I watched a fascinating documentary last night, 'The Corporation'. It attempts to define what a corporation is and what its affect on the world is. The opening premise regards the question: 'If a corporation is a person, then what kind of person is it?' The answer is quite astonishing, considering the magnitude of this 'person's' power...
The following snipets are taken from the documentary's website. I've taken the liberty to make them more concise for those with A.D.D., but you can find all the info you want at http://www.thecorporation.com/index.php ...
SYNOPSIS
THE CORPORATION explores the nature and spectacular rise of the dominant institution of our time. Taking its legal status as a "person" to its logical conclusion, the film puts the corporation on the psychiatrist's couch to ask "What kind of person is it?" Provoking, witty, sweepingly informative, The Corporation includes forty interviews with corporate insiders and critics - including Milton Friedman, Noam Chomsky, Naomi Klein, and Michael Moore - plus true confessions, case studies and strategies for change.
A LEGAL 'PERSON'
In the mid-1800s the corporation emerged as a legal "person." Imbued with a "personality" of pure self-interest, the next 100 years saw the corporation's rise to dominance. The corporation created unprecedented wealth. But at what cost? The remorseless rationale of "externalities"-as Milton Friedman explains: the unintended consequences of a transaction between two parties on a third-is responsible for countless cases of illness, death, poverty, pollution, exploitation and lies.
THE PATHOLOGY OF COMMERCE
The operational principles of the corporation give it a highly anti-social "personality": It is self-interested, inherently amoral, callous and deceitful; it breaches social and legal standards to get its way; it does not suffer from guilt, yet it can mimic the human qualities of empathy, caring and altruism.
MINDSET
The people who work for corporations may be good people, upstanding citizens in their communities - but none of that matters when they enter the corporation's world. As Sam Gibara, Former CEO and Chairman of Goodyear Tire, explains, "If you really had a free hand, if you really did what you wanted to do that suited your personal thoughts and your personal priorities, you'd act differently."
MONSTROUS OBLIGATIONS
The Corporation exists to create wealth, and even world disasters can be profit centers. Carlton Brown, a commodities trader, recounts with unabashed honesty the mindset of gold traders while the twin towers crushed their occupants. The first thing that came to their minds, he tells us, was: "How much is gold up?"
PLANET INC.
You'd think that things like disasters, or the purity of childhood, or even milk, let alone water or air, would be sacred. But no. Corporations have no built-in limits on what, who, or how much they can exploit for profit. In the fifteenth century, the enclosure movement began to put fences around public grazing lands so that they might be privately owned and exploited. Today, every molecule on the planet is up for grabs. In a bid to own it all, corporations are patenting animals, plants, even your DNA.
DEMOCRACY LTD.
Democracy is a value that the corporation just doesn't understand. In fact, corporations have often tried to undo democracy if it is an obstacle to their single-minded drive for profit. From a 1934 business-backed plot to install a military dictator in the White House (undone by the integrity of one U.S. Marine Corps General, Smedley Darlington Butler) to present-day law-drafting, corporations have bought military might, political muscle and public opinion.
And corporations do not hesitate to take advantage of democracy's absence either. One of the most shocking stories of the twentieth century is Edwin Black's recounting IBM's strategic alliance with Nazi Germany-one that began in 1933 in the first weeks that Hitler came to power and continued well into World War II.
FISSURES
The corporation may be trying to render governments impotent, but since the landmark WTO protest in Seattle, a rising wave of networked individuals and groups have decided to make their voices heard. Movements to challenge the very foundations of the corporation are afoot: The corporate charter revocation movement tried to bring down oil giant Unocal; a groundbreaking ballot initiative in Arcata, California, put the corporate agenda in the public spotlight in a series of town hall meetings; in Bolivia, the population fought and won a battle against a huge transnational corporation brought in by their government to privatize the water system; in India nearly 99% of the basmati patent of RiceTek was overturned; and W. R. Grace and the U.S. government's patent on Neem was revoked.
Back to me...The documentary is filled with inteliigent insights from brains like Chomsky and contains fascinating insights from people like Sir Mark Moody-Stuart and Ray Anderson, CEO of Interface - the latter comes across as an extremely concientous leader of business. It also contains brutal honesty from Carlton Brown, a commodities trader, who paints a stark picture of the greed that is destroying our world.
I suggest you check it out, then come back and hit this shit with some comments. Wurd.
__________________ Full fathom five thy father lies;
Of his bones are coral made;
Those are pearls that were his eyes:
Nothing of him that doth fade
But doth suffer a sea-change
Into something rich and strange.
It would seem impossible, but you just got a whole lot stupidererererererer.
__________________ Full fathom five thy father lies;
Of his bones are coral made;
Those are pearls that were his eyes:
Nothing of him that doth fade
But doth suffer a sea-change
Into something rich and strange.
__________________ Full fathom five thy father lies;
Of his bones are coral made;
Those are pearls that were his eyes:
Nothing of him that doth fade
But doth suffer a sea-change
Into something rich and strange.
Im doing my dissertation on The Elite Deviance and White Collar Crime. How ultra fabulous of you to post this. Its like this mental link we have going or something...
Anyway...
Noam Chomsky is one of my favurite Americans of all time. I read so many of his books and his ruthless criticisms are like noones ive read before. Awesome. I wish I had seen the movie if it included an interview with him. That would have been very interesting.
This documentary will probably be in the library, so I will definitively look for it.
I think one of the most interesting things I find about people who are so eager to condem individuals who rob and kill someone, do not have clue how much corporate crime is done every single day.
Ford easily killed hundreds of people, Nike easily exploited slave labour, many others easily polluted neighbourhoods and drinking water, from which hundreds of people died - and they knew it and said nothing. Corporate homicide for profit.
__________________
في هذا العالم ثلاثة أشخاص أفسدوا البشرية : راعي غنم , طبيب و راكب الجمال , و راكب الجمال هو أسوأ نشال و أسوأ مشعوذ بين الثلاثة
Woah! Seems like Bird Flu isn't the only infectious disesase doing the rounds at the moment...First Spieljarhead, now (la)botan(y)kus...Watch out, World!
__________________ Full fathom five thy father lies;
Of his bones are coral made;
Those are pearls that were his eyes:
Nothing of him that doth fade
But doth suffer a sea-change
Into something rich and strange.
Moving jonathanswiftly on...or should that be 'moving on swiftly, Jonathan'? Anyway, as I was saying, moving swiftly jonathan on...Yes, lil' b! YES! YES YES! YESSSSSSSSSSSSS!
I also read more than a little of ol' Noam during my studying days. 'Language acquisition and psychology' was the order of my relation to him, and a profound it was, too. Indeed, he is a very smart, smart man. There were numerous episodes involving Chomsky and I was struck once again about how everything he uttered was concise, well-thought and pertinent to the discussion.
As for corporations, it is indeed sad. Too many people seems to accept that a corporation will exploit and plunder resources with little thought about the environmental and social damage it causes. If a corporation is a person, then it can also be considered a rapist; it uses, abuses and refuses to re-use(s) a resource once a cheaper one presents itself. Nike, GM et al are perfectly happy to proclaim that they are providing employment opportunities to people in the Third World, but once the area they are working in begins to develop, they up-and-leave as the society begins to demand more rational wages.The sad thing is that people accept these practices by supporting such brands.
A corporation may get fined a million dollars or more for deviant practices, but when this is compared to the billions they make in revenue, it is but a piss in the bath.
__________________ Full fathom five thy father lies;
Of his bones are coral made;
Those are pearls that were his eyes:
Nothing of him that doth fade
But doth suffer a sea-change
Into something rich and strange.
When it comes to killers, rapists, kidnappers, paedophiles, gangsters and thieves, everyone has plenty of philosophy to sell to everyone here about death penalty and justice.
When it comes to Corporate crime, which does precisely all those things multiplied by few hundred thousand, noone has any comments.
How typical.
__________________
في هذا العالم ثلاثة أشخاص أفسدوا البشرية : راعي غنم , طبيب و راكب الجمال , و راكب الجمال هو أسوأ نشال و أسوأ مشعوذ بين الثلاثة
Perhaps if I inserted some mysterious conspiracy involving dragon heads and witches' eyes, plus a couple of examples of CEOs on drug-induced necrophilic rampages, it would get the kids interested...
It's a shame because the doc investigates the same type of thing Moore does, but without the 'look-at-me' sensationalism...
__________________ Full fathom five thy father lies;
Of his bones are coral made;
Those are pearls that were his eyes:
Nothing of him that doth fade
But doth suffer a sea-change
Into something rich and strange.
No, I saw your post after I had posted mine. I was referring to most of the cretins who think they think around here...
__________________ Full fathom five thy father lies;
Of his bones are coral made;
Those are pearls that were his eyes:
Nothing of him that doth fade
But doth suffer a sea-change
Into something rich and strange.
I wouldn't disagree with your argument, but I think labor unions are pieces of sh*t as well. I guess everybody loses so maybe we should all drown ourselves so we never have to spend another dollar as a consumer for the rest of our lives.
LOL priceless Anyway during the Worldcom scam I was an employee of Woldcom and it was insane! Whats more is that Berny Ebbers said something to the effect in the aftermath that he wasn't sorry and if he could do it all over again he would.........Off with his head
Corporations are essential to the American way of life. Their existance is the result of the capitolistic sensability. To remove them, is to remove democracy.
However, their existance is not a needed part of human existance. By all means, remove them....
But it MUST come in conjunction with the removal of all modern democratic senability. Once the corporate dogs are removed, so too, must come the removal of our engrained need for their presence in our lives. Halliburton is allowed to control our state...so, our state must be allowed to survive without Halliburton. While this isn't an unreasonable assumption when based on the de-construction of a single conglomerate...the de-construction of all such organizations must occur at the same time. Why rob Peter to pay Paul?
Diversity is the only key to true self-exploration and change. Let the chips fall where they may....but why play the game at all, if the outcome is expected?
__________________ "If I were you"
"If you were me, you'd know the safest place to hide...is in sanity!
KMC Community Forums
Oct 19th, 2005 01:41 AM
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Anyway during the Worldcom scam I was an employee of Woldcom and it was insane! Whats more is that Berny Ebbers said something to the effect in the aftermath that he wasn't sorry and if he could do it all over again he would.........Off with his head 
