Goldman Sachs has been considered as a disciple of Alber Carr’s theory, “ Business is a poker game and

we are all bluffing” because of the settlement for an amount of 550 million dollars as imposed by
securities and exchange commission (SEC) that Goldman had to pay. It was believed that even after
paying 550 million dollar, Goldman Sachs had earned more from the bluff [ CITATION Gro10 \l 1033 ]. As
per the Alber Carr’s theory, being ethical should be a personal choice and it must not be mixed with the
business. To be successful in the competitive market, businesses should identify all the opportunities
just like in the Poker game and should do their best in winning it. It may involve adopting unethical
methods the end goal should be to win money even if bluffing is required.

Business like poker game, involves winning or losing. This is a game where every contestant wants to
win in the end. And like poker, the main goal is to win, hence the businesses that are successful in
revenue do not follow any ethics. Everything is fair in love, war, and competition [ CITATION Agg19 \l
1033 ]. No matter how much an individual follow ethics, but in business to be successful they have to be
unethical sometimes [ CITATION Hof20 \l 1033 ]. There are no fixed methods that makes any business
successful. For example, the case of Goldman Sachs, where they had to bear the penalty of over 500
million for misleading the investors on mortgage related projects, they had actually made more money
out of it, which was a win for Goldman Sachs.

References
Aggarwal, A. (2019). BUSINESS TIPS- EVERYTHING IS FAIR IN COMPETITION. AAIE Public Speaking.

Gross, D. (2010). Goldman’s Best Trade Ever. MoneyBox.

Hoffman, A. (2020). Business education as if people and the planet really matter. DOI.

Hi Surendra,

Great post and I agree to your point that Goldman Sachs came out as a winner with a minimal penalty
compared to the profits it had. I would also like to opine and elaborate more on the discussion why
bluffing is perfectly fine in business.

Goldman Sachs or any business firm's end goal is to earn maximum profit. To achieve this, they
sometimes indulge in unethical practices. No laws exist against bluffing in real world and both Goldman
Sachs and Carr believes that business has no place for ethics as it is related to one's personal choice or
values. Carr believes that businesspeople don’t behave like citizens in a workplace similarly in a poker
game, the players use bluff or any strategy to win the game.
Hence, I agree to Carr's statement and believe that bluffing is an important component of business and
doing something that is not against the law such as Goldman's $550 million settlement scheme with the
Security and Exchange commission qualify as bluff. Businesses should only run on rules or measures that
is being set by company officials for maximum profitability and not on ethics and values keeping in mind
the fact that they do not break any law.