Are corporations evil?
By taiguy
@taiguy (478)
United States
October 13, 2008 2:41pm CST
Are corporations evil by default? A corporation can be thought of as a "soul less enitity" since it has very little liability to any single person when it commits crimes (i.e. a product kills someone, etc). On the other hand, the idea that the taxpayers control the corporation can give it more "morality" in the fact that not a single person decides what is "right or wrong" for the company.
Corporations carry out some of the most horrific human rights abuses of modern times, but it increasingly difficult to hold them to account. Economic globalization and the rise of transational corporate power have created a favorable climate for corporate hum rights abusers, which are goverened principally by the codes of supply and demand and show genuine loyalty only to their stockholders.
Caterpillar Componany has provided Israel with the bulldozers used to detroy Palenstinian homes.
In plachimada, Kerala, Coca-Cola extracted 1.5 million liters of deep weel water, which they bottled and sold under the names Dasani and BonAqua. The groundwater was severely depleted, affecting thousands of communities with water shortages and destroying agriculrual activity.
In 1988, Dow provided pesticides to Saddam Hussein despite warnings that they could be used to produce chemical weapons.
Monsanto is the world's leading producer of the herbicide glyphosate, marketed as Roundup. Roundup is sold to small famers as a pesticide, yet harms crops in the long run as the toxins accumulate in the soil. Plants eventually become infertile, forcing farmers to purchase genetically modified Roundup Ready Seed, a seed that resists the herbicide.
Now my question is whether the corporations would be any more good (or eviler) if they were owned by a private group/person instead of by the shareholders? Is the "leverage" for committing attrocities an affect of un-evolved law in the rest of the world who wants a "quick profit" from taxing these companies who are eager to abuse the situation? Is any corporation or private company destined to be "immoral" simply due to an excessive size (i.e. profits)?
On a side note, perhaps a "extra credit" question, I recently read an article on venezuela's IRS effectively being the "tax code maker", "tax code justice", and the "tax code executioner". Anyone who made it to the third year of high school will know that any democracy can only exist when you break up the "legislative", "executive", and "justice" branches. Beyond this specific example the comments left by people reviewing the article pointed in the same direction. That is, because "Coke" was the corporation being sued they really didn't care if what venezuela was doing was legal or not. Should large "evil" corporations have a "seperate law" that only (unfairly) applies to them. What incentive is there for a "moral" corporation to be "moral" if they get punished with the rest?
2 responses
@elmiko (6630)
• United States
13 Oct 08
No I don't think their evil. Thats a stereotypical view thats got alot of people thinking that and the more people think that the more others seem to believe it as well. The more people say things the more contagious it becomes to where other people start thinking the same idea. This is where the stigma of evil corporations came from. They provide the biggest majority of the best and well known products to most people. They provide lots of jobs for people to make a living. You got to remember corporations started out small but got bigger because of how good their products or services were. Other businesses closed because they were not as good.
1 person likes this
@Sheepie (3112)
• United States
13 Oct 08
Well, most of the time I would not think that people are ever really evil, there are always intentions behind their actions that seem evil. But I did not know about any of those examples that you told about. The desperation for wealth drives all of the evil here, and I guess it's just the way it is. Something does have to be done about this, you're absolutely right on this one.
1 person likes this
@taiguy (478)
• United States
13 Oct 08
Sometimes I wonder if the prism is simply the rich vs. poor view. The poor resent the rich for having, and the rich are (i imagine most the time) simply being rewards (or the grand parents were) for working hard. In a sense this is socialism vs. caplitalism. Most developed countries have a large welfare system so one my consider the democracies of today a mixture of both.
One might wonder whether us 'little people' would not be so scared of 'big corp' if we had more of a say into the doing of the company (in a sense like we vote our representatives). Maybe the more Coke I buy the more I gain share holder's rights. Individually this would mean nothing, but collectively we would have a vote to "morally steer" these soul-less entities when their shareholders lack the will of healthy long term ambitions.
By the way, I meant to say "sharedholders" instead of "taxpayers" in the first paragraph.
