The Greatest Good Essay
The skydivers who are most confident are not those with the longest life expectancies." That's Berkeley Haas professor Don Moore crushing my parachuting dreams. I learned much from interviewing him, but especially this: overconfidence makes us act foolishly, and often immorally. The jump between confidence and ethics seems far-fetched, but Moore's research shows that the link is direct. Behavioral ethicists call it "bounded ethicality": overconfidence narrows our moral vision. When people are too sure of their own character, they stop questioning themselves.
Case in point, consider Friedman's pencil: its cedar comes from Congo, graphite from Brazil, rubber from Indonesia. There's beauty in how the invisible hand brings workers together, but it's also no secret that laborers in these countries earn mere cents on the hour. Still, American companies that profit from this arrangement rarely have ethical qualms. Instead, bounded ethicality turns their "exploitation" into "just business."
As an ethics geek, this phenomenon alone should've moved me to boycott my local USPS. But I didn't. I run an import-export business zealously and receive overseas wholesale packages weekly. So when I read about Moore's bounded ethicality and Friedman's pencil, I wanted to know: can entrepreneurs remain both ethical and profitable? With Moore's insights and research guidance from professor Paul Adler, I stumbled upon Selznick's philosophical solution: moral businesses must structurally embed righteousness into themselves, even when that entails economic sacrifice.
I'm oversimplifying his philosophy, but it works. I built Satus, my AI startup, to guide low-income entrepreneurs toward ethical B-Corp standards. And at The Kewl Company, I donate my earnings to charity and source from regulated businesses, not sweatshops. And I do all of this to follow the Hippocratic Oath: do no harm. Putting virtue over self-interest meant thinner margins. Avoiding shortcuts. Monetary sacrifices. But I'm confident in these sacrifices because of the scholars I respect most: Moore, Friedman, Selznick. They have what Aristotle called praxis: practical wisdom. Wisdom that changes things in business. If one Haas professor and his sagacity is already moving my business practices toward equity, then an entire school of them could catalyze my next paradigm shift. That would be a beginning.
What this one does
He let an idea reach the thing it would actually cost him. A professor’s research on overconfidence walked straight into the import business he runs, and he rebuilt how it sources and where the money goes. Thinner margins are a smaller claim than most students make, and a reader believes him because he priced it.
The essay is the student’s own writing, printed here unchanged.
If you want somebody reading your student’s file with you this year, that is the work we do.