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CultLeaderPancake

- 3 months ago

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Are corporations only as good or evil as their customers?

Example: McDonalds... not inherently evil, they were just finding ways to get hot meals into the mouths of families as quickly and cheaply as possible. Their customers thought that by spending less money and time on food consumption, it would free up resources for other things in life.

Fast forward 60 years, we realize the bounty and pleasure of making slow-cooked meals with ingredients that actually spoil. And we're starting to see companies who sell to customers wedded to that philosophy.

To me, if you think a company is doing harm, don't buy from them and enlighten others of your discovery. I figure the exception to this would be corporations that use political might to write market share into law, but that's another story...

Are corporations only as good or evil as their customers? Are corporations just giving us what we think we want?

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The robbery is from the propagandist mental manipulation of the advertising industry, which has manufactured a society based on consumption in an infinite growth economic model. Problem is we live on a finite planet. The crime is the delusional idea that this can continue unabated, cost cutting = quality reduction, cost cutting also = higher profits. The third part of the equation in your question is investors. Where to they fit into your good and evil, if they hold their shares knowing the dangers of the activities of said corporation, perhaps they are real evil? Or maybe it's the system itself. Profit through the exploitative nature of the system to satisfy investor's desire to increase their portfolios.

You have to look at the practices of the company and grade what they are doing to their costumers in the present with more gravity than what they said they stood for back when they first started out. Free market economics is a competitive system and I don't see anything wrong with a little manipulation because business is business, sometimes it's harsh. If the corporations only objective is increasing profit at the excessive exploitation of resources, employees and profit than the corporation is evil, just like a villain in a Disney movie.

One the other side, all consumers are definitely not innocent sweet victimized princess. Most "problematic" consumers are ones that are not even well meaning, that are just fat, selfish and insistently ignorant. But even with that realization one has to wonder if these people were glutenous BEFORE or after the age of the corporation. Perhaps a business like McDonald's isn't just selling hamburgers but in the last 60 years has been creating its own perfect consumer that will just eat it's sh*t and die. People don't seem to mind that their fellow man is being corralled into a lifetime slaughterhouse system. Sound familiar (psst, n***s).

Not everyone can put their money where their mouth is. Some people have to dress there children in clothing made in Cambodia and feed them less nutritional food or less varied diets. NOT EVERYONE CAN HAVE A PHILOSOPHY ABOUT HOW THEY EAT, unless that philosophy is what is on-sale at the grocery store but people can try to avoid things that harm them and our society should work to educate and proliferate better nutrition.

Even people who shop organic as much as possible eat cheeseburgers once in a while.

People are increasingly lazy.

Eat lazy = get fat
Pay someone instead of DIY = go broke

Corporations are conscience-less machines. They're not human, so we can't blame then.

The blame is spread.
The owners of a company make the decisions that guide the company. The consumers enable the company by doing business with them. It gets more complicated when you realize that companies hide things from consumers. This isn't hard because most consumers don't want to know these things. Advertizing further complicates things by effectively conditioning people into ideal consumers (for the company) from a young age.

The only true goal of a corporation is to make the biggest profit through any possible way the can. In many times through history this has come at the expense of the consumers themselves. It is becoming more and more difficult not to have to buy from these massive corporate entities. There are fewer and fewer alternatives out there to turn to. It is up to us to protect our interest from these large organizations, and to do that our governments have to be made to serve the people again. Private money needs to get out of politics.

Market forces are complex, and to say corporations are evil or that customers are evil is to miss that fact. The field of economics exists for a reason. Generations of economists have been unable to successfully and reliably predict the behavior of markets for a reason.

Is the person with a meager salary who shops around for the best price, and ends up at WalMart evil? No, they are part of a complex system. Is the cashier at WalMart evil? Are they evil if they grab a burger at McDonald's when they're tired, at the end of their double shift? What if the WalMart job was the only one they could get, and the McDonald's is beside the door on their way out?

"the bounty and pleasure of making slow-cooked meals with ingredients that actually spoil" is a luxury to someone who can't afford to stock perishable ingredients (and risk waste), and who hasn't got the time to make slow-cooked meals, because they're working two minimum wage jobs in order to feed themselves and their children.

I don't think an evil customer has much to do with a corporation or executives of said corporation making vile decisions. The customer just wants services or goods. Not an evil deed. However, a corporation can make evil decisions by relocating to a third-world country and violating rights that may not be present in America. I understand what they're trying to do - supply the demand in the most cost effective way possible. Can this be done without being immoral? Fux yeah. But I'm afraid most people just aren't aware of the vast majority of grimy goop some of these corporations are up to. Lots of money goes into keeping things quiet... and it works. For all I know, the blanket that keeps me warm at night was stitched up by a 13 year old kid in Pakistan that gets beat by his or her superior for shoddy craftsmanship. Does that make me, the consumer, evil? No.

Uhm, I rely on fast food as I don't like to cook, that does not make me "evil".

McDonalds had a good idea post WWII, but have gone way past that now and most of us know it too. There food is laden with chemicals and substances bad for us. Some have to eat it, for a sandwich for $1, when you don't have funds or resources to fix food, will keep you from starving to death.

We didn't do this. They did this. We didn't say, "... well I want my fries to look darker so put chemicals in them." They did that.

They did it. We bought it and some still do.

Corporations are to me the most dangerous thing in the US, probably the world; not all, but many.

they sell sh*t, and people eat it.

"Are corporations only as good or evil as their customers? Are corporations just giving us what we think we want?"

I think they are simply servicing markets.

And while it is the customers who make or break a corporation, something has to be said about the evolving mission statement of the company over time. The most common mission statement these days, is "to make money (while providing a service)". Not that long ago a more common mission statement was "to provide a service (while making money)".

A seemingly small difference in vision. But perhaps a huge watershed in the clientele attracted.

we have to have ways of regulating - or slaves will continue to be used in Africa to harvest the chocolate everybody demands stays as cheap as 1 minutes US wages, one month of African worker's....

corporations do not plan for the future properly - ravaging the environment is just one aspect where they need good legislation. and enforcement...
which requires that government and police forces are not in cahoots and are non corruptible...

mmmm work to do there...

As far as people saying that low income families eat this garbage because it saves them cash that's crap. It's incredibly easy to get food stamps if you have low income and especially children. I have myself and my son to support and if we ate McDonald's twice a day it would cost me roughly $140.00 dollars a week. About the same as going to the market and maybe a little more. Pff...No thanks At this point if you live in a city with 58 McDonald's locations, I'm fairly damn certain it has a few libraries too. We are responsible if we choose to eat that crap all the time. Just like the smoker knows he's risking his health every time he lights up. And yes. They are giving people what they want. All the cash that keeps rolling in is a good indicator of this. I don't want it so I don't buy. shrug

Let's all dance around the free market maypole! As if. Simple answers... You nuts act as if corporations don't do everything in their power to create appetites and monopolies, short change the consumer, subvert the democratic process and judicial system, ignore their responsibilities to their workers, countries and humanity in general. Who has the time or inclination to go through the long history of the oil companies and American automobile corporations manipulations over the decades for example, every time you goofs get a wild hair? Do you think it is an accident that America has such poor mass transit and railroads when the rest of the developed world doesn't. Do you think it was the consumers who killed the electric car 20? years ago? Your incredibly inefficient paradigm has only worked to the extent that it has because of unrealistic and now unsustainable energy prices. Your paradigm requires us to be at war constantly to pick up the slack. Most of the military industrial complex is disguised corporate welfare. You believe in a system of public risk and private gain and there always has to be more of both. Social security isn't a Ponzi scheme. At the level of the big players, your economic system is. And the banks and corporations keep getting bigger and more irresponsible. Upper management doesn't even need to succeed to prosper. They hold guns to all our heads and dare us not to go along.

Yup. Nobody has ever been forced to shop at Walmart or eat McDonald's or use gasoline. All these things people do voluntarily.

Would things be better if someone were to step in and "protect us" from our bad decisions? That's debateable. It probably depends on how intelligent and prudent that someone is.

McDonalds advertises known addictive substances and carcinogens to children and appeals to parents by providing them with meals that they don't have to work on. They get most of their meat products by stuffing living creatures into pens and wire cages their whole lives where they get mutilated and abused by their keepers and then they get their throats slit so they choke on their own blood after just choking on the smell of their own urine and feces their whole lives. That's pretty effing evil, man. If I were standing on the corner pushing crack that was made by mistreated slaves on kids then I'm pretty sure most people would be very much against that.

Hence why I stopped buying fast food. I place less blame on the people buyin' the stuff. For one, it's highly addictive. Also, lots of people simply don't know how terrible that stuff is yet. But I do think it's awful of some people to simply ignore the reality of the stuff they buy and I can also blame myself for that. This laptop was made by Chinese worker-slaves... We're not the ones enslaving but we're certainly consenting with our dollars. I was contemplating this yesterday at work where I do security for a company that sells chinese sweatshop clothes at highly inflated prices and I was picturing all those factories with suicide nets... I'm quitting. Complicity ain't as bad as the crime but it's still bad.

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@CultLeaderPancake Dallas

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Are corporations only as good or evil as their customers?

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People are increasingly lazy.

Eat lazy = get fat
Pay someone instead of DIY = go broke

Corporations are conscience-less machines. They're not human, so we can't blame then.

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Uhm, I rely on fast food as I don't like to cook, that does not make me "evil".

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they sell sh*t, and people eat it.

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Are corporations only as good or evil as their customers?

People are increasingly lazy.Eat lazy = get fatPay someone instead of DIY = go brokeCorporations are conscience-less machines. They're not human, so we can't blame then.

Uhm, I rely on fast food as I don't like to cook, that does not make me "evil".

they sell sh*t, and people eat it.

What's Next?

People are increasingly lazy.

Eat lazy = get fat
Pay someone instead of DIY = go broke

Corporations are conscience-less machines. They're not human, so we can't blame then.