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So someone once suggested I should make a thread about all the horrible things corporations do, have done, or are trying to get away with doing.
So here we go:
Starting with Nazi profiteers that are still with us.
Low hanging fruit provided by AIG
AIG
Murdoch's little fun in the spotlight recently
Tyco
LIC yet another company that never seems to realize wrongdoing even with its employee's being arrested
Walmart -- that's an easy one
Have fun adding your own -- and remember people -- corporations exist only for their own profit and gain, the more profit to be gained the more likely they are to forget the rules assuming you can't pick them out in a line up and even if you could "I was just following orders" or "I didn't know what my underlings were doing right under my own nose and supervision".
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Wow thank you for that Whiteknife -- I understand a bit of wariness with new products and ideas: Change will happen and needs to be realized, but not all change is good (and we shouldn't simply change for the sake of changing) -- but Monsanto is trying to suggest that simply by not using their product you are unjustifiably raising prices and casting doubts on the safety of their product (something that hasn't actually been proven yet on the large scale).
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Wow thank you for that Whiteknife -- I understand a bit of wariness with new products and ideas: Change will happen and needs to be realized, but not all change is good (and we shouldn't simply change for the sake of changing) -- but Monsanto is trying to suggest that simply by not using their product you are unjustifiably raising prices and casting doubts on the safety of their product (something that hasn't actually been proven yet on the large scale).
Theres more but it was late and I didnt feel like digging. Ill get more tonight after I DM the next installment of Savage Tide tonight. How the hell Montsanto doesnt get hit with an antitrust lawsuit is beyond me. Methinks it might be because that they are so deeply embedded at all levels in the US government.
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To me Monsanto is even easier than Wal-Mart. At least Wal-Mart attempts to correct itself after being sued. (I should know, Ive worked for them since 99. Back when the work during breaks stuff was occuring. Now its a write-up not to take your full allotment of break-time) Just Google Monsanto and you'll get all kinds of stuff for this thread. Like suing farmers who never bought their product, but who had a neighbors GM stuff become cross pollinated with their regular plants. (If I were a judge, I would order Monsanto to sue bees and the wind for monetary damages, not the farmers.)
Fox News can't figure out the difference between a volcano and burning fossil fuels.
So scientists are thinking there was 'recent' volcanic activity on the moon. Fox's News reporter then asks, "Does that cast doubts on climate change since we haven't been on the moon burning fossil fuels in that time?"
For the inept I will explain what is wrong with this question:
1. Volcanoes have nothing to do with the burning of fossil fuels.
2. Volcanoes are not man made (or man caused -- with the possible exception of a single mud volcano ).
3. Climate change can be caused by volcanoes... but volcanoes are not caused by climate change.
Fox News can't figure out the difference between a volcano and burning fossil fuels.
So scientists are thinking there was 'recent' volcanic activity on the moon. Fox's News reporter then asks, "Does that cast doubts on climate change since we haven't been on the moon burning fossil fuels in that time?"
For the inept I will explain what is wrong with this question:
1. Volcanoes have nothing to do with the burning of fossil fuels.
2. Volcanoes are not man made (or man caused -- with the possible exception of a single mud volcano ).
3. Climate change can be caused by volcanoes... but volcanoes are not caused by climate change.
Hahahaha The best part is being schooled by a saturday morning children's TV show host.
Cabela's and Bass Pro Shop's: Two more of my favorite targets
To Summarize: If your town wants one of these 2 to open up a store or warehouse there, they better pony up the sweet heart tax breaks and/or free land. They'll even play you against another town to see who gives the better deal. Border-line extortion, if you ask me. Oh and on top of the deals you give them, they'll throw in some stuffed wildlife into their stores, so that they count as museum. ( how can they help that museums arent taxed?)
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Cabela's and Bass Pro Shop's: Two more of my favorite targets
To Summarize: If your town wants one of these 2 to open up a store or warehouse there, they better pony up the sweet heart tax breaks and/or free land. They'll even play you against another town to see who gives the better deal. Border-line extortion, if you ask me. Oh and on top of the deals you give them, they'll throw in some stuffed wildlife into their stores, so that they count as museum. ( how can they help that museums arent taxed?)
Yeah, but Bass Pro Shops are awesome. So that makes it okay.
(No it doesn't, I just have really fond memories of going to BPS with my dad as a kid and learning to fly cast in their indoor fly casting pool.)
On subject: Can't forget about Ipod City and the grueling child labor used to build smartphones.
The most satisfying spectator sport in the UK off late has been watching the power dive from grace by Old Rupert and his slimeball son. Watch this space the biggest heads are yet to fall in this one.
Fox News can't figure out the difference between a volcano and burning fossil fuels.
So scientists are thinking there was 'recent' volcanic activity on the moon. Fox's News reporter then asks, "Does that cast doubts on climate change since we haven't been on the moon burning fossil fuels in that time?"
For the inept I will explain what is wrong with this question:
1. Volcanoes have nothing to do with the burning of fossil fuels.
2. Volcanoes are not man made (or man caused -- with the possible exception of a single mud volcano ).
3. Climate change can be caused by volcanoes... but volcanoes are not caused by climate change.
That is special...
The most satisfying spectator sport in the UK off late has been watching the power dive from grace by Old Rupert and his slimeball son. Watch this space the biggest heads are yet to fall in this one.
It has been great fun hasn't it :D
The founding of the Tobacco Institute; for the express purpose of generating doubt about scientific evidence of the negative health effects of Tobacco, and pro-Tobacco propaganda. This after the tobacco industry scientists had already independently identified tobacco tar as Carcinogenic.
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Horrifying conflict of interest, you say? What are you, a FREEDOM-hating STATIST?!?!?!
Horrifying conflict of interest, you say? What are you, a FREEDOM-hating STATIST?!?!?!
No, it just proves government shouldn't have the power to control such things, since it can be corrupted. Companies buying off regulation just means we shouldn't try regulation in the first place.
And the scary thing is, there are people who can make that argument with a straight face.
Hmm.....
"Are Corporations Evil?"
thread or,
"Malfeasance: Is It Evil?"
thread......
maybe.....both?
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Horrifying conflict of interest, you say? What are you, a FREEDOM-hating STATIST?!?!?!
No, it just proves government shouldn't have the power to control such things, since it can be corrupted. Companies buying off regulation just means we shouldn't try regulation in the first place.
And the scary thing is, there are people who can make that argument with a straight face.
I'm glad you added that last line, because I read the first line as being completely serious. Poe's Law strikes again!
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I know. Satire is dead. Even the Onion can't keep up.
Maybe comedians could sue politicians for infringing on their business.
My favorite is the "We shouldn't raise taxes because rich people cheat on their taxes, so if we raise them they'll just cheat more." argument.
Which I see made with distressing regularity.
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Maybe comedians could sue politicians for infringing on their business.
Tom Lehrer quit the game back when Kissinger was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, saying, "How can I compete with that?" (Paraphrase)
I know. Satire is dead. Even the Onion can't keep up.
Maybe comedians could sue politicians for infringing on their business.
My favorite is the "We shouldn't raise taxes because rich people cheat on their taxes, so if we raise them they'll just cheat more." argument.
Which I see made with distressing regularity.
My favorite tenet of the tax cuts religion is:"Raising taxes will hurt the economy." Right, because every last copper penny in those heaps of treasure rich people and megacorporations have contributes to economic growth. Raising marginal rates one jot would just totally blight job markets and stunt growth (unlike letting the heaps get even bigger, which would magically help the economy).
Rich People: Quit Making Us Pay For Our Employees
Remember when people here said comparing capitalism to feudalism was a strawman?
Key highlights:
"People who work for free are far hungrier than anybody who has a salary, so they're going to outperform, they're going to try to please, they're going to be creative," says Kelly Fallis, chief executive of Remote Stylist, a Toronto and New York-based startup that provides Web-based interior design services. "From a cost savings perspective, to get something off the ground, it's huge. Especially if you're a small business."
The benefit unpaid labor offers to a business is pretty clear, but it can also give employees needed experience, a reference letter or even a self-esteem boost in a depressing economy.
Unfortunately for many employers hoping to use unpaid labor to advance their business goals, there are strict federal and state rules that workers must be paid the minimum wage and paid for overtime, and must abide by other provisions in the Fair Labor Standards Act, which applies to about 135 million people working for 7.3 million employers
One editor and two cameramen ended up quitting before the end of the trek due to rough conditions and 16-hour workdays. In retrospect, Lovejoy says, "I would screen a little bit better and make sure they understood that this wasn't a vacation."
Meanwhile, companies continue to make record breaking profits.
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History lesson: Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire.
Back when we still really trusted the invisible hand to just do things on their own, there were little to no laws regarding how employees could be treated. The Triangle Waist Company had a roaring 500 employees working in a New York factory, all women, most immigrants.
Then in 1911, a fire started. This wasn't uncommon - in fact, shirtwaist factories tended to be very combustible due to low to nonexistent safety guidelines and the owners honestly just not caring that much. The fire started on the 8th floor, and people outside who saw the smoke sent out the fire alarm. Inside the building, there was no fire alarm. People learned of the fire when the fire came for them.
This high up there were a few escapes, but the fire blocked some, and others were locked. Workers, when they arrived at the factory, were literally locked in - and the man with the key took it with him when he ran away. What few exits were left were quickly warped.
So people started to jump. They did not survive the landing.
When the law came for the owners - who had equally fled and left their workers to die - they showed remorse and wait no, they did everything they could to attack and denounce the survivors. After doing everything in their power to destroy the survivors and witnesses as well as their crediblity, the two men walked - acquitted.
The two were later found guilty in a new lawsuit and had to pay $75 per deceased victim. The two owners collected $400 per victim from their insurance - $60,000 more than the reported losses.
One was fined twenty dollars two years later for locking employees in his factories again.
Never. Never. Never forget that the people at the top of the corporation have figured your exact dollar worth, and are more then willing to give that up for increased profits. Never, ever forget that to them you are a number - and there are numbers worth more then you. That they examine the exact cost of safety measures and, were they not forced to abide by them, would not.
And if you are a parent, then do not let it slip your mind that two casualties in that fire were fourteen year old girls.
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Rich People: Quit Making Us Pay For Our Employees::jaw drops::
I can't believe that's real.
People forget that employment of workers is not the end goal of companies and of capitalism. Slavery and serfdom were not created from a desire merely to control others - it was an economic creation from those at top, and they've never forgotten what they've lost.
Pollution isn't just about the collapse of ecological systems, it can mess us up too..
It took Chisso Corporation almost half a century to start putting things right.
see also
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My favorite tenet of the tax cuts religion is:"Raising taxes will hurt the economy." Right, because every last copper penny in those heaps of treasure rich people and megacorporations have contributes to economic growth. Raising marginal rates one jot would just totally blight job markets and stunt growth (unlike letting the heaps get even bigger, which would magically help the economy).
See the Laffer Curve and other forms of Voodoo economics.
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Oh, oh! Nobody's posted about Union Carbide's 25 years of escaping responsibility for the Bhopal Disaster (and eventually scapegoating a few employees for minor penalties).
tl;dr version:
Estimates vary on the death toll. The official immediate death toll was 2,259 and the government of Madhya Pradesh has confirmed a total of 3,787 deaths related to the gas release. Others estimate 3,000 died within weeks and another 8,000 have since died from gas-related diseases. A government affidavit in 2006 stated the leak caused 558,125 injuries including 38,478 temporary partial and approximately 3,900 severely and permanently disabling injuries.
But...
In June 2010, seven ex-employees, including the former UCIL chairman, were convicted in Bhopal of causing death by negligence and sentenced to two years imprisonment and a fine of about $2,000 each, the maximum punishment allowed by law.
Oh, oh! Nobody's posted about Union Carbide's 25 years of escaping responsibility for the Bhopal Disaster (and eventually scapegoating a few employees for minor penalties).
There is a reason...
There are so many cases of Corperate arse-hatery throughout recent history, it will take us a bit of time to cover them all ;)
I know I'm reaching back a bit, here, but has anybody ever read the report of the Nye Commission? The Reece Commission? (My personal favourite from that one: "We operate under directives, the substance of which is that we shall use our grant-making power to alter life in the United States such that it may be comfortably merged with the Soviet Union.")
It's amazing what our government will admit to when they think nobody is paying attention...the two commission reports I reference above directly relate to corporate malfeasance, and if they were widely known and understood by the American people even today, the resulting bloodbath caused by an enraged public would be quite literally Biblical in scale.
Frankly I tend to ignore reports of Communist infiltration from the 50s or before, given how much of it was just made up.
It's not clear from your quotes what the government was supposed to be admitting to. Or what we should be outraged about.
I don't know what the Reece Commission was but the Nye Committee was a Congressional hearing on the eve of World War II about all the fun and exciting war-profiteering that went on during World War I.
EDIT: Reece/Cox Committee
I know I'm reaching back a bit, here, but has anybody ever read the report of the Nye Commission? The Reece Commission? (My personal favourite from that one: "We operate under directives, the substance of which is that we shall use our grant-making power to alter life in the United States such that it may be comfortably merged with the Soviet Union.")
It's amazing what our government will admit to when they think nobody is paying attention...the two commission reports I reference above directly relate to corporate malfeasance, and if they were widely known and understood by the American people even today, the resulting bloodbath caused by an enraged public would be quite literally Biblical in scale.
Frankly I tend to ignore reports of Communist infiltration from the 50s or before, given how much of it was just made up.
It's not clear from your quotes what the government was supposed to be admitting to. Or what we should be outraged about.
I don't know what the Reece Commission was but the Nye Committee was a Congressional hearing on the eve of World War II about all the fun and exciting war-profiteering that went on during World War I.
EDIT: Reece/Cox Committee
People I remind you this is about corporations not government -- take it elsewhere.
I don't know exactly what Sieglord was getting at, but the Nye Committee was a government study of PRIVATE CORPORATIONS and the fun and exciting war-profiteering they did during World War I.
Is that better?
I don't know exactly what Sieglord was getting at, but the Nye Committee was a government study of PRIVATE CORPORATIONS and the fun and exciting war-profiteering they did during World War I.
Is that better?
Aye it is -- such an explanation does help a lot in explaining its place here. Corporate war profiteering is always a problem -- both sides of the US Civil War had issues with companies making inferior goods and charging much too much for it -- things like cardboard shoes for example were rampant at that time too.
I will be the first to admit that not everyone in the corporate world are soul sucking leeches that are the dregs of humanity -- indeed I would imagine that outside of the companies some of these people that do horrible things to others are actually fine people.
In my opinion the problem is the environment of corporate culture creates a situation where such behavior and methods become possible and even easy to do -- much like the study that put some students as prisoners and others as wardens that had to be stopped because the behaviors that started developing were too extreme and made the study too dangerous to continue.
I can't believe I forgot:
Paizo is incredibly racist against goblins. And not in just a "benign-neglect" kind of way, but in a real, active instigation of pogroms and lynchings. (See any low-level modules and particularly the racist filth in "We Be Goblins!")
In fact, my clan is involved in a class-action lawsuit against them and their hate-crime spreading ways.
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I can't believe I forgot:
Paizo is incredibly racist against goblins. And not in just a "benign-neglect" kind of way, but in a real, active instigation of pogroms and lynchings. (See any low-level modules and particularly the racist filth in "We Be Goblins!")
In fact, my clan is involved in a class-action lawsuit against them and their hate-crime spreading ways.
Fortunately for paizo, goblins can't file briefs, since briefs must be submitted in writing.
Great, so now in addition to being an interminable Kantian, you're also a racist.
See what Paizo has wrought?!?
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Aye it is -- such an explanation does help a lot in explaining its place here. Corporate war profiteering is always a problem -- both sides of the US Civil War had issues with companies making inferior goods and charging much too much for it -- things like cardboard shoes for example were rampant at that time too.
In the Spanish-American War it they called their rations embalmed beef, and for good reason.
I will be the first to admit that not everyone in the corporate world are soul sucking leeches that are the dregs of humanity -- indeed I would imagine that outside of the companies some of these people that do horrible things to others are actually fine people.In my opinion the problem is the environment of corporate culture creates a situation where such behavior and methods become possible and even easy to do -- much like the study that put some students as prisoners and others as wardens that had to be stopped because the behaviors that started developing were too extreme and made the study too dangerous to continue.
Corporate officers have a legal duty to maximize value to their shareholders. If that means pumping poison into the water and air and killing off fisheries, children, downsizing during record profits, whatever, that's what it means. If it means getting fined for it, as long as the fine isn't as big as the savings, they'll keep at it unless there's a serious risk of being outright shut down or the bad PR impacts earnings that much. That is unless a most unlikely turns of events transpires: human beings given the choice to do what's extremely lucrative and their entire peer group and all their professional experience and everything else is leaning on them heavily to do and what's right, they choose the latter in significant enough numbers to win a board room vote.
Exactly -- the environment breeds bad social decisions.
Corporate officers have a legal duty to maximize value to their shareholders.
This is true. What I don't get is how/why this supposedly absolves them of any other legal duties or responsibilities. Following that logic, being a hit man should be legal. After all, hit men are just fulfilling the terms of their contracts, right? Heck, it would be immoral of them to not kill their victims! :P
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2. Volcanoes are not man made (or man caused -- with the possible exception of a single mud volcano ).
Interesting article about fracking. I was most astounded by the assertion that since fracking is done in a different layer, it can't affect the well.
I can't believe I forgot:
Paizo is incredibly racist against goblins. And not in just a "benign-neglect" kind of way, but in a real, active instigation of pogroms and lynchings. (See any low-level modules and particularly the racist filth in "We Be Goblins!")
In fact, my clan is involved in a class-action lawsuit against them and their hate-crime spreading ways.
I've got a review coming up for We Be Goblins. General sense: Racist, with a sprinkling of truth. Towards the end there was more goblin empowerment. And I have cancelled my subscriptions.
Corporate officers have a legal duty to maximize value to their shareholders.This is true. What I don't get is how/why this supposedly absolves them of any other legal duties or responsibilities. Following that logic, being a hit man should be legal. After all, hit men are just fulfilling the terms of their contracts, right? Heck, it would be immoral of them to not kill their victims! :P
You'll have to ask someone who thinks it should. I think that responsibility for corporate lawbreaking should not extend merely to CEOs and board members, but to individual shareholders who control significant portions of the company's stock. (So not a random guy who has two shares somewhere, but definitely someone who holds more than 10% or the stock.)
And I also think that if a company's actions lead to death the very least the board of the time should be facing are charges of negligent homicide, along with the whole chain of command between them and the employees at the bottom who implement the policies day to day.
You'll have to ask someone who thinks it should. I think that responsibility for corporate lawbreaking should not extend merely to CEOs and board members, but to individual shareholders who control significant portions of the company's stock. (So not a random guy who has two shares somewhere, but definitely someone who holds more than 10% or the stock.)
And I also think that if a company's actions lead to death the very least the board of the time should be facing are charges of negligent homicide, along with the whole chain of command between them and the employees at the bottom who implement the policies day to day.
I certainly didn't mean to imply that you thought it should! But the idea that moral obligation to shareholders trumps all does seem to be a common (if not explicit) argument.
In case you're curious, I have asked, but I have yet to get a decent answer. Any takers? :P