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The Corporation
I saw The Corporation last night at Landmark Ken with ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
whitewhale, up in Kensington on Adams Avenue just East of Normal Heights. I first encountered this film at the San Francisco International Film Festival, but it was sold out there (instead I watched about two thirds of Route 181, a road trip along the UN partition of Israel/Palestine), and then it's taken its merry time to come down to San Diego for a one-week run.
It's a good film because it presents quite a lot of issues, but I don't think they're all uniquely tied to "corporations." The notion of 'Corporate Personhood' is attacked on the basis that a corporation can at best be a person without a conscience, motivated only by shareholder value, i.e. "greed". Many corporate abuses are chronicled, but few alternatives are given. Nonetheless, I agree with most of the criticisms, most along the lines of "a corporation will do anything to make a buck."
- we were handed a pamphlet crying for an end to "corporate personhood," complaining that, since corporate personhood came about as a result of a supreme court action and not an act of the legislature, corporate personhood is illegitimate because "judges can't make laws; only the legislature can make laws." It really annoys me when I hear things like this. You can't be a champion of judicial review when the courts interpret the law to require, for instance, same-sex marriage, but then cry "judicial activism" when they create corporate personhood. This is particularly hilarious, because "judicial activisim" is traditionally a Republican complaint. Personally, I think the judicial branch is the one branch of government that seems to carry out its duty in a well-informed, rational way.
I'm not against 'corporate personhood'. Transnational corporations, on the other hand, are scary.
- corporations commit a wide array of atrocities on the way to producing a product that people will buy for as little cost as possible. This film puts the blame entirely on corporations. But the fact of the matter is that they are driven entirely by consumer demand. Nobody will actually say that they want to club a baby seal in order to wear a designer t-shirt, but when they vote with their money, that's exactly the decision that they've made. The fact that people still drive their SUV to Wal-Mart to buy Nikes is evidence that consumers Don't Really Care. Style and price seem to be the only determining factors in what people buy. (I put 'style' before 'price' due to amazement at the markup on 'designer' wares.) People vote one way in the democratic process (most people express concern about the environment, their community, etc), but contradict themselves in the marketplace.
One way is to change the rules. If all corporations are held to strict environmental, labor, and other standards, then you can safely choose the most stylish / cheapest product and know that all products available to you were created under similarly environmentally-conscious means.
- This illustrates a big problem with democracy. A direct democracy will give the majority of the people exactly what the want, even if it is the enslavement of 49% of the population. Capitalism is, without a doubt, the most efficient and most productive system for giving people what they want. Of course, it's also a system that makes them want a lot of these things in the first place. Like enslaving 49% of the population so that 51% of the population can live in permanent retirement, it's not a good idea to give people exactly what they want. That's why our government has regulations that restrict the scope of laws and the extent of freedom. That's why we have labor and environmental regulations. That's why we have a representative democracy. And so on.
- Another criticism of corporations that is given is that they have a tendency to fire people, to lay off workers. It's inappropriate to complain about layoffs without also mentioning that corporatiosn also hire people in the first place. I'm all for job security, but requiring that corporations never lay off workers is ridiculous.
- Much is made of the fact that a corporation is responsible only to its shareholders, but not to the community, its employees, or anyone else. So, the question is, who are the shareholders? And how do they benefit? These days most corporations are owned almost entirely by (1) a few extremely rich people, and (2) mutual funds, retirement funds, etc. Ownership by mutal funds and retirement accounts seems sort of democratic because it means that the corporation is owned by "the people," but it's not really, since those people generally have no say in the running of the companies they collectively own. Why? Because the accounts are managed by banks who are given given the mission of increasing 'shareholder value'. If more corporations were owned directly by individual persons who actually took the time to vote in quarterly corporate elections, it's possible the course of a corporation could be influenced in a more 'democratic' way.
You see, when you own stock in a company, you own a part of that company. Periodically throughout the year, they send you reports on what the corporation is doing. Then you have an opportunity to vote on a small number of corporate issues, and also choose the corporate leaders. There's also a box that says "let the board of directors vote for me." Because most stock is held indirectly (via mutual funds, pension funds, etc), it's almost always this option that is exercised.
- so we see that the point of a corporation is to maximize "shareholder value". big problems come in because a corporation affects lots of people other than its shareholders. It affects its workers (through working conditions, compensation, and job security) and it affects the areas in which the corporation operates (Phil Knight, who runs Nike, never visited the Indonesian sweatshops in which their products were assembled; shareholders don't usually live in the areas that their corporation is deforesting, strip mining, etc). There is a very neat solution to this: have the employees and affected community members be the shareholders. We call this a "co-op".
whitewhale, up in Kensington on Adams Avenue just East of Normal Heights. I first encountered this film at the San Francisco International Film Festival, but it was sold out there (instead I watched about two thirds of Route 181, a road trip along the UN partition of Israel/Palestine), and then it's taken its merry time to come down to San Diego for a one-week run.It's a good film because it presents quite a lot of issues, but I don't think they're all uniquely tied to "corporations." The notion of 'Corporate Personhood' is attacked on the basis that a corporation can at best be a person without a conscience, motivated only by shareholder value, i.e. "greed". Many corporate abuses are chronicled, but few alternatives are given. Nonetheless, I agree with most of the criticisms, most along the lines of "a corporation will do anything to make a buck."
- we were handed a pamphlet crying for an end to "corporate personhood," complaining that, since corporate personhood came about as a result of a supreme court action and not an act of the legislature, corporate personhood is illegitimate because "judges can't make laws; only the legislature can make laws." It really annoys me when I hear things like this. You can't be a champion of judicial review when the courts interpret the law to require, for instance, same-sex marriage, but then cry "judicial activism" when they create corporate personhood. This is particularly hilarious, because "judicial activisim" is traditionally a Republican complaint. Personally, I think the judicial branch is the one branch of government that seems to carry out its duty in a well-informed, rational way.
I'm not against 'corporate personhood'. Transnational corporations, on the other hand, are scary.
- corporations commit a wide array of atrocities on the way to producing a product that people will buy for as little cost as possible. This film puts the blame entirely on corporations. But the fact of the matter is that they are driven entirely by consumer demand. Nobody will actually say that they want to club a baby seal in order to wear a designer t-shirt, but when they vote with their money, that's exactly the decision that they've made. The fact that people still drive their SUV to Wal-Mart to buy Nikes is evidence that consumers Don't Really Care. Style and price seem to be the only determining factors in what people buy. (I put 'style' before 'price' due to amazement at the markup on 'designer' wares.) People vote one way in the democratic process (most people express concern about the environment, their community, etc), but contradict themselves in the marketplace.
One way is to change the rules. If all corporations are held to strict environmental, labor, and other standards, then you can safely choose the most stylish / cheapest product and know that all products available to you were created under similarly environmentally-conscious means.
- This illustrates a big problem with democracy. A direct democracy will give the majority of the people exactly what the want, even if it is the enslavement of 49% of the population. Capitalism is, without a doubt, the most efficient and most productive system for giving people what they want. Of course, it's also a system that makes them want a lot of these things in the first place. Like enslaving 49% of the population so that 51% of the population can live in permanent retirement, it's not a good idea to give people exactly what they want. That's why our government has regulations that restrict the scope of laws and the extent of freedom. That's why we have labor and environmental regulations. That's why we have a representative democracy. And so on.
- Another criticism of corporations that is given is that they have a tendency to fire people, to lay off workers. It's inappropriate to complain about layoffs without also mentioning that corporatiosn also hire people in the first place. I'm all for job security, but requiring that corporations never lay off workers is ridiculous.
- Much is made of the fact that a corporation is responsible only to its shareholders, but not to the community, its employees, or anyone else. So, the question is, who are the shareholders? And how do they benefit? These days most corporations are owned almost entirely by (1) a few extremely rich people, and (2) mutual funds, retirement funds, etc. Ownership by mutal funds and retirement accounts seems sort of democratic because it means that the corporation is owned by "the people," but it's not really, since those people generally have no say in the running of the companies they collectively own. Why? Because the accounts are managed by banks who are given given the mission of increasing 'shareholder value'. If more corporations were owned directly by individual persons who actually took the time to vote in quarterly corporate elections, it's possible the course of a corporation could be influenced in a more 'democratic' way.
You see, when you own stock in a company, you own a part of that company. Periodically throughout the year, they send you reports on what the corporation is doing. Then you have an opportunity to vote on a small number of corporate issues, and also choose the corporate leaders. There's also a box that says "let the board of directors vote for me." Because most stock is held indirectly (via mutual funds, pension funds, etc), it's almost always this option that is exercised.
- so we see that the point of a corporation is to maximize "shareholder value". big problems come in because a corporation affects lots of people other than its shareholders. It affects its workers (through working conditions, compensation, and job security) and it affects the areas in which the corporation operates (Phil Knight, who runs Nike, never visited the Indonesian sweatshops in which their products were assembled; shareholders don't usually live in the areas that their corporation is deforesting, strip mining, etc). There is a very neat solution to this: have the employees and affected community members be the shareholders. We call this a "co-op".
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