The Corporation ;; Oh, How Blogging Slips Away

As the few people who are following me are aware, the quaint of my posts has diminished a huge amount. My last couple of posts have been put up only on inspiration for my Digital Media or Psychology class. Marks are nice, I enjoy getting good marks. Here's just one more example of me putting something onto my blog for marks. As I always say, I would wish to get back into Blogging a bit, but I don't think that is going to happen. I've gotten into playing a few games that have taken up my free time at home. In not all that long the weather will start to warm up again around my town and I will be more social along with that.

The Corporation Reply

In my Digital Media class we watched a documentary called 'The Corporation'. We also discussed some themes in it in my Psychology class. Here's what I have to say.

First of all, this documentary exposes how in depth corporation has nudged it's way into our society. No matter where you go, you will find it. It is everywhere, and it started off as a good idea. As so many good ideas start, they become exploited though. A corporation is a business, or group of businesses that act as a person. They act as an actual living human being, however though some legal issues and reasoning, they exist only for their own well being. A corporation may do what ever it wishes, as long as it is beneficial to itself and legal; well it should be legal. The actions a corporation takes are not always legal.

I do not think that the problem is as bad as it use to, and I suspect that there may be less of an issue in Canada (though that may just be my own biased thinking), however there have been cases where documents have been leaked to the public that the owners of these corporations did not want to be let out. Documents stating that what has been advertised is not true, and in many cases what is the truth is not even ethical. The example given in the documentary we watched was of dairy products advertised to have no antibiotics in them. This was far from the case. The dairy cows were being given a hormone to increase the amount of milk they produced. If the idea of an animal over producing what it should make natural is not enough, this caused more problems than awkwardness in walking. The increased milk production lead to infections that caused the milk to become tainted with blood and puss. To counter this the cows were given huge amounts of antibiotics, something that is passed into the milk. These cows were producing huge volumes of milk, tainted with not just blood and puss (less after the antibiotics) but antibiotics that can be harmful to humans directly and indirectly. It's a good thing that corporal secrets are leaked sometimes.

Back to the corporation, and it's legal standing as a human. It is just my opinion, but that is ridiculous. The purpose of this was so the owners could not be directly harmed, however the company itself could receive harm. This is much better than the owners being harmed, in the owners opinions. I don't know how the concept of a corporation came to be, but once a person is created it cannot be terminated by legal standings unless it does something deserving of capital punishment. It can be charged, it can be fined, but it will exists as long as the owners need it to. This immortal being has the ability to do what ever a normal person would, however with the bonus of phenomenal amounts of money.

Lets take some attention away from the company itself, and look more to the owners and high ranking members or employee's of these entities. They get payed a huge amounts of money, due to the businesses being so large. The large amounts of money being created is expected due to scaling. A child sitting at the side of the road may invest twenty dollars into the ingredients to make lemon-aid. Once this at-home operation sells out there may be a profit of ten dollars, perhaps more if the child knows what he or she is doing. Proportionally, a mom-'n-pa business may invest a few thousand dollars and get a similar 50% profit. This same profit percentage will give a few thousand dollars back. This is enough to grow with however. A simple ten dollar payback will give enough money to get more ingredients, but with a limited growth.

Now consider a company that has this profit margin of half of what it has invested. It invests a given amount of money, and gets the profit. Now it joins with other similar companies, or uses the money to not just expand the individual store, but to create more stores. Soon this one store is found in several communities. If this continues the one store could multiply and create a small economies empire. With the continued expansion or profit, it is expected that some business owners will have the cunning needed to make their business exceptionally profitable. At some point it will be easy to take out some of this profit and put it in your own pocket without damaging the business.

Here comes some corporate greed though. This large company will hire people who are unable to get the best jobs possible. The work does not need much education, so it is easy to obtain also. The working class; under the control of the rich class who controls the company-now-empire, now-corporation; is payed a very low wage. Often only enough to live off, with few luxuries.

How is this fair though? It would be understandable to pay low wages if the company is small, but if the head of the corporation is making enough money to add a wage increase to everyone who is under him or her and not notice a dent in their salary, shouldn't there be more payed out? The result is the same as it has been for hundreds of years, initially becoming overly predominate in the futile age. You start in the working class, you die in the working class. You can change social and economic classes, but chances are you won't.

There is so much that could be looked at regarding monetary values alone, but who else pays? Big business has gained a reputation for damaging the surroundings around it, and even worse, the areas away from it. The items that are created, are done so in far off lands where labor is cheaper due to poverty being in place already. The individuals in poverty may see this to be a great opportunity to get some money, but they will quickly find that working with toxic chemicals, having their environment polluted and the animals and plants around them becoming sick also leads to them to become sick. Have you ever considered how so many items cost so little at many large stores?

As already stated, the initial collection and processing of the ingredients to create this low priced item are obtained in parts of the world struck with poverty. To lower the price the waste is simply dumped instead of dealt with in an ecological process. This taxes the environment, so the rich corporation deity does not need to pay. Once the item is made, it will be shipped to a first world country as many who are reading this will be living in. The item is sold for little because it has cost little to make. To avoid raising the price any higher the workers are payed little, and they are not given the benefits that they should often.

What is the solution to this? Well we could just let the resources run out so that this model falls apart, but I don't think we will have time to do that. Instead there should be a redistribution of wealth.

Instead of the big money, big business, big corporation leaders being payed so much for management they should pay the workers more. This has been tried before, and it has been found that if the workers want to be at work; if they are payed enough, given what they need, respected, and put into positive environments; productivity goes up. Everyone wins? I think so. I think it's okay for the people in charge to take a slightly larger share, but not enough to put everyone else in it into the lower ranks of our society.

There needs to be more filtering of this also. More regulation to ensure it happens. There are systems in place, but they are not enough. Why not make a couple more jobs to employ those who are not? Everyone loves when more jobs are made. What if those jobs made were to make sure that everyone who has a job, is doing it the best they can due to the fact they are in the best environment they could be.