Managerial Capitalism: Being and Becoming

At first glance, Friedrich Nietzsche’s pro-capitalist stance on private property and the process of accumulating profit (or wealth) may seem to extend a vote of confidence to the business manager as a type. After all, managers manage the private property of stockholders (which can include themselves) with a fiduciary duty to do so to increase shareholder value by maximizing profit. The notion of profit-seeking by maximizing revenue and minimizing cost is arguably too simplistic. Squeezing a workforce too much, for example, can backfire in the long term. Nietzsche was concerned about such a thing happening even though he claims that the vast majority of laborers must be kept to subsistence wages for culture to be possible. He castigates petty, short-sighted managers who do not look out for the spiritual and economic welfare of workers, and yet holds that those workers must be slavish in the sense of being exploited by employers so culture can emerge and be sustained by the rich. To be for such exploitation and yet against petty cost-cutting managers renders Nietzsche’s socioeconomic philosophy interesting as well as useful in terms of keeping a capitalist economy from being reduced to the mentality of its bottom-feeder producers. I first discuss the matter of exploitation and then turn to how Nietzsche addresses his wider socio-economic philosophy more specifically to human-resource management. Within the wider subject-heading of exploitation, very different approaches, or mentalities, to human resource management can be discerned. In dichotomous terms, there can be said to be a pathos of distance between enlightened self-interest and selfish, short-sighted greed.

Nietzsche claims that capital accumulation and economic inequality are necessary for adequate investment in culture, such that not everyone must be oriented to satisfying basic needs. Moreover, private property and accumulating money serve a more fundamental function in terms of human being and becoming, the latter being construed in terms of, growing. Nietzsche’s use of this term can be thought of in terms of Aristotle’s appropriation from the natural world for his philosophy.

It has seemed to me in life that some people may have a static orientation, whereas other people may be inherently oriented to change, as in self-development. The static orientation is based on being, whereas the default of dynamism can be said to be based on valuing becoming. It may be that people wetted to a static state of being feel threatened psychologically by change-oriented people because the latter typically want the former to work on themselves too. In a dysfunctional family in which most of the people value stasis, for example, the person who values development may ironically be scapegoated precisely because any change is rejected, even that which would make the family healthy. Translated into Nietzsche’s socioeconomic philosophy, possessing assets, or private property, applies to a person’s static nature, whereas accumulating wealth means that a person is dynamic—changing.

To Nietzsche, capital accumulations by titans, and those by wealthy people more generally, have permitted the advent of culture in terms of there being adequate investments in it—something that we moderns may take for granted even though much of human (pre) history our species was oriented to meeting survival needs. Regarding a society having some individuals rich enough to develop a cultural scene, Nietzsche insists that what Marx calls the surplus value of labor of the vast majority of workers must be transferred to the few—the capitalists—so they have enough money to invest in culture. A city benefits even though most laborers work for subsistence wages. Nietzsche relates capitalist enterprise to culture as follows:

“In order for there to be a broad, deep, fertile soil for the development of art, the overwhelming majority has to be slavishly subjected to life’s necessity in the service of the minority, beyond the measure that is necessary for the individual. At their expense, through their extra work, that privileged class is to be removed from the struggle for existence, in order to produce and satisfy a new world of necessities. Accordingly, we must learn to identify as a cruel-sounding truth the fact that slavery belongs to the essence of culture. . . . The misery of men living a life of toil has to be increased to make the production of the world of art possible for a small number of Olympic men.”[1]

Slavery here is in the sense that the laborers are held to such a minimum monetary compensation that they cannot free themselves from working so their basic survival needs are met. For the privileged class—the capitalists—to be removed from the struggle for existence is a late-arriving novelty for our species, and thus the advent of culture can be construed as a luxury rather than as an intrinsic aspect or manifestation of human existence. Put another way, even though the dominance of the capitalists over labor, which I submit is a better description than is the word slavery, “belongs to the essence of culture,” culture does not belong to the essence of our species. So even though culture raises the entire species from being oriented to satisfying subsistence needs, the scaffolding that is constructed to reach the rarified air can be viewed as artificial.

Neither is the exploitation that is necessary for culture natural. Landa argues that the relevance of Nietzsche for capitalism lies precisely in slavish exploitation. Even though Nietzsche claims to have “stood far above any strictly material concerns, the basic fact cannot be ignored that, if his ‘aesthetics’ necessitate slavery, . . . if the production of ‘culture’ means the ruthless material subjugation of the vast majority of people to the benefit of an elite, then a socioeconomic theory of exploitation is inscribed into the very core of his aesthetic theory of noble culture. And it precisely here, I argue, that Nietzsche’s pertinence for capitalism lies, in the dreary fact of exploitation . . .”[2] Although the economic elite undoubtedly benefit, however, it is the species that benefits from culture. Put in terms of socioeconomics, a city benefits by having some buildings devoted to culture rather than to the means of production. Although this point renders the exploitation somewhat better morally, Nietzsche’s criticism of modern morality means that he rejects the normative objection that economic exploitation is unethical. Considering that the benefits of accumulated wealth for culture benefit not just the rich and the exploitation (i.e., economic “slavery”) is spared a damning ethical verdict, it is not difficult to see why Nietzsche would be in favor of culture. Of course, apart from Nietzsche, the holding of the vast majority of a workforce to subsistence wages while an economic elite gets rich off the transferred surplus value of labor is ripe for ethical castigation. Even if we reject Nietzsche’s socioeconomic account of culture as a result, Nietzsche presents another rationale for being wealthy—one that is existential in nature.[3]

Private property and accumulating wealth correspond to being and becoming, respectively. As such, Private property and capital accumulation are “firmly established by Nietzsche as representing the rudiments of life itself.”[4] Nietzsche claims that “those who have possessions are of one mind on one article of faith: ‘one must possess something in order to be something.’”[5] Does this mean that the subsistence-limited worker bees do not exist? Surely not. Perhaps Nietzsche means to count as something rather than to be something. This interpretation is in line with the businessman’s value-set wherein to count as someone is a matter of how much one possesses (i.e., how wealthy one is).

The capitalists would perhaps be less familiar with Nietzsche’s rationale for the act of accumulating possessions, including money: “But this is the oldest and healthiest of all instincts: I should add, ‘one must want to have more than one has in order to become more.’ For this is the doctrine preached by life itself to all that has life: the morality of development. To have and to want to have more—growth, in one word—that is life itself.”[6] Here, becoming is put in terms of growth as a natural process of life.[7] The will to power is for Nietzsche the will to life, and strength is the self-confident embrace of the fullness of life in overcoming obstacles in order to feel the pleasure of power. According to Landa, Nietzsche claims that to “live truly and properly is therefore to Exploit, Possess and Accumulate . . . Under this light, the will to power reveals itself as the metaphysical extension of the will to money.”[8] But do counting as something in virtue of having material possessions and growing as a plant does count as metaphysical? Moreover, what use did Nietzsche have for speculative metaphysics? Rather than being grounded in existentialism, Nietzsche’s view of being and becoming may bear a family resemblance to Heidegger’s claim that a person as a dasein, or one that is, comes to realize oneself hammering in an open field; only in action does a person realize oneself as one is as a that (i.e., an entity). The action to which Nietzsche refers is only open to the capitalist, however, in accumulating wealth, for the worker bees are enslaved to meeting their subsistence needs and thus are cut off from becoming in the sense of growing.

Lest it be concluded that Nietzsche’s view favors business managers, including executives, rather than stockholders who are oriented to the long-term value of their stock, Nietzsche spanks down the typical managerial primacy of immediate profit: “No doubt, the wide-ranging, multi-faceted perspective of the philosopher, as compared with the narrow view of the standard market-apologist intent on immediate gains, endowed the former a much more flexible class position. . . . Since the preservation of the class hierarchy and the prevention of a comprehensive socialist alternative was the foundation of Nietzsche’s social vision, he was at times perfectly willing to criticize naked exploitation of labor when that meant dangerously exacerbating class enmity to the point of imperiling the overall stability of the system. As in the following example: ‘What we now refer to as justice, is from this point of view a highly refined usefulness, which does not take into consideration only the present moment and exploits the opportunity, but rather reflects with responsibility on the lasting consequences, therefore taking care of the well-being of the worker as well, of his physical and spiritual satisfaction, in order that he and his descendants will continue to work for our descendants, and will be available for a longer period of time than a single individual’s life. The exploitation of the worker was, as one now understands, a stupidity, a ruthless enterprise at the cost of the future, which endangered society. Now we have before us almost a war, and the price for achieving peace, for sealing contracts and wining trust, will at any rate be very high, since the foolishness of the exploiters was great and long-lasting.’”[9] A company’s management that can be characterized by the short-sighted, petty greed of its managers is sub-optimal from the standpoint of maximizing stockholder wealth in the long-term, and thus is not in line with being and becoming. Even in terms of the wealth of non-stockholder executives, cutting labor benefits that are already trivial so as to boost next quarter’s bonus detracts from being able to retain workers whose efficiency can “grow” the company, and whose sons and daughters may decide to work for the company. In short, to the extent that the manager as a type cannot master (i.e., overcome) the instinctual urge of greed manifesting as short-sighted, selfish pettiness, Nietzsche’s pro-capitalist philosophy is not in favor of managers of such a pathetic mentality of weakness. The philosopher’s (amoral) approbation is reserved for managers who apply enlightened self-interest to management of stockholder wealth concentrated as a company by looking after non-supervisory employees in order that they will (and their offspring, if hired) continue to produce such that stockholder wealth can grow like a tomato plant on a vine during a warm, wet summer.

It is ironic that it is a philosopher who “chides economic liberalism on strictly pragmatic grounds and promotes, against the irresponsible zeal to maximize profits at the immediate present, the contraceptive measure of a ‘highly refined usefulness’ whose purpose is to ensure that the very principle of profit will survive on an enduring basis. To the extent that the ruthless practices of economic liberalism, by over-exploiting the worker, become themselves a potentially destabilizing factor jeopardizing the future, Nietzsche is willing to show his teeth to the masters as well, and recommend what one commentator readily celebrated as ‘an enlightened labour policy.’”[10] Nietzsche’s esteem for the will to money as possessing and accumulating goes not include the greedy zeal to maximize profits without adequate attention being placed on resisting expedient measures that are oriented to temporarily boosting quarterly profits and the stock price.

Beyond taking away employee perks such as complimentary gym memberships even though exercise can elongate how long an experienced employee can work, managers can detract from the long-term monetary value of a company (and stockholder wealth) by being petty with customers. When grocery-store companies decided to charge customers for paper bags, customers rightly perceived the managers as petty. When petty managers of airlines figured out that they could boost revenue by charging customers for seats with extra leg-room and for checked luggage—even applying a weight-limit to each suitcase—the business judgment was that any business lost in the long-run from customers feeling “nickeled and dimed” by a greedy management would be made up for by the more immediate revenue gained from the fees. An example of a viable substitute in the long-term in North America could be high-speed trains.

In contradistinction to banal, incrementalist managers, Nietzsche’s esteem for self-confident strength, which says in terms of its natural rather than contrived, self-interested generosity, what are the parasites to me? A person having an overflowing surplus of power (and wealth) and is oriented to life can be contrasted with the new bird of prey—the weak who seek to dominate by petty cruelty. Whereas the self-confident, strong business titan is oriented to the pleasure that is obtainable from a large, successful business deal, the weak manager greedily clutches at cutting costs budget-item by budget-item. Whereas courageous titans can be likened to the Greco-Roman conquerors whose nature it was to gain land and captured slaves, petty, control-obsessed managers can be likened to ascetic priests whose weak nature it is to inflict “Thou Shalt Not!” as a weapon to beguile the self-confident strong.

Managers who market themselves as leaders rather than managers while actually micro-managing subordinates are nonetheless innately weak rather than strong. The “leadership versus management” dichotomy itself may be a guise wherein petty managers seek to rebrand banal management as something that is enlightened in terms of self-interest. To be sure, Nietzsche points to the possibility of such self-interest being adopted by managers in order to meet the spiritual and (basic) material needs of workers so the best of them do not leave. Indeed, such economic self-interest should extend to take into account generations of workers.

Therefore, even though Nietzsche’s philosophy can be regarded as pro-capitalist because private property and accumulating wealth enable a sense of being and becoming, respectively, it cannot be said that the philosophy lauds the business manager as a type. Rather, it depends on the underlying mentality of a particular manager and even of a company’s management. Organizational culture can play a large role in forming and maintaining managerial values, norms, and practices. The culture of Enron was dramatically different than that of Ben and Jerry’s, for example. Just because Nietzsche’s philosophy can be reckoned as pro-capitalist does not mean that he would support any management. In fact, capitalism itself need not be defined in praxis by its lowest common denominator. Nietzsche’s philosophy can be utilized to keep that from happening, or to raise an economy based on private property and the market-mechanism above the squalid mentality of its bottom-feeder producers.

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1. Friedrich Nietzsche, “The Greek State,” in On the Genealogy of Morality, trans. Carol Diethe (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), pp. 178-79.
2. Ishay Landa, The Overman in the Marketplace: Nietzschean Heroism in Popular Culture (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2007), p. 28.
3. This is not to say that Nietzsche was an existentialist. The Leibniz scholar, Patrick Riley, once asked me whether I thought Nietzsche’s philosophy falls under existentialism; he didn’t think so either. Neither is the philosophy nihilist; Nietzsche asks, “what is nihilism today if it is not” being “weary of man.” Friedrich Nietzsche, On the Genealogy of Morals, in Basic Writings of Nietzsche, trans. Walter Kaufmann (New York: The Modern Library1968), p. 480.
4. Ishay Landa, The Overman in the Marketplace: Nietzschean Heroism in Popular Culture (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2007), p. 28.
5. Friedrich Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil, trans. Marion Fabor (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998), p. 77.
6. Friedrich Nietzsche, The Will to Power, trans. Walter Kaufmann and R. J. Hollingdale (New York: Vintage Books, 1968), p.  77.
7. Here Nietzsche is in line with Aristotle.
8. Ishay Landa, The Overman in the Marketplace: Nietzschean Heroism in Popular Culture (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2007), p. 29.
9. Ishay Landa, The Overman in the Marketplace: Nietzschean Heroism in Popular Culture (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2007), p. 30. Translating from Friedrich Nietzsche, Samtliche Werke: Kritische Studienausgabe in 15 Einzelbanden (Herausgegeben von Giorgio Colli und Mazzino Montinari, Berlin/New York: Walter de Gruyter, 1988), Vol. 2, pp. 681-82.
10. Ishay Landa, The Overman in the Marketplace: Nietzschean Heroism in Popular Culture (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2007), p. 31. Landa quotes from Keith Ansell-Pearson, An Introduction to Nietzsche as Political Thinker—The Perfect Nihilist (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), p. 91.

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. 

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[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.

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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.

Coronavirus Reveals Dysfunctional Culture in Arizona

In mid-October, 2020, when the coronavirus was again peaking in E.U. states such as France and Germany and U.S. states such as Wisconsin and New Mexico, public health experts were worried about how the upcoming flu season would interact with the new virus, especially as people gather more indoors when outside temperatures turn colder. On October 15, 2020, for instance, seven U.S. states saw record numbers of hospitalizations, according to the Covid Tracking Project, and fourteen states set records for their seven-day averages of new daily cases, according to Johns Hopkins University.[1] France and Germany had already instituted nightly curfews. On October 16, Tier 2 Restrictions went into effect in London, which include urging people to avoid public transportation. Because physical distancing is not always possible on buses, subways, and light rail, universal mask wearing was crucial. According to IHME projections at the time, universal mask wearing in general “could save the lives of more than 70,000 Americans in the next three and a half months.”[2] With New Mexico’s chief executive referring to the coronavirus situation as “the most serious emergency that New Mexico has ever faced” on October 14, it was very troubling that Arizona, which borders New Mexico, had failed to enforce laws requiring masks on public transportation. This failure is extraordinary because of the mentality behind it.
On June 19, 2020, Maricopa County, which includes the Phoenix metropolitan area, had announced mask regulations approved by the Board of Supervisors. One of the regulations reads, “All riders and operators on public transportation must wear a mask.”[3] This bore directly on the light rail and buses, which Metro Valley, the transportation authority, either ran directly or through subcontracted operating companies and Allied Security. With enforcement of the new regulation being “the responsibility of law enforcement,”[4] Metro Valley announced that it would not use its employees and subcontracted security guards to enforce the regulation. In allowing passengers to board the buses and light rail without wearing masks, Metro Valley was actually breaking the law even during the “second wave” of the virus in June, 2020. In fact, it was not uncommon to see bus drivers and security guards either not wearing masks or wearing them around their chins rather than on their mouths and noses. It was especially common to see the riders wear masks covering only the chin.
Metro Valley’s excuse for not enforcing the “requirement,” which meant allowing passengers (and employees) to be on mass transit without wearing masks even though the regulation forbid it, was that some passengers (and employees) could not wear masks due to medical conditions like asthma. Allowing this exception to break the rule overall bespoke ignorance, stinginess, and laziness. Because at risk riders could have been accommodated with the modest requirement of having their respective physicians fill out a medical form that in turn would be necessary to obtain a special medical transit ID. Medical IDs were already issued to the disabled who had a medical provider fill out Metro Valley’s medical form. The transit authority did not have to emasculate the regulation and thus the public health on account of an exception. Talking to Metro Valley supervisors, I was struck by the near obsession on the exception to the extent that I could detect no awareness of making a requirement anything but, and in so doing, violating the regulation. Small minds should not rule large companies, for the consequent harm to the public can be large.
I was thrice flabbergasted when I listened on my phone to Metro Valley customer-service employees insist that masks were required on buses and light rail and that passengers could ride without masks was not incompatible with the requirement! Declarations by ignorance that cannot be wrong have a bad odor. Such ignorance has no legitimate basis in standing on stilts above customers (or anyone). When I pointed out the obvious point that allowing maskless riders on buses and trains means that masks are not required, the standard reply was actually corrective. “Masks are required. Riders will not be turned away for not wearing masks.” How can a mind possibly hold those two thoughts together as if they were consistent? Perhaps willful ignorance enjoys being corrective because of the little bit of power that can be enjoyed—so starved for the pleasure from power is the weak bird of prey, according to Friedrich Nietzsche.
Unfortunately, neither the county sheriff’s office nor the Phoenix police (nor that of at least one suburb) felt the need to enforce the county and various city laws on masks. “You need to call Metro Valley on that,” I was told as I sought comment. Even if Metro Valley had a policy of enforcing rather than breaking the regulation (and city laws) mandating masks on public transit, it was still the responsibility of law enforcement (i.e., not a transit company) to see that the regulation (and laws) are enforced. For law-enforcement agencies of municipal governments to rely on company policies conflates governmental law with organizational policies. The lack of accountability was staggering even as the coronavirus remained as a viable threat to the public health.
The political and educational cultures in Arizona were such that efforts to enforce the regulation and correct Metro Valley’s pathetic policy were especially important. On October 17, 2020 in a conference room at a resort at Scottsdale, a suburb of Phoenix, two presenters with QAnon “went on a long diatribe against people who wear masks to prevent the spread [of coronavirus]. It’s a way to control people, and a symbol of submission, they argued.”[5] It bears stating that in 2019, Arizona had ranked 49^th out of the 50 American states on education prior to college. Unfortunately, a culture of ignorance can easily support and spread the message of QAnon in Arizona—“inventing an imaginary threat and ignoring the very real virus” in spite of all those people who had already died from the pathogen. Such a culture can also enable a vacuous “requirement” to be perpetuated as if it were really a requirement rather than an instance of reason turned against itself with impunity. In such a culture, a significant number of riders and employees, including bus drivers, can be expected to skirt their company’s policy on mask-wearing because it is a fraud anyway. Such employees need only have told their respective supervisors that a medical condition prevents the wearing of a surgical mask without any written documentation to support the validity of the claim. In such a culture, bus drivers would rather bar riders from sitting in the front half of the buses, meaning that the riders might not be able to keep apart spatially as per governmental and even Metro Valley’s own guidelines, than bother to wear masks while driving. Why could such drivers be required to wear plastic face guards if a legitimate medical reason exists for not wearing a surgical mask? Besides the culture of ignorance, one of a lack of regard for the public health (i.e., other people) is also part of the sordid culture that has been so ensconced in Arizona.

A Metro Valley employee and a rider covering their respective chins. 

Security employees exposing their noses and mouths contrary to company policy. It is no wonder that riders did so as well, or went without masks, even though they were "required."

At times, the bus rider on the right held his green towel by his teeth, as if this were equivalent to wearing a mask. Such minimalists were common on public transportation during the pandemic.

A bus driver wearing his mask to cover his chin. I called Metro Valley to report the unsafe practice, and yet two months later, the driver was still leaving his mouth and nose exposed (see photo immediately below). Moreover, the continued prevalence of drivers without masks or not wearing them correctly is an indication that Metro Valley and its subcontracted operator companies have been managerially incompetent in holding drivers accountable. The continued bad driving (e.g., stopping abruptly rather than coasting to a light already red) also points to managerial negligence. 

Two (of several) other bus drivers not wearing masks, hence violating company policy. Were they medically exempt, presumably they would be wearing face coverings instead. 

Seats being held/blocked contrary to Metro Valley's policy by drivers. A plastic divider between the drivers and the seats is supposed to be sufficient protection for the drivers. Their efforts at over-protection, incredibly even by maskless drivers, can be at the expense of passengers being able to maintain physical distance between each other. Even though restricting the seating violates company policy and the company is aware of the practice, accountability has been a problem. 

A security guard starring at me taking a picture (which is legal) perhaps to intimidate me while literally overlooking the maskless rider stretched out on three seats. Starring at innocent riders to intimidate them while ignoring infractions of train policies (e.g., lying over three seats) epitomizes the local police/security culture. 

Four security guards in one-half of a train car, and four in a train car on a routine basis. Such excessiveness intimidates paying customers and leaves other trains without any protection. This epitomizes the local police/security culture in which as many of three backup police cars are used for police giving a traffic ticket. Meanwhile, the police departments refuse to enforce the laws on mask-wearing in retail stores and on public transportation. Hence, "bipolar" aptly characterizes the culture, wherein minor matters deprioritize more important ones. 

A security employee prohibited by Metro Valley even to instruct riders how to wear masks correctly. 

Perhaps the overriding question is how such a badly managed mass transit company (including its subcontractors that operate the buses) could continue in such a condition of ineptitude. In 2019, I had shot lots of videos of aggressive bus drivers, bad driving (e.g., stomping on the brake pedal at the last minute), and excess security on some trains (hence with none in others). The city of Tempe’s Transportation director invited me to attend a meeting with Tempe’s transit director, representatives from Metro Valley and the director of one of the bus-operating subcontractor companies (First Trans) in the room. Reflecting the local culture, the director dismissed all of my videos because one of them shows speeding of only six miles-per-hour above the speed-limit. To my utter astonishment, the other people in the room let him get away with the illogical effort to invalidate all of the videos—even those showing aggressive bus drivers shouting at passengers (the drivers generally viewed their ridership as lower class than themselves, which would have to be pretty low). Tempe’s representative lied to the director, “The city of Tempe has no problem with the driving,” after only months earlier having told me that speeding is a real problem (to which I added hard braking). Perhaps bribes helped reinforce the pathetic inter-organizational culture there.
Also up for grabs is why the local law enforcement would decide not to enforce a law so relevant to the public’s safety/health, and let the mass transit company (and its contractors) violate the law by allowing passengers to ride without wearing masks. It seems that in Arizona, the local law enforcement agencies have too much discretion over which laws they will enforce. Anyone calling in a noise complaint there knows this to be true. 
Ironically, and reflective of the bipolar culture, residents in poor and middle-class areas have had to endure police departments' excess reliance on low-flying police helicopters, which have routinely interloped beyond their respective jurisdictions (such as a city helicopter flying over county land), flown outside of designated air corridors for fly-through traffic, and flown around more expensive neighborhoods.  
On the evening when I published this essay at a coffee shop, a police car passed by as I was about to go to the shopping center's parking lot, and a few minutes a police helicopter flew over diagonally. Both seemed to be on a routine basis and duplicative rather than on a coordinated search. Then a mile away, just after I had stopped at a grocery store, another police helicopter was making at least ten wide circles over a nice looking residential neighborhood before flying away. Then just before I reached my apartment, several miles away, I saw yet another police helicopter (with yet another in the distance). The next morning on my way to the coffee shop to edit this essay, I again saw a police helicopter. The local residents may be used to living in a police state, but we others are not and it doesn't take long for us to notice it on account of its excessiveness, just as we new-comers notice the proclivity of the local police departments to refuse to enforce certain laws. To be sure, surveillance and so many back-up police cars for traffic tickets do take up resources, including personnel. If half the effort were applied instead to enforcing masks on public transit when the E.U. and many U.S. Midwestern and Northeastern states were coronavirus hotspots, Arizona would have been in a better position going into the winter.  

[1] Christina Maxouris and Jason Hanna, “The US Has Reached 8 Million Covid-19 Cases, and the Pace of New Infections Signals a Tough Winter,” CNN.com, October 16, 2020.
[2] Ibid.
[3] “Board Approves Mask Regulations Due to Community Spread of COVID-19,” Maricopa County Communications Office, June 19, 2020.
[4] Ibid.
[5] Donie O’Sullivan, “Analysis: A CNN Reporter Went to Two Different QAnon Events. Here’s What He Found,” CNN.com, October 19, 2020 (accessed same day).

Corona Crisis: Unethical and Criminal Businesses and Municipal Agencies Pervade in Phoenix, Arizona

On July 7, 2020, NBC News reported that Arizona had a record number of cases (105,094) and of deaths (1,927), with a four percent daily increase in reported cases. Also, coronavirus hospitalizations and related ventilators being used were also at record highs. A reporter with MSNBC stated, “Arizona is in crisis.” On the previous day, on MSNBC television, that same reporter had said, “Arizona is in free fall,” in that the number of cases was rising so fast. It had taken three months for the first 50,000 cases and only 23 days for the next 50,000. Observing that people were not wearing masks in downtown Scottsdale, he reported that “Arizona is out of control.” People there were not taking precautions, and the local and state authorities were not on top of the crisis. On June 22, 2020, a physician with the University of Arizona-Phoenix interviewed on The 11^th Hour show on MSNBC asserted that the Arizonans who were saying, “No one is going to order me to wear a mask,” were being selfish because refusing to wear a mask, say on a bus or in a store or restaurant/bar puts other lives at risk. Also a salient ingredient of the crisis in Arizona was the anti-science contingent of the population. In an interview at the time, Alan Alda (of the TV show, MASH) pointed to “pockets of people who still think science is just another opinion” as having a mindset that “puts us all in danger.”[1] The rigors of scientific experiment, such as the use of control groups and random selection, render science closer to knowledge than are mere opinions based on ideology and a person’s own experience. Privileging one’s own ideology and experiences counts as self-embellishing, and perhaps even self-idolatry. Such people are not likely to accept knowledge that contradicts their respective opinions and experience. Living in Phoenix at the time, I had encountered a lot of anti-intellectualism and incompetence along with refusals to enforce virus-deterring policies and even laws. Just one year earlier, Arizona’s education system through High School (K-12) had been rated as 49 out of the 50 States. Combined with an ideology in which companies and individual residents should (which implies can) self-police themselves on physical-distancing and wearing face masks indoors in public and on public transportation,  the recipe is for a greater need for respirators. 

To be sure, Arizona got to the place of crisis in part because the governor had lifted the stay-at-home order and opened businesses on May 14, 2020. His choice was in line with the wishes of U.S. President Trump, who wanted a more productive U.S. economy that would facilitate the president’s re-election in the coming November. The spike in new cases began in Arizona after the governor allowed non-essential businesses, including bars, restaurants, and gyms, to reopen. Pressure from President Trump and a shared pro-business political ideology were likely factors in the Republican governor’s decision. Meanwhile, Arizona had more than its share of political ideologues who believed that business policy or a public law mandating physical distancing and mask-wearing were tyrannical overreaches even though government has a duty to keep its people safe. 

Does mandating the use of masks indoors in public constitute tyranny? Is God against public health? Are certain political ideologies blind to the health and safety of a people? Can what is generally viewed as outlandish in most democratic societies be mainstream, and thus virtually unchecked, in one particular society?

However, other salient factors leading to the crisis in Arizona as of early July are worthy of being mentioned. Such factors include the refusal of Arizonans overwhelmingly to maintain a physical distance from other people while in public—especially indoors, such as at retailers including grocery stores, department stores, and bars. Even before mid-May, when Arizona had been on lock-down, grocery store employees got away with regularly ignoring the store policies and state law on physical-distancing because neither the store managers nor public authorities (e.g., the local police, county Environmental Services dept, city government) would see that the policy or law was enforced. Store managers of two grocery chains blatantly told me that they were not enforcing their own physical-distancing policies and thus the state law. Even on July 9, 2020, when the state’s hospitals were nearing capacity from the virus, I was stunned at a Sprouts store to see neither customers nor employees paying any attention to the store’s own regularly-announced physical-distancing policy. From a business standpoint, refusing to follow or enforce a store policy goes beyond incompetence and sheer foolishness; fecklessness, I submit, was also in the mix.

Wearing masks indoors when in public became a local law in Phoenix in late June, 2020. A few days before July 4, 2020, I went to Target, a retail department-store chain, to return an item. As I entered the store, I saw a sign indicating that masks must be wore as per the local law. 

Inside the store, I asked the assistant manager helping me with the return what is done to customers who ignore the policy and law. “Oh, we can’t enforce that,” she said matter-of-factly. 

On the evening of July 4, I (stupidly) went to a bar/restaurant called Half-Moon Sports Grill for a burger. As I approached the establishment, I heard a group of customers leaving the “restaurant” wonder aloud, “No one in there is wearing a mask.” Yet I went inside anyway, though to an isolated table from which I could see the horse-shoe bar where neither masks were being worn nor physical distancing was being enforced (e.g. by spacing out the seating). The store’s policy violated the law on both counts. 

The seats had not been spaced out along the bar. Perhaps the manager was spaced out? Many people sitting at the bar and at the tables near me were not eating anything. Even actual drinking was sparse. The customers "nursing" their drinks could have removed masks to take periodic gulps or sips, as the case may be. 

Indeed, the governor had recently closed bars (and gyms) because they had been hotspots for transmission of the contagion. A waitress told me that masks were not required when people were sitting. The law, however, stated at the time that masks need not be worn while mouths are being used to eat or drink.  The manager of Half Moon must have assumed that anytime a customer is seated, he or she must be eating or drinking. This is not what I saw, and during a crisis wouldn’t it just make sense to err on the side of caution in interpreting the local law? I was especially shocked when the waitress came up to my table twice without wearing a mask; she had been walking without wearing a mask and she had apparently decided that physical distancing does not apply to herself.

So the next day, I gave the local police a tip. On a Sunday afternoon, the cops would go to the bar/restaurant to see if any violations were occurring. I offered to send the videotape I had shot inside the establishment, but the Phoenix police refused. So the matter being corrected depended on whether the bar was busy enough on a Sunday afternoon to show a violation. No one would ever guess that the matter was urgent and important; it was as if the police were oblivious to the unfolding health crisis. The police had obviously not been paying attention when the governor had only weeks early stated in a news conference that businesses refusing to enforce local and state measures would be dealt with. Instead, the police followed their typical minimalist enforcement routine. A minimalist mentality has no place during a crisis, except, it seems, in Arizona.

The local transit authority, Metro Valley Transit, already had a sordid reputation for enabling bus drivers who were hostile to paying customers and drove badly. In early July, the company showed just how incompetent it was by having signs and a company voice (phone) message indicating that masks were required on the buses and yet Oliver, a supervisor of the customer-service department, told me that because some passengers cannot wear masks for medical purposes (i.e., there were exceptions), the company was only recommending that masks be worn. That a requirement would be treated as optional because exceptions exist demonstrates gross managerial incompetence. Such incompetence (and narrow-minded rigidity) is apparently inert even to a societal crisis (e.g., sky-rocketing numbers of coronavirus cases). That is to say, more was involved than ignorance.

Masks being worn improperly, or "minimalist," quickly became popular in the Phoenix metro on the buses, with drivers looking the other way. In the photo just above, the driver had even contorted his mirror so as to see the passengers, and yet he did not even ask the passenger pictured to wear a mask in spite of there being a "Mask Are Required" ungrammatical sign facing the entry door. This is ironic, given the driver's intent to be able to watch as many passengers as possible. The pleasure of power seized at in weakness issues out in control, yet interestingly here without holding passengers accountable. 

On July 10, 2020, I was fortunate on my morning commute to be on a bus in which not only was the driver not wearing a mask, but three passengers were not too. One of them was biting down on a small towel, demonstrating that the lack of accountability on the non-enforcing drivers was particularly risky, given the willfulness and ignorance of many riders. By the same reasoning, the lax enforcement of the public-health state, county, and local (Phoenix metropolitan area) laws by police and the respective governments on not only the bus company, but also grocery and department stores and restaurants/bars bore a high health cost given the condition of the local population. 

It was bad enough that the vast majority of bus drivers were not enforcing the mask policy in spite of the local law even though signs notifying passengers (and drivers) of the requirement were on the buses. On July 10, I discovered that at least one driver didn't think his company's policy and the law pertained to him. After he let on three passengers who were not wearing masks, I called Metro Valley's customer service number. Not surprisingly, no one from the company (e.g., the driver's supervisor) bothered to call the driver during the route. That too is typical, even though the customer service employees could see to it that someone from the company immediately calls the driver, whether he or she is not wearing a mask, enforcing the policy/law, or being verbally abusive toward paying customers. In May, I had tried calling the local police on a driver who was refusing to comply with the bus company's policy on 10 riders maximum on a standard-sized bus. "You have to call the bus company," the police dispatcher told me. "But the driver is breaking the physical distancing state law," I exclaimed, utterly astonished that a private company rather than a police department would be the only enforcer of the law. "You would have to contact the bus company," I heard again. The local police also tried to avoid enforcing the local laws on nighttime noise, so I was not surprised at the push-back itself. 
During my conversation with Oliver of the bus company in early July, I mentioned the company’s voice-message and the signs specifying that masks were required. “They are wrong,” he informed me. He even said he would change the voice-message; I was not surprised at all a week later to hear the same phone-recording that masks were required. Oliver believed that he could not be wrong even though people could die as a result. So I wrote to the city of Phoenix and the local press on the conversation. Although Oliver had no reason to fear being held accountable, given the company’s squalid management cadre, I suspect that the city may have come down on the bus company for telling customers that wearing masks is merely recommended due to there being exceptions. For a week or more later, the bus company's customer service employees were no longer telling riders that drivers do not enforce what is a recommendation. Even so, drivers were still not complying, even though the company was finally taking its own signs and voice-recording seriously. 

Despite complaints from paying customers for some time on driver hostility and bad driving (e.g., abrupt stops), the management had failed to solve those two problems. In part, the drivers’ union was too strong, but the city of Phoenix and the suburbs were not good at holding the regional transit authority accountable. So I was not surprised in early July, 2020 when a bus driver became enraged when I called customer service to report that masks were not being worn by about half of the riders, and the driver was ignoring the company’s policy on the ten-passengers maximum on a regular-sized bus. With 17 riders on the bus, physical distancing was not possible, which made the non-compliance on masks particularly risky. Fortunately, the customer service representative also heard the driver’s shouts. In going after me rather than having enforced the policies (and laws) in the first place, that driver demonstrated to me why things were out of control in Arizona with regard to the pandemic. The driver was certainly out of control mentally, and his refusal not to enforce bus-company policies with impunity means that his company was out of control managerially. By implication, the city governments in the metropolitan area were falling short in holding the regional transit authority accountable.

By early July, 2020, I noticed that the riff-raff (i.e., rules don't apply to me) on the buses were developing a sub-culture wherein masks were to either not be worn at all or just cover the chin. Because the buses are so unreliable there, the riff-raff make up the vast majority of the ridership. Even so, drivers were not enforcing the mask requirement on that ridership, which one driver confided to me is generally viewed as pathetic by the drivers. Is not a refusal to enforce a requirement also pathetic? Does this not liken the drivers to their typical ridership? Signs on the buses continued to declare that the masks are mandatory, and the drivers continued to dismiss their duty to enforce that company policy. As evidence for this investigation, I took a photo of a rider as he was dozing off; he was wearing his mask to cover his chin only. 

When this passenger got off the bus, he put his bandana on even though no one else was on the sidewalk. 

As I turned back around, I saw the driver shaking one of her fingers at me as if she were scolding a child. It is legal to take pictures on the buses and light rail in Arizona, and yet the driver felt sufficiently emboldened in her refusal to enforce the policy that she called her supervisor and took a picture of me!  Rather than realize that she had failed to enforce a requirement, she directed her hostility to me. Generalizing, given all the reports of driver hostility toward passengers, the drivers who refused to enforce company policy not only felt entitled to do so, but also aggressively went after the paying customers who felt that the drivers should be held accountable because they were putting the health of those customers at risk. Sadly, given the continued bad driving and driver-hostility generally, I could conclude that the company’s management was lax (i.e., incompetent) on holding its drivers (and bus operating subcontractors) accountable.

It is interesting that at least some retail companies, bar/restaurants, and bus companies in Arizona gave up on enforcing their own respective policies (and any underpinning laws), while Airlines, libraries, medical clinics, and hospitals had no such problem. It is not surprising that NBC News would find that things are out of control in Arizona regarding the pandemic. It is ironic that such a heavily-policed state, where intimidation from a huge police show of force/presence is presumed to be the best deterrent to crime, would be so deficient on enforcement even during a crisis. Perhaps views of the national news could finally see just how pathetic the situation in Arizona really was, and likely will be for some time.

Theists, ecologists, and ethicists could agree that a pandemic taking a particularly dire toll on such a people would make sense. Theists could point to God’s disfavor on the selfishness, lack of consideration for others’ health, refusal to do one’s duty in enforcing public-health business policies and governmental laws, and hostility. The same rationale would support a variant on the Biblical story of Noah—this time with God extinguishing our species for having refused to sufficiently stave off carbon-induced climate change. Naturalists could paint a picture of a selfish, inconsiderate people being especially prone to a pandemic. Nature abhors weakness, and thus a weak people. Ethicists might say that it is just that people who refuse to enforce policies or laws protecting the public health during a crisis catch the virus themselves. Similarly, bus passengers and retail customers whose risky behavior puts others at risk could be said to deserve to suffer the plight themselves. They would doubtless disagree, and they would insist that they could not be wrong about it, as if they were gods on stilts during a flood.

1. David Hochman, “Alan Alda Is Obsessed with the Power of Science,” AARP: The Magazine, June/July, 2020.