The Moral Advantage

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2 The Moral Advantage

I tell you that virtue is not given by money, but that from virtue comes money, and every other good, public as well as private.

SOCRATES

When I titled this book The Moral Advantage, I was aware that the phrase could sound both naive and crass, not an appealing combination. On the naive-sounding side, am I really claiming that morality in business is a way of advancing one’s own interests, of actually creating an advantage for oneself? If I am making such a claim in earnest, this idea surely seems a bit clueless in a world where CEOs make off with vast fortunes by inflating their pay, hanging employees out to dry, and deceiving the public: clearly you don’t need to be moral to make a lot of money. On the crass-sounding ...