The Corporation

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Narrator: A new car built by my company leaves somewhere traveling at 60 mph. The rear differential locks up. The car crashes and burns with everyone trapped inside. Now, should we initiate a recall? Take the number of vehicles in the field, A, multiply by the probable rate of failure, B, multiply by the average out-of-court settlement, C. A times B times C equals X. If X is less than the cost of a recall, we don't do one.
Business woman on plane: Are there a lot of these kinds of accidents?
Narrator: You wouldn't believe.
Business woman on plane: Which car company do you work for?
Narrator: A major one.
-Fight Club

Don't say that this doesn't happen

Well there you go corporations are held to standards set by society.

The issue there ends up being that for such an idea to be accepted, the probable rate of failure would have to be relatively low, otherwise there would be such fall-out from that it would end up hurting future profits due to a bad name, and it would outweigh the possibilities of net profit. Really though, C would end up being rather high thus meaning that the recall would have to be rather unprofitable.

Now, that leads to a question on whether or not a recall could harm society through the misuse of resources.

Last edited by Awesomelyglorious on 02 Jun 2007, 11:03 pm, edited 1 time in total.

It is also one with a name that is not necessarily associated with a documentary. "The corporation" occurs enough times outside of a documentary that it can create some problems. I have found various links that refute parts of it and I could put them all together but technically speaking that would be annoying. It really is not up to this super-great standard though in my opinion as it misses much of the economic arguments.

*I* miss the point? You miss the point! Economists study all of that! They study labor, they study externalities such as pollution, they study sustainability, they deal with advertisements! I do not miss the point at all, this is something about an economic institute and yet the experts on economic institutes are NOT consulted. That is a blatant problem.

It leaves questions of one's credibility if one isn't. The reason I state that is because there is more complexity

Some of the things they mentioned are not externalities though. As was in the film the things stated did include things that were not 3rd party issues but rather issues between both parties involved. This includes the labor issue and also the advertisement issue on some level as well. The transaction is an interaction in its own right, not an externality. I know what an externality is though, I stated only the negative version as those tend to be stated more often as externalities as the positive ones are not viewed as problems.

Well, considering that most of the aspects of personhood are necessary for any corporation to work then yes, personhood is necessary. From wiki on corporations "As a legal entity the corporation receives legal rights and duties. Five rights always exist for a corporation: the ability to sue and be sued (this gives the corporation access to the courts); the right to a common treasury (this gives the right to hold assets separate from the assets of its members); the right to hire agents (this gives the corporation the right to hire employees); the right to a common seal (this gives the corporation the right to sign contracts); and the right to make by-laws (this gives the corporation the right to govern its internal affairs)" You can't remove most of those things without hurting the functioning of the corporation. Yeah, you really do miss something with that comment, what is the stock market? Banks are part of what I talk about, but stocks are the issue at hand. If there is no ability for the corporation to hold wealth, then it cannot reasonably function.
Right and corporate personhood is pretty much a necessity for any large human organization consisting of multiple owners. If a corporation made of workers is what you would like to see then it probably could be done.

With all due respect, and to add on to Awesomelyglorious said, to come to this conclusion you have to both ignore the history of the Soviet economy itself, as well as contradict the very people who claimed the massive centralized socialist Soviet system would inevitable would pass the United States economically. The U.S.S.R. certainly had plenty of natural resources, and an ability to coerce more resources as well as trade goods from it's vassals unlike anything the United States possessed.

At the time America began it's "dirty tricks" (an interesting term since the use of financial warfare could hardly be considered unexpected considered the Cold War in which the Soviet Union was conducting similar directed activies against the United States and it's allies) didn't really begin in full force until the Reagan administration. Many of these "tricks" consisted not of intentional sabotage directed at damaging Soviet industry and technology (through, for example, computers traded by US companies that malfunctions and caused damage to Soviet equipment due to secret embedded coding), but rather diplomatic efforts to cut off trade (reducing the an oil pipeline into Europe from two to one pipe), the arms buildup, and SDI.

However, any damage caused by the Americans (and numerous Soviet sources comfirm the damage, notably by the looming potential costs of SDI) does not eliminate the perilous state the overstretched Soviet empire was in as it entered the 1980s. There is no shortage of writings from the Soviet economics discussing the shortages, overstocks, the poor condition of materials, the lack of productivity due to government monopoly, ex cetera. These issues were not new, and, despite claims from apologists, were only intensified by the crash industrialization of the Stalinist era.

The appointment of Secretary Gorbachev, with powers unprecedented since Khrushchev, has everything to do with these facts. His unprecedented economic reforms were still too limited too save the Soviet economy. His political reforms gave up the communist monopoly and, ironically, helped bring about it's downfall.

Also: First off, don't tell me that a car company is just going to allow large numbers of bad parts that are going to break down and kill people. This would be utterly insane business. Why? First, they are going to get sued. Alot. Believe me. Families of victims are understandably upset and sometimes they sue everybody from people responsible to people with little to no responsibility at all, and the simple fact is juries are more likely to rule in favor of the grieving family the big mean corporation. Second, news of stuff like this is terrible publicity and means less cars sold. The news shows (remember the Dateline fiasco about making stuff up in regards to something like this some years back?) has no objection to running stories about big mean corporate meanies making cash off people killed in tragic circumstances.

Companies that have notoriously poor auto safety records attract negative media attraction and thus a poorer reputation. Companies that do otherwise gain the opposite and thus the market encourages companies to improve their record.

Automobile accidents have been declining for decades now, despite the fact that cars are smaller then they used to be partially due to environmental regulations.

Fine, I am going to go through this but by memory and by wiki.

Corporate personhood is something I have already dealt with the need of.

Sweatshops? http://web.mit.edu/krugman/www/smokey.html

That was written by trade economist Paul Krugman.

Monsanto? http://www.reason.com/news/show/36646.html

I'll give you the environment, but that does not call out for removing the corporation as other enterprises have done horrible in that regard. Don't believe me just look at the USSRs environmentalism. All it means is that we need to crack down on externalities.

Psychopath? Sure. That is desirable, if corporations didn't do their job then they would be bad institutions. They are designed to allocate resources. This ultimately means that they should make profit as that is the way to allocate resources. http://www.colorado.edu/studentgroups/l ... iness.html

Firing people? Sure, why not? They need to get rid of people sometimes so that way we can use human resources effectively. Some corporations don't like doing this, I know that Toyota doesn't. Toyota stays in business because its idea works.

Suicide gene? The problem is insufficient means of getting a good return on a non-suicide gene product. If there was no good return though, they would have innovated elsewhere.

Investors and others do benefit from changes if they know what they are doing, should that be a surprise?

Private property? Well, how do you deal with many of our problems without tying them in to human interests? We tend to be somewhat self-interested. A property system deals with that effectively as it allows us to benefit from being effective and it allows punishment for violating another.

Advertisement? Well: Free speech? Parental control?

Marketing and branding? So what? Don't live in the corporate town or buy from trader joe's or something.

Patent life forms? Well, I don't mind them patenting things if it encourages them to get things done.

Corporations working with the governments that they reside in? Sure. If you lived in Germany, you would have likely created Fanta too. In fact, to a great extent, demonization of the Germans happened because we didn't like them. We had our fascist supporters in the US, we didn't like the Jews too much either, they just went to war with us and we wanted to demonize them and laud our own ideas.

Butler and FDR? Well, at the time it looked like FDR was leading people on a bad path. He was intensely dislike in certain crowds for doing some things wrong in their minds and not only that but the environment was unstable. We had all sorts of crazy wannabe leaders roaming around trying to promote their own dream.

To some extent there is some controversy with the Bechtel issue as they claim that the local government raised the prices and that they just managed the water system and that ultimately it was not really their problem.

Now some of my statements are simply ones to argue against the corporation, a lot are what I believe though but you asked for me to look over it and argue against ideas within it.

No. My own understanding of economics is far from anything approaching expertise, and my own mind isn't really well tasked for such intricate tasks. However, I do think that fact is that the great majority of people (including even many intellectuals, media figures, and politicians) do not seem understand or simply cannot relate to may elements of basic elements of economists (such as how supply and demand, or prices operate) and this does greatly skew some of their thinking in this area..

That film is misguided lefttarded rubbish.

Corporations are beneficial to both the economy and society when regulated and run properly.

Viewing corporations as monsters which destroy society just shows how stupid that documentary is.

Corporations are will always be dangerous. Unless they take away personhood and servely limit their power. Corporations are destructive to society. I.E walmart.

Chances are that people will avoid it and the corporation will lose money.

Whatever we replace corporations with would be dangerous as well. As I mentioned earlier, removing their personhood would be to destroy their ability to do what they are designed to do in some cases. Ok, walmart exists, I think you have to go a few steps further to claim that they are destroying society, all I have seen them do is sell posters and gummy worms.

Walmart is predatory and injures local economies, it exploits its workers, owns sweatshops and busts unions. All for the sake of profits. You are so naive.

Injures local economies by providing them with cheap goods and efficient use of resources? Does exploitation exist within choice? Sweatshops which I have already defended as good? Refuses to work with certain organizations based upon its choice? All for the sake of efficient allocation of resources? I do not consider myself naive and your assertion that I am naive is a rather blind one. I did not ask you to make your claims because I had not heard these things before and had no knowledge of Wal-mart, but rather because I wanted you to set up the pins so that they could be knocked down.

It ruins local economies by runing locals out of business, sweatshops exploit the poor of the world, union busting is illegal and against human right. Awesome, I think you ought to be checked out. YOU have some sort of problem! Corporations suck, we have bee doig quite well without them. I propose we tear down coporations but retain a free market, we should allow co-ops and small businesses to thrive. And then the market can be free. Corporations have been also interfering with public universities. That is really bad they are messing with public property.

I support regulations to ensure good conditions. Outsourcing abroad is beneficial for corporations and foreign companies. In turn as the corporation grows, the economy back home grows. The workers in LEDCs have lower wages and living costs already, and jump at the job opportunity. The pay is likely more than they would recieve from an LEDC based company as well.
Whilst some people in MEDCs will lose out on low-skill jobs, they will find higher skill jobs elsewhere. People still have to run all the shops and maintain the machines.