Corporations are evil. Corporations profit from war and make unsafe products, they spill oil and coal ash, they encourage children to smoke and deny heath care to the sick. They use third world child labor and pay them pennies, all the while claiming that the kids are better off. Even corporations whose motto is “don’t be evil,” do evil.
Consider this list…AIG, Merrill Lynch, Blackwater, Enron, Haliburton, Philip Morris, Wal-Mart, Dow, Pfiser, Diebold, Exxon…this group of companies has a history that includes fraud, unsafe products, dumping of toxic chemicals, deforestation, union busting and war profiteering. And those are just the easy ones…the low hanging fruit…the ones whose evil you really don’t need to explain. For each on this list there are hundreds of other corporations who are taking more from society than they give.
These corporations are not in the business of evil. They are in the business of profits. But the pursuit of profit without any other consideration sets the stage for some pretty evil stuff.
Corporate wrongdoing is a byproduct of greed. Greed is what makes capitalism work. I am a big believer in capitalism. I have not seen a better system, certainly not the communist model with their five year and ten year plans. Greed and the thirst for profits have led to the creation of some of my favorite possessions. Were it not for this greed, I would not have my cell phone, my laptop computer, my flat screen TV. Yay, profits. Yay, greed.
Not everyone is greedy for money alone. Some lust for power. We call those people politicians. They play a big part in enabling Corporate evil. Corporations lobby politicians. If the politicians vote for bills that aid the corporations, then the corporations give them bribes that they call “campaign contributions.” It’s a cozy relationship – great for the corporations, great for the politicians, but not so great for the citizens of the US…you know, the customers of the corporations and the constituents of the politicians. Politicians are fond of saying “get government off the backs of business.” They claim that aiding business aids the economy, which aids us all. In some cases that’s true. In many cases it is not.
Take, for example, the 1999 repeal of the Glass-Steagall Act. This act, signed at the height of the Great Depression, separated commercial and investment banking. Commercial banks tend to be very conservative while investment banks take on risk for higher returns. When Glass-Steagall was repealed, it eventually led to commercial banks taking on huge risks as well in pursuit of the kind of profits the investment banks were getting. The result was a global economic crisis that we still cannot see the end of. How could that repeal have been good for the country? The economy was doing well, so it’s not like we needed a boost. So it wasn’t driven by need, it was driven by greed. The financial industry wanted it and they had Phil Graham bought and paid for.
I’m not anti-corporation. Corporations provide needed jobs and tax revenues. We need corporations. And I don’t want to clip their wings like some bad passage from “Atlas Shrugged” (as if there is a good passage to that book). But our society exerts more control over stray dogs than we do over corporate malfeasance. What’s more, unchecked corporate evil comes with a future cost. Pollution costs. Global warming costs. And ask the millions and millions of unemployed around the world if there is a cost to the current economic crisis.
Proper regulation does not prevent corporations from making a profit, it prevents them for making a profit at the expense of the citizens. Make all the money you want, just don’t make a mess. Simple.
We need to rule over corporations, we cannot have them rule over us. And rule over us they have.
