From Lakeside Press: An Interesting Piece On Business Ethics--

Why do the bad guys win? A psychiatrist looks for some answers



The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.

-- Often attributed to Edmund Burke (1729-1797), but probably anonymous

Every profession has its bad apples. Law, medicine, architecture, accounting, real estate they all contain members who are an embarrassment to the vast majority of honest, ethical practitioners. In analyzing the myriad reports of victimized home owners, I am struck by how often the underlying, root cause in most horror stories seems to be 'bad people'. I don't mean the honest builder who makes a mistake. We all make mistakes. I mean those people who are dishonest, mean spirited, deceptive, deceitful; people who make mistakes and lie about them. People like our developer, Jake Cooper.

These people would rather spend money on lawyers to fight you instead of investigating your complaint or fixing the problem. They seem completely unconcerned about their reputation or your satisfaction. These are people who, because of deep seated psychological flaws, seek to hurt customers who complain instead of trying to help them. I believe that 'bad people' are responsible for much of the heartache and emotional trauma suffered by victims of defective construction.

Why do bad people get away with hurting others so easily, with causing so much trouble? The problem, of course, is not confined to the housing industry. Many best selling books have recounted the greed and dishonesty of people in the business world, of how they get away with their unethical behavior, and of the lawyers who help them succeed. Read these books for a flavor of what you are up against when the people selling you a product prove dishonest, or when they hire lawyers to fight a legitimate complaint. Several books of this genre are listed in the Bibliography.

These books cover such topics as the savings & loan scandal, Wall Street buyouts, stockbroker dishonesty and bank fraud. They are about complex dealings that involve lawyers, bankers, accountants, real estate executives, politicians and, above all, innocent people getting hurt. Some people see these stories as exemplifying the Greed of the 1980s. Others find in them signs of the decay of civilization. Still others see nothing more significant than a few bad guys getting caught with their hands in a gigantic cookie jar. Different people will no doubt come away with varying perspectives after reading these books.

Here's what I glean from the stories told in these books. Except for the most egregious of the players, like Dennis Levine, Michael Milken, Ivan Boesky, Charles Keating, and Robert Maxwell, most businessmen get away unscathed with unethical behavior that lines their pockets at the expense of innocent victims. Read these books and you will see that only a tiny percentage of the bad guys ever get caught or punished or penalized financially. The vast majority of unethical dealers get away completely with their chicanery. And the victims? Most of them never recoup anything more than a fraction of their losses. Billions lost to the S&L failures. Billions lost to BCCI. Billions lost to Drexal Burnham. And where do these billions of dollars come from? From thousands upon thousands of innocent people.

Of course, defective construction is seldom the result of conspiracy or fraud in the legal definition. People become victims when bad guys screw up and refuse to follow through, honor a guarantee, or make good on their work. Instead of outright, provable fraud, the root causes are much more mundane: incompetency, greed, inability to admit a mistake, lying, mean-spiritedness traits that are often displayed by 'bad people'.

Our architect and builder were incompetent by anyone's standard, and could not admit their mistakes. Our developer was greedy and provably dishonest. The defendants' lawyers did nothing meaningful to resolve the dispute or investigate our complaints. At no time was a realistic and honest offer made to fix our house, or satisfy our complaint. In any major dispute over defective construction, when the root cause is bad people, you will find a similar set of players, and similar consequences for the homeowners. . .(click title link above to read this very interesting piece on a industry very near to all of us, and our homes and families).

Related stories/links (more):

http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/dn/latestnews/stories/012107dntswperryhomes2.3c4f952.html

http://www.fortbendnow.com/opinion/2519/homeowners-without-protection-are-falling-to-foreclosures#c009633

http://www.hobb.org/

http://www.hadd.com

http://www.ahrc.com

http://www.texaswatch.org/tw/

http://stoptexashoaforeclosures.com/

http://www.texashoareform.org/Links.html

And for a listing of the lawyers who file foreclosures for HOAs see:

http://pages.prodigy.net/hoadata/

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