Response to Ian Wooden on Kiadso’s post “The Silliness of CSR (Corporate Social Responsibility)”
http://www.rethos.com/news/view/626-The-Silliness-of-CSR-Corporate-...
I like to see corporations as well, but only to learn about their practices. The fact that they are on this site most certainly does not mean that they are courageously trying to make a difference by throwing themselves at our mercy. It means, we are a profitable market, and they are trying to get us to buy their stuff any way they can. Now I think this is a great idea. Let’s tell them what we want.
We want you, corporations, to pay laborers a standard minimum wage… 10 dollars an hour. We want you to become directly accountable to the public, meaning, if a community decides they don’t want you around, you have no right to set up shop. Wal-mart, I’m talking to you.. in Austin, Texas you are taking over Northcross mall and people are very upset about it. Please leave. We want you all to advertise on your product and on your commercials your labor practices, your percentage of profits given back to communities, results of independent studies comparing similar products, death and injury resulting from your practices, animal treatment, number of anti-trust violations, and other things I’m sure I’m leaving out. This type of advertising would undoubtedly slaughter profit-margins..public relations is a massive massive industry because psychology can be used to get people to buy things without actually making the “thing” better – it is a despicable, corrupting practice, and would essentially be done away with.
If DOW advertised its testing practices and deaths caused it would hemorrhage money. If IBM advertised its prior nazi support it’s profits would take swan dive. If KFC plastered its abuse of chickens on every bucket the ensuing shareholder lawsuit would be over before Judge Judy’s first commercial break.
Oh, and, corporations, you can’t own two or more businesses whose coinciding interests disrupt democracy. G.E. you’re out. G.E owns NBC, and is a war contractor. NBC, as a media station, should disseminate information in an unbiased way, but how can it? With profits as the sole motivating factor, It would be silly NOT to use NBC to make war more likely..people love war-related media which increases advertisement value, and war means big aircraft, water treatment, etc. contracts. Imagine Halliburton bringing you news. In fact, Halliburton is a good comparison. Former CEO, Dick Cheney, is our Vice President. GE director, Sam Nunn, was senator of Georgia for 27 years. If that’s not a conflict of interest I don’t know what is. So you also can’t share politicians, OK corporations? And no lobbying as well, it’s not right to change the laws so you can make more money at our expense. AT&T and Comcast, stop lobbying to eliminate net neutrality so you can make a few more bucks, we like our websites being equal in cyberspace(I’d like to know your opinion on net neutrality, Ian). Rethos shouldn’t be disadvantaged by Change.org because Chang.org paid Comcast to have it load faster (not true to my knowledge). G.E might pay to have its websites load faster than DemocracyNow.org because Democracy Now dissuades people from supporting a war. All these things are kind of a bummer on that profit-margin..but that’s what we want.
In sum, if corporations did what we think they should do, a wave of suicides would wash over Wall Street.
Do you see the depth and width of the web we face. And rest (or don’t) assured it is a hard web to cast off, it is tenacious, powerful, and armed to the teeth with a ferocious greed and awesome power (something like half of the world’s 100 biggest economies are corporations). This web, undemocratically and unaccountably, reaches almost every aspect of your life, bowing only in the presence of profits. Why would we want a structure like this dominating our lives, if we had a say, we wouldn’t have them act this way.
For precisely this reason, we forge our say.. by creating structures that give everyone a voice, that allow those most affected by decisions to affect the decisions. I’m sure the residents of Richland, Washington would like to at least have known when GE released large amounts of radiation into the air to see how far it would travel. The soldiers who worked with Agent Orange would’ve appreciated a heads-up from DOW about its demonically deforming effects. It is our responsibility to do away with a system that encourages this type of behavior. The incentives run the wrong way – toward corruption not honesty, distortion not clarity, ignorance not enlightenment, authoritarianism not democracy. We can create a system with honorable and just mechanisms – we are human beings, the most complex information processing entities in the known universe. If we cannot come up with a freer and fairer way of producing goods and services, then I say we deserve the inevitable fate of corporatism.
