February 5th, 2010
Corporations are people who can be very twisted
You know how the post 9/11 world is supposedly so different from the 9/10/2001 world? Well, America changed after 1/21 based on the US Supreme Court decision granting corporations person status. Here’s some twisted logic: A. Corporations are people. B. Corporations enjoy unchallengeable control over individual, non-unionized workers (now 92.8% of American non-government employees). C. Corporations can act without remorse or accountability — they can be psychopaths.
North America’s expert on psychopathy is Robert Hare. The documentary, The Corporation, explores the premise that businesses behave maliciously and without conscience. This DVD is recommended viewing.
Hare draws the analogy between people and corporations.
- superficial, style over substance
- grandiosity, we’re number one, none better
- manipulative, that’s what PR is for
- lacks empathy, hey it’s “just business” to rationalize cutthroat competition
- lacks remorse, anything goes if not caught, bonuses after economic crash
- does not accept responsibility for actions taken
- impulsive and reckless, especially in the absence of regulations
- focus on short-term, quarterly stockholder gains are all that matter
- poor behavioral control, irrational and quick to rage
- ignores consequences of their actions on others (the climate, workers, economy)
- actions harm others, anti-social
Tags: psychopath, Robert Hare, The Corporation DVD
This entry was posted on Friday, February 5th, 2010 at 11:56 am and is filed under Bullying Tutorials, Employer Action/Inaction. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
Hi,
I already knew that the supreme court had ruled that corporations are people.
What I don’t know is how society would be different if they weren’t deemed to be people.
Can anyone enlighten me?
Jay
Jay, That’s another American myth that is irreversible because of repetition throughout the years. It was a sentence in the head note to the Santa Clara case and not in the Supreme Court decision. But the guy died and it became legend and precedent. Corporations are chartered by states. Unlike people, when they misbehave, the state could end their existence. Read Thom Hartmann’s book “Unequal Protection” for the full story on the fabricated idea that corporations are people. GN
Corporations have incredible number of regulations to deal with. OSHA, WC, FDA, UL, ISO 9000, etc.
They have these requirements because they won’t voluntarily adopt procedures that make themselves good corporations.
I for one do not like regulations. They add cost and use time. Even so, corporations are not good corporations with regard to constructive work environments. Do we form regulations to tell managers, supervisors and executives how to behave toward their employees?
The answer is “YES” if they don’t voluntarily adopt sensible non-bullying practices.
We could make a minimal requirements on how to behave. Requirements that would prevent people from becoming targets.
These requirements could be new requirements or they could be added to the OSHA requirements.
Does anyone have comments?
Jay
Jay, Most of the countries with anti-bullying regulations have embedded them in their Occupational Health and Safety codes. Violations allow work stoppage in some places. However, they remain toothless because few fines are levied or they are too small to deter misconduct. Our own OSHA fines for death by accident is less than $10,000 (I think). GN