was clearly making up an excuse to get me in trouble for having asked her to comply with U.S. law. What a strange, absurd mentality, at least outside of Arizona. Not surprisingly, she had let a maskless man ride. While walking to the back door to exit the bus, the maskless old male passenger felt entitled pick up the baton from the driver and shout “I’m vaccinated; I don’t have to wear a mask” at me. I knew he was ignorant so I did not comment. Nevertheless, she kept shouting his presumed factoid to me as he got closer. After he left, the driver once again began shouting insults at me, having dismissed my statement that I was done with the conversation. She called me a dumbass and a weirdo, and told me in a dismissive and hostile tone, “Go back to your institution!” My stop was coming up, so I could not get off the bus, but I did not want to hear any more from the childish driving having a temper-tantrum. So I began repeating, “I don’t talk to local creepers.” I had said this to the maskless passenger too.  “I won’t let you ride on my bus ever again,” the driver said. It is significant that she referred to her bus, in repeating, “I won’t let you ride my bus ever again,” when in actuality the city of Phoenix owns the bus and she does not have the authority to ban anyone from ever riding “her” bus ever again. Even were the bus her own, she would still be required to follow federal law, though she clearly believed otherwise.  She even put her two hands to her ears while operating the bus like a kid would do, and angrily repeated, “I know you are, I know you are,” after I declared that I do not talk with local creepers.  It was surreal that any bus driver would behave like a four year-old. “What are you in kindergarden?” I replied. Even when I was walking out of the bus and then outside of the bus, the driver was yelling insults, so I continued repeating my line. It was incredibly pathetic that a four year-old’s mentality would stop her temper-tantrum only to pick up her phone to call her supervisor, and yet the bus company’s customer service does not allow passengers to speak with a supervisor of the drivers in real time even when a driver is not only abusing his or her authority, but is having a temper-tantrum. It is precisely because the drivers know that they can misbehave with impunity that they go on the offensive even more by claiming that a passenger is misbehaving. It is not surprising that drivers tend to presume impunity in violating a federal regulation geared to ending a pandemic. It is not surprising that several drivers in 2020 and 2021 felt entitled to ignore the local and federal laws, respectively, requiring that passengers and drivers wear masks. Some drivers actually wore their masks to cover only the chin area as if that constituted compliance. Arizona’s pre-college education ranked 49^th out of the 50 states at the time. Go figure. Presumptive arrogance combined with astounding ignorance is a toxic combination.

I submit that this last driver was so brazen at least in part because there really is no accountability in the local mass transit system, which includes Metro Valley, the regional transit authority and TransDev, a private subcontractor that operates the buses, which are owned by the city of Phoenix. Both Metro Valley and TransDev have told me that their policies allowing maskless riders and drivers invalidate the federal law. By the way, a local police patrol employee informed me (when he was off duty) that bus drivers are not federal employees to the federal law does not apply to them. “So you locals are ok with the federal money you get from the feds for your mass transit, but that doesn’t obligate you to follow their regulations,” I concluded. He gave a thumbs up. Three weeks earlier, a patrol supervisor informed me that the only “real law in Arizona is that which goes through the state legislature.” There is virtually no enforcement of masks on the light rail by security guards either. They illegally impersonate police officers by wearing silver badges, yet have admitted that Metro Valley won’t allow them to enforce the local ordinance in 2020 and the federal regulation in 2021. I think the guards are more interested in intimidating passengers to feel the pleasure of being dominant (albeit certainly not superior in any way) than in enforcing even federal law.

It is strange seeing three or four guards on one half of a car yet not one of the Allied Security employees are enforcing the federal law as it is even stated on on-board signs declaring, “Per Federal Law, Masks Are Required.” Once when I heard a train’s operator make an announcement at every stop, I pressed a red button at an intercom with the driver. The drivers want passengers to report problems, so it was ironic that a young black guard rushed to me (I had not seen him in the back) and demanded to know what I had been talking about. I asked him twice to lift his mask from his chin to cover his mouth and nose. He obviously felt entitled to break the law even though signs on the doors and windows were obvious. Without even waiting for me to answer his question, he became very hostile toward me and declared that if he ever sees me use the intercom again, he would kick me off the train. As I was leaving the train, I passed by the operator’s open window. “Of course we want you to use the intercom to report things like you did—that many passengers are ignoring my announcement!” I asked her to report the guard.

In short, the arrogance, corruption, and incompetence at the state, city and mass transit levels at least in Phoenix are such that someone who is not used to such a sordid, ignorant, and hostile culture cannot but be astonished—jaws-dropped astonished. Not only does the bus company ignore reports of illegal behavior; the company claims that its policy, which contradicts federal law, is the only thing that the company acknowledges as valid. How could anyone at a company believe that a company policy nullifies a federal law? How could a police chief tell her police force not to enforce a federal law, when according to the U.S. Department of Justice, the F.B.I. routinely relies on local law enforcement to play a role in enforcing federal law. Yet in Phoenix, Arizona, a police supervisor specializing on transit refused to acknowledge that state officials ever enforce federal law. “They want their laws enforced? They will have to send feds to enforce them.”

On the Role of Business in a Societal or Global Catastrophe

While it is obvious that a business or industry can affect and be affected by its environment, such as by polluting a river and a hurricane, respectively, it is less well known that a business or an entire industry can cause or facilitate a societal or global crisis. Whereas polluting a river can be answered with government regulation, the very legitimacy (and thus ongoing operations) of a company or even an entire industry is arguably at risk in knowingly creating or significantly worsening a societal/global crisis. The latter role goes beyond the scope of government regulation and corporate social responsibility, although broadening or just enforcing anti-trust laws may be sufficient to deal with the lost legitimacy. That is to say, what I have in mind is another genre or type of problem.
For instance, Exxon funded its own scientific studies on the effects of the oil industry on the Earth’s climate as early as in the 1950s. Certainly by the 1970s, the company’s management knew that the ongoing release of CO2 into the atmosphere would cause severe climatic problems, and yet the company’s public-relations lied to the public that the company’s studies were not decisive. Given the industry’s clout/money with members of Congress and even presidents, the company could keep the government from legislating and regulating geared to an expected crisis. Exxon (and the entire industry) played a major role in causing global warming, which could result in the extinction of our species, not to mention reduce the production of food-stuffs and trigger mass-migrations and even wars such as over water-rights.
Business ethicists can be expected focus on the ethical principles violated lying and the related willingness to be a major contributor to a planetary crisis as regards habitability. In other words, what should Exxon have done? Scholars of business and societal culture focus on the incompatibility of corporate and societal cultural norms and values. Within that field of business and society, advocates of corporate social responsibility design company charitable programs oriented to specific societal problems, especially if the company had contributed to the ongoing (rather than crisis) problems. Operating a food bank for the poor is not like saving the planet, or our species. Political economists cover the legislative and regulatory capture by an industry and the resulting muted regulations. Systems theorists can explain how all of these parts work together—an entire system with a fatal flaw in its basic design and operation. The ability of business to cause or even greatly facilitate a societal or global crisis is perhaps so new in the twenty-first century that this sort of problem has not yet been studied.
In 2007-2008, mortgage producers and investment banks created sub-prime mortgages and made high-risk bonds based on the risky mortgages. Investment banks even sold insurance for holders of the bonds. The financial derivative and insurance markets became so large that when they collapsed, a financial crisis occurred. An industry had put the world’s financial system itself at risk of collapse. Financial regulation was not sufficient; a gigantic financial infusion from the Congress and the Federal Reserve was necessary. Unlike the banking crisis of 1907, more than a socially responsible J.P. Morgan would be needed. Society, through its government, had to step in both for the U.S. economy and the global economy. The crisis was that large. That the financial sector was culpable and yet could receive federal money without strings (so even bonuses could be paid!) suggests that the notion of a few large companies or an industry creating a major societal-level (e.g., the economy) crisis was new. Wall Street money as electoral campaign contributions doubtless played a role in the refusal of Congress and the U.S. president to break up the big banks, but the larger question of what to do when a business or industry creates a societal crisis rather than localized typical problems had not been considered in its own right.
To be sure, a government can enable a company to create a societal crisis. Take, for example, the public-health crisis during the coronavirus pandemic that began in 2020. In Phoenix, Arizona, the regional transit authority and the two subcontractor companies ignored local law requiring that masks be worn on the buses and light-rail. A significant proportion of bus drivers went maskless and/or allowed passengers to ride without wearing masks even when federal law required masks even of operators behind a plexiglass shield. A representative of TransDev, one of the subcontracting companies, said that the law didn’t matter because of the company’s policy, which permitted masks and presumably overrules federal regulations. A representative of Metro Valley, the regional authority, refused to enforce the federal regulation on the light rail as well as against the willful bus drivers (and passengers). A transit supervisor on the police force told me that the chief of police had told police employees not to enforce the federal regulation even though, according to the FBI, local law enforcement is regularly relied on to enforce federal law. “They are federal; we are state,” the police supervisor told me. He also told me that the governor had told the chief not to enforce the federal regulation. That federal money goes into the mass transit system in the Phoenix metropolitan area is apparently no reason to follow federal law on mass transit. One police employee told me that “bus drivers are state employees (which is false) so they are not bound by federal regulations. A second police patrol supervisor had told me that the only real law in Arizona is that which “goes through the state legislature.” All three men were not only sure that they could not be wrong, but were extremely rude and dismissive towards me. I concluded that Arizona is in need of federal oversight.
At the company level, TransDev has been knowingly misleading its bus drivers into thinking that they don’t have to wear a mask and that passengers need not either—in spite of the company’s own signs, “Per federal law, masks are required on the buses.” A representative from Metro Valley, the regional authority, told me to ignore the signs. This mentality within at least two organizations is itself a problem. In fact, with Arizona having the highest infection rate in the U.S. on at least November 3, 2021, the mentality and the resulting patchwork of masks on the local buses and light rail can be said to be a significant cause of the ongoing pandemic locally. At the very least, the positive correlation is troubling, though conveniently not to the governor, chief of police, regional transit authority, or TransDev company.  The brazenness alone is enough for informed minds to question the legitimacy of at least the local police department (which was being investigated by the FBI for having intimidated and stopped peaceful political protesters) and the TransDev company. The matter of the higher officials, including the governor, the mayor of Phoenix, and the city manager, is of course more political. I had spoken with the mayor’s office manager and had sent an email to the manager’s office (my request to speak with a managerial-level staffer resulted in a call from an intern). Besides the sheer willfulness, lack of respect for federal law, and ignorance all around, the culpability of a company (TransDev) in giving the ok for bus drivers and passengers to go maskless, and another company (Allied Security, backed up by Metro Valley) to allow security employees to go maskless and allow passengers to go maskless on the light rail when the state ranks highest in the pandemic-danger in the U.S. suggests that companies can create or severely worsen a crisis with impunity both within the companies themselves and in a corrupt and ignorant political culture. The question of legitimacy is in this case broader than just for a few companies.
Company managements are not always above lying to the public. The case of Boeing involves a management lying to its pilots, customers, and the public, resulting in preventable deaths, a significant decrease in the company’s reputational capital, and arguably even a societal-level crisis at an early stage regarding aviation. The company installed new software that could be influence by a sensor that could malfunction. Saving the company the cost of training the pilots, the company’s management did not inform those employees of the addition. The ethical dimension is pretty clear (consider Kant’s dicta about lying). What is less clear is the matter of a company being of such size in a market and the latter being so salient in society that the company can unilaterally cause a crisis at the societal level. Announcing a program in corporate social responsibility, such that helps children to keep up in school, wouldn’t suffice; the harm in a societal crisis is so much greater than are the societal problems to which CSR is geared. At the very least, the board and upper management could have been replaced by a law; the company’s response was to replace the CEO with the “Plan B” insider on the board. That is, playing a significant role in causing a societal crisis could justify the intervention of a government, rather than leaving it up to a company’s shareholders. Where the government is itself corrupt, such as in Arizona, the needed intervention can come from a federal government (e.g., U.S. and E.U.) or even other countries against both the government and the particular company involved. Corporate social responsibility and business ethics are geared to a lesser scale of harm. Causing a societal or global crisis does not reduce to unethical business and is not redressed by corporate social responsibility. Instead, society has more legitimacy to intervene and in a more drastic way, given the nature of a crisis.

On the Weakening of the Rule of Law in the United States

When law enforcement (i.e., police) conveniently exclude themselves from obeying law, the contradiction should, I submit, be sufficient for the perpetrators to be fired. It is not enough for their boss to chastise or even suspend the hypocrites, for they are inherently unfit for law enforcement, and should instead be treated as actual or potential criminals. What about when such a sordid mentality comes to proliferate through a police department, especially if it lies beyond the competence of a city government to hold even such a department accountable? What if a local political “law and order” culture tacitly exempts police and goes on to look the other way as the latter render the locality into a police state? I contend that the Phoenix metropolitan area, including the suburbs surrounding Phoenix itself, furnishes us with a case in point.

In a subway station in New York City in October, 2021, two cops shoved a passenger out of the station because he had asked them why they were not wearing masks, which federal law at the time required be worn on subways, light rail, street cars, buses, and indoor subway stations. The alpha male policeman lied in declaring to the passenger that he was “a disturbance,” and subsequently shouted. Sounds like a bully to me. Not exactly a fitting persona for people who can legally kill others, yet how many police departments willow out such misfits?

Whereas the bully component can be dramatic enough to grab headlines in the news, the presumptuous decision made by police employees—and this is what “officers” really are—that the law does not apply to them is noxious in its arrogance. As NYC mayor de Blasio said after viewing the video of the subway incident, “if you’re going to be in law enforcement, you actually have to participate in following the law.”[1] The mayor noted that the police had been given the mask-requirement instructions “a thousand times.” It was not as if the two police employees did not know that they were breaking the rule—and violating a federal regulation!—when they aggressively turned on the passenger who was motivated to see that the law was enforced. Janno Lieber, CEO of the MTA (the metro transit authority) put it well in saying, “I don’t want to see [passengers] being pushed out of the system by people who are not complying with the rules that the federal government sets. Come on, enough.”[2] 

Unfortunately, “Come on, enough” could be said of the Phoenix (Arizona) police department, which the U.S. Justice Department had found guilty of lying to the department about having denied police-accountability protesters their constitutional right of political protest. To knowingly intimidate protesters with excessive shows of guns, police employees and vehicles, and low-flying helicopters reveals an immaturity and lack of judgment on proportionality that de facto de-legitimate a police department even if such qualities are salient in the local culture.

In Phoenix, self-exemption from having to obey federal law had become overwhelmingly salient in the local culture, given the proportion of light-rail and bus passengers who did not wear masks—or wore them only covering their respective chins! Even a significant number of bus drivers had self-exempted themselves from the signs on the buses: “As Per Federal Law, Masks Must be Worn on the Bus.” Calling the mass transit authority (Metro Valley) to report some of the drivers who were disobeying company policy and violating federal law, I was stunned to hear, “Our drivers don’t have to wear masks. Don’t pay attention to the signs on the buses.” A manager of TransDev, one of the bus-operations sub-contractor, left a voicemail informing me that even though masks were required by federal law, the company had no such policy.” Interesting. Company policy trumps federal law. Welcome to Arizona.

In October, 2021, with passengers passing by to pay, this bus driver was violating federal law by refusing to wear a mask. I reminded her that masks are required on city buses. After I took my seat, she made a general announcement that if any (paying) customer on the bus feels unsafe, he can get off and catch the next bus. Notice that the driver had lowered the plexiglass "window" pane and thus was being unsafe (and thus inconsiderate). Her passive aggression in her hostile announcement added insult to injury even though she felt convinced that she was entitled to break federal law. This sense of entitlement backed up by passive (and active) aggression is salient in the local culture. I called in a complaint to the regional transit authority (Metro Valley) against that driver. 

A few weeks later, I witnessed the same driver again not wearing a mask. At least she had the plexiglass window pane up, though the federal regulation requires masks be worn by operators even behind plexiglass. I had heard back from TransDev, a subcontractor bus-operating company, telling me on my voicemail that the company policy allows drivers to go maskless, even in spite of the federal regulation. Metro Valley customer service had a week earlier informed me similarly that passengers can board the buses even though the company's signs on the buses forbit it as "per federal law." Such entitlement! Such willfulness! Such passive aggression! Such ignorance! A company policy does not outweigh a federal law or regulation. 

Seeing a managerial-level Phoenix policeman walking from his "Supervisor" car to the police substation on Central Ave near Arizona State University’s downtown Phoenix campus, I told him that I had encountered: bus drivers (and light rail security guards) refusing to wear masks and even allowing passengers to ride without wearing masks. I added that the regional transit authority and one of its sub-contractors arrogantly and ignorantly declaring that such passengers can ride and bus drivers need not wear masks.

To my profound, jaw-dropping astonishment, the police patrol manager informed me that “the only real law is Arizona law,” and my governor told us that we don’t have to follow that federal mandate.” Every law and regulation mandates, I said to correct for the man’s ignorant belief that a mandate is optional and does not have the force of law. I pointed out that state governments cannot constitutionally nullify federal law; South Carolina had learned this lesson in 1832. I also cited the Supremacy Clause of the U.S. Constitution. “Where did you learn that?” the policeman asked, “At Yale?” I had told him that I had studied political theory (as well as theology) at Yale. The man’s disdain for higher education was just as salient as was his sordid ignorance, and of course he presumed that he could not be wrong. Unfortunately, the local workforce in general was saturated by unbelievable ignorance that would presume itself to be infallible and lash out as if in getting even.

I reported my conversation as well as the messages from the regional transit authority and its TransDev subcontractor to the office manager of the Phoenix mayor’s office. I even called the city manager’s office and asked for a managerial level employee to return my call. Instead, a misleading intern called me. Meanwhile, nothing changed in the mass transit system. Given the decadence in the local culture, I would have been surprised had anything changed. I was most concerned that the city government would not pounce on such outrageous statements by a police manager concerning federal law. Such utter corruption and an inert local government could produce a toxic, perfect storm beyond the reach of the U.S. Justice Department to counter, for the local police department and regional transit authority (and its two operations sub-contractors) had become infused with the local culture. 

Specifically, I am referring here to the sense of entitlement that laws can be ignored or simply dismissed if they are inconvenient, and the defense mechanism of hostility in the face of having the bloated, self-serving sense of entitlement questioned or contradicted outright. For instance, I called the police non-emergency number in 2021 to report loud bass from cars at a self-serve carwash near where I was living at the time. The offender was still present when the police arrived. To my utter shock, one of the two patrol police employees claimed that no law prohibits loud noise in a residential neighborhood. "The business owner has posted signs--right over there--citing the Arizona statues and the local ordinance number (2-22). Would you take a look?," I countered in a calm voice that belied my real objection to his ignorance. "No, I won't," he objected like a child. So the man-child would not even go to the offending pick-up truck to speak with the young men. While I was waiting for the business owner to call me back, the man-child slowly followed me as if I were a suspect rather than witness reporting an ongoing, almost daily crime that the local police had failed utterly to stamp out. The man-child's sense of entitlement was evident not only in his lying about the law, but also his abject refusal to drive or walk over to one of the signs. He assumed himself infallibly to be on solid ground, from which he then tried to intimidate me (hostility). Getting back at me for what? What sort of sordid mentality invents retribution out of thin air? A week after I had reported the man-child's behavior to his department, I received a call from a patrol supervisor, who was intent on arguing with me by insisting that the sign read "No Trespassing." "I don't doubt that such a sign exists there, but that's not the signs that I was referring to when I said that the signs read 'No loud noise, no revving engines, ...' and at the laws are cited at the bottoms of the signs--one posted at each post." The woman hung up on me. There would be no accountability within that woefully stubborn and corrupt police department, which had lied to the FBI concerning another matter: intimidating protestors who were protesting against police brutality in 2020.  A dysfunctional culture, whether of a locality or an organization, is extremely difficult to cure. 

---

[1] Liam Reilly, “NYC Mayor ‘Troubled’ by Video Showing Unmasked Officers Forcibly Removing Masked Subway Commuter,” CNN.com (October 21, 2021).
[2] Ibid.

Arizona’s Dysfunctional Business and Governmental Culture Creates a Crisis in the Coronavirus Pandemic

On January 15, 2021, the New York Times reported that Arizona had the highest 7-day daily average per capita of deaths and new cases of the new coronavirus, covid-19.[1] On one day, Arizona had 11,324 new cases.[2] “We’re the hottest spot in the U.S. and among the hottest spots in the entire world,” said Keith Frey, the chief medical officer for Dignity Health’s Arizona division.[3] “If we don’t slow this down over the course of the next days and weeks, then we will be fully into that crisis zone,” he added.[4] It would be a crisis of the state’s own making, and thus preventable but for the local culture at least in the Phoenix metro area. In other words, the crisis did not happen to Arizona; rather, the crisis was in large part homemade, and can thus be used as a window into a dysfunctional culture in the United States.

In spite of county and municipal laws and company policies on wearing masks in stores and on public transportation (buses and the light rail), many stores and the mass-transit company forbid employees from even asking incoming customers to wear a mask (or wear one correctly over the nose and mouth). Grocery stores were particularly problematic, with even their own employees walking around with impunity without masks on (properly). “We don’t enforce that requirement,” a grocery-store director told me. How, then, can the policy be considered to be a requirement? “It just is,” a store manager told me. That wearing masks was not only a company requirement, but also a city and county law was of no interest to the manager. “We don’t enforce the law,” he quipped. “But you are violating it by letting people in who are not wearing masks,” I retorted. This was not his concern.

The Phoenix metropolitan mass-transit company, and thus its two subcontracted bus-operating companies, also had a policy forbidding employees from enforcing the company’s own requirement and the local law. Some bus drivers would even not wear a mask or wear one without covering their noses and mouths! Some light-rail security employees subcontracted by the mass-transit company wore their masks over their chins too, as did a significant proportion of the rail passengers. Some security employees asked passengers to wear their masks correctly, while most of those employees did not. The notion that masks were required on the trains was a farce, and yet notwithstanding this, the company’s representatives had no problem defying logic itself by insisting that masks were required.  It was as if the company policy and the county law mandating masks on public transportation simply did not exist, and yet they did. “It’s not really a law,” a customer-service employee told me. Why? Because the county doesn’t have a legislature and only one of them can pass laws. The county board was apparently extra-governmental in nature.

Both retail and the mass transit were exploiting an exception, that of medical exceptions, to invalidate the rule. Incredibly, the stores and mass-transit company used this exception to justify refusing even to ask customers and passengers, respectively, to cover the nose and mouth area with an existing mask. People with medical conditions exempting them from wearing masks would not have masks on. The absurdity of allowing an exception (e.g., a medical condition) to condemn a requirement was permitted in the dysfunctional culture and amid a lack of accountability by regulators.

The problem was exacerbated by the political extremism that was salient in the state. A steadfast refusal to obey the law on wearing masks had a significant role in the number of people not wearing masks in stores and on public transportation. Such people could easily exploit the managerial incompetence both in retail and mass transit. It does not take long to realize that an intentionally-unenforced requirement is not a requirement, even if this point is not grasped by company managers. Yet the managerial dysfunction enabled this condition to go on for almost a year as of January, 2021. In such a political culture wherein a significant proportion of residents believe they are justified in breaking the law and ignoring company policies, it can be reckoned as inexcusable for companies to follow the invalid logic that the existence of an exception invalidates a rule (or requirement). In other words, it is negligence pure and simple. The lack of accountability, which was well-ensconced in the culture within companies as well as between businesses and local and state government, enabled the corruption that gave the virus the upper hand. It was as if the locals could not help themselves.

Moreover, the local culture wherein political extremism was salient allowed for the erroneous belief that the public good is simply the aggregate of individual wills. Where enough wills decide not to wear masks indoors in public and on public transit, the aggregate public good falls short of being above the ability of the virus to spread. The public good as merely the aggregate of individual wills thus is not good enough; it falls short of what the public good actually is (e.g., being greater than the ability of the virus to spread). The understatement of the public good can be understood too as the belief that the general will (e.g., Rousseau) is reducible to the aggregation of private wills.

The good of the whole, I submit, is more than the sum of the individual parts because some parts may even detract from the public good and thus understate it if it is taken to be merely the aggregation of individual wills. That the market value of a product is determined by the aggregate supply and demand does not mean that the public good is likewise determined. For one thing, the market value of a product is in a closed system (the aggregate supply and demand) whereas the public good is open-ended. In other words, the public good can be higher than the aggregate of the individual wills would have it because enough private-benefit-only wills can detract appreciably from what is the good of the whole. If enough people refuse to wear masks indoors in public places, and stores and even governments look the other way, the result is significantly below the good of the whole, which in this case is stopping the coronavirus. By its self-inflicted crisis, Arizona was functioning well below its own good, and a highly dysfunctional local mentality is to blame.

---

1. Jordan Allen et al, “Coronavirus in the U.S.: Latest Map and Case Count,” The New York Times, January 15, 2021.

2. Alicia Caldwell and Ian Lovett, “Arizona Is America’s Covid-19 Hot Spot and on the Brink of Crisis,” The Wall Street Journal, January 15, 2021.

3. Ibid.

4. Ibid.

Ethical Human Resources Management

Ethics applied to human resource management is typically thought to boil down to treating subordinates well. Kant’s categorical imperative, treat other rational beings not just as means, but also as ends in themselves, applies to this sense of ethical HR management. Specifically, human beings are not only cogs in a machine; they have lives outside of work that should not be expected to reduce to serving the interests of the employer. Another side of HR management also exists, however, that concerns the handling of unethical employees. Such handling can be ethical or unethical.

Front-line employees who deal with customers whether in person or at a call center are especially subject to customer complaints. The choices that such employees make on how to deal with customer complaints regarding themselves can be ethical or unethical. For instance, an employee who resists a customer’s request to speak to the employee’s supervisor acts unethically by exploiting the conflict of interest. The conflict lies in the employee putting his or her own vocational interest above the interests of the customer and even the company. Gate-keeping refers to an employee’s efforts in getting the customer to say why he or she wants to speak with a manager so if the reason reflects badly on the employee, he or she can lie about a supervisor being available or insist that the customer speak only to the employee about the issue. Such an employee is operating at a primitive level—that of self-preservation—rather than as a duty-bound agent of a principal (e.g., a company).

I contend that a company’s management that does not have adequate safeguards against such an exploitation of a conflict of interest operates unethically with respect to its human resources. Should a customer inform a supervisor of a specific employee who is exploiting the conflict of interest and yet the supervisor does not set negative consequences for the employee and notify middle-management that the company’s safeguards against such exploitation are not sufficient acts unethically too. Safeguards are possible beyond relying on individual customer complaints. The latter strategy is flawed because the complaints that actually reach a supervisor are reduced in conditions in which employees can get away with exploiting the conflict of interest. Put another way, a company is unethical in relying on individual complaints to willow out problematic employees as a safeguard because it is hampered by the exploitation itself. Interestingly, whereas exploitation of employees is a common refrain, an employee’s exploitation of customers is less commonly known.

Stronger safeguards are ethical where their efficacy cannot be compromised by an employee’s exploitation of customers. Concerning phone calls, for example, the greeting could include the following: “At any time while speaking with a representative of the company, you can press 5 should you like to report a problem you are having with the representative.” The call could go to a designated manager who acts as a safeguard. In a store, a designated desk could be identified as the place where customers can go if they have had a problem with an employee. Unlike a typically customer-service desk, the person taking the complaints should hold a rank higher than that of the entry-level employees. Unfortunately, entry-level employees may tend to cover for each other, and thus extend the conflict of interest rather than curtail it.

Internal audit departments could definitely add assessing weak as well as presumably strong safeguards. Calls to respective customer-service departments could be made, and verification could be applied not only to those calls, but also on real complaints. Problems may be difficult to detect. As a case in point, the customer service process used by the regional transit authority in Phoenix, Arizona begins with an employee in Metro Valley’s customer-service department. Complaints on bus drivers are sent to their respective supervisors, yet they are known to cover for their respective drivers rather than provide accountability. Also, drivers circumventing company policies, including those regarding the coronavirus pandemic, has also been a major problem. Bad driving, such as braking too hard, and, relatedly, driving fast to accrue enough time to take smoking breaks, have also been endemic and beyond the reach the process of accountability. Aggravating the matter of accountability, the driver-supervisors work for the sub-contracted bus-operating companies; at least one of which dismissed videos of bad braking in 2018. In short, the customer-service department’s process of handling complaints and feedback is grossly inadequate, given the behavior of enough drivers and their supervisors. An audit would ideally uncover the corruption and come up with a process that takes the problematic drivers and supervisors (i.e., the dysfunctional culture) into account. Accountability is indeed difficult in such organizations in which employees regularly flaunt company policies and the immediate supervisors enable such behavior by refusing to enforce the policies even where unsafe driving and passenger health are concerned.