Ethics and Morals
It is cool and raining here this morning…reminds me of my Oregon years!! But it is Friday and this is good!
We are here much ado about ethics in our profession these days…to me good ethics in our behavior is really a moral issue…if one is lying, stealing, cheating, etc it is all about low morals in the individuals who are involved…after all it is really all about one’s character…this is not necessarily a religious issue as some think…it is about simply being a good person…honest, hardworking, loyal, clean living…sort of like folk used to be in bygone times…as for those of us in this line of work…don’t write a report for something that you personally did not see…be diligent and astute when inspecting on a project…don’t just sit in your truck and write a report on something that you should have climbed up a ladder or somehow physically went up on the deck and looked at looked at the items in question…don’t lie…don’t cheat…etc…know the building codes and know what you are inspecting…we have a public trust to do a thorough and ethical inspection…public safety is the issue…people will be working and visiting within the structures we are trusted to inspect to see that they are built according to the job specifications and the building codes…we are the eyes and the ears of the engineers who design the structures, the governing municipality, the owners of the structures, and the general public…we have assumed an enormous trust!!
I saw a statement online today that made some sense…it said that the additional bailout money that President Obama wants to get is really just another loan and credit is what has gotten us in this mess to start with…the writer suggested that rather than make matters worse by another loan to just let the economy bottom out on it’s own and it will… then take some corrective action…I don’t know enough about economics to make a call on this one…the current state of affairs is an unsettling one to say the least…and we all know in our heart of hearts that the age old character flaw called “greed” is at the bottom of all this…some of America’s most powerful and some of it’s wealthiest are eaten up with “greed”…so much so that they turned their back on wrongdoing because they stood to make more money by doing so…if they had corrected or sought to correct the problems that they saw they personally would have stood to lose money…”GREED” prevailed…integrity did not matter any longer…if we were near the wealth and power it would tempt us as well…that is why these folk who are near the top or near money need to have character under girding their actions…the mess we are currently in is the direct result of leaders who sought personal wealth above doing the right thing for the people of this nation who have entrusted them with leadership…
Well enough rambling for today…
