While watching the Wall Street movie, many questions dawned on me. The movie shows a young man (Bud Fox) just trying to make it as a broker in the big apple and is faced with several ethical and moral challenges while on the path to wealth. He finds a way to work with Gordon Gekko, who is known as a legend in the Wall Street world, only to find all the ways Gekko plays the game and simply uses Fox in order to gain a few bucks.
During my Entrepreneurship and Society class, we talked about how ethics and morals play a role in Entrepreneurship. Every single person has some form of moral or ethical code that they stand by on a daily basis, whether or not they think about it all of the time. Society runs on many things, and ethics is one. But, much like the market, ethics and moral acceptance changes constantly, leaving entrepreneurs playing games with their businesses to see how successful they turn out to be after the market changes. The movie isn't shown through an entrepreneurs point of view, but it shows how ethical behavior and belief can impact business and even life. Dug Fox wanted to make big deals and make a name for himself to be successful, so he thought if he got in with someone big like Gekko that everything would be smooth sailing. Only to come to the point where he had to make serious decisions about getting inside information for Gekko to run his way through stocks. This not only led Fox to get arrested and possibly jail time, but it damaged the lives of other people too who had nothing to do with the stock game.
Like I stated above, Society and Ethics go hand in hand on a daily basis. So, this leaves Entrepreneurs in a state of deciding if their business venture is worth the hassle and money to continue. They have to continue asking: "Will I continue bringing value to the market although the ethics have changed?", "Will the customers continue buying my products or services?", etc. What would a world look like without ethics and how would that affect entrepreneurship? Do you consider money to be ethical? Does it cause more damage than good, and if so, doesn't that mean that we live in an unethical environment already? Money is considered greedy, money is the power that it is given, money is everything that we make it out to be both good and bad. These are all questions and perspectives that I had while watching this movie. It also reminded me of the movie The Wolf of Wall Street. Although these two movies are different, they shed light on the ethical and unethical lifestyle. Both Jordan Belford and Bud Fox wanted fast money and a quick way to gain a check, only for everything they know and love to come crashing down.
