World Issues Homework Nov. 14, 2012: The Corporation

1.
a) In the documentary, “The Corporation” the producers attempt to spread the message of how corporations only care about maximizing their profits without any regard for the negative consequences that come with it. They use the term externality to describe how the modern-day corporation makes decisions with the intentions of putting the burden from any negative outcomes onto a third-party.
b) At the beginning of the documentary the producers explain how corporations have been legally granted the notion of personhood. This allows a corporation the ability to sue or be sued in court. The producers creatively decided to analyze the corporation psychologically as if it were a person with the capability for logic. A checklist was created in attempt to determine if the corporation is a psychopath. Some examples of requirements on the list included; “Incapacity to maintain enduring relationships”, “reckless disregard for the safety of others”, “deceitfulness repeated lying and conning in order to make profit”, and “unable to admit guilt”. The producers came to the conclusion that all of these traits mentioned above are similar to those of a psychopath.
c) An issue that was stated in the movie was in relation to the checklist requirement, “incapacity to maintain enduring relationships.” Corporations are manufacturing products in developing countries where labour wages are near to nothing. They found Nike documents that showed for each product made in the Dominican Republic the labour force creating the product was making only one-eighth of a penny. Another issue that occurs in large corporations is the disregard for the environment. An example was shown where a paper plant, instead of properly disposing the chemicals left-over from production they were poured into a local river. In the video the river was visibly polluted. Corporations will promote the use of products even with the knowledge of potential health problems. The Fox News Corporation had several law suits against them for refusing to report on a story accusing the Monsanto company of creating a chemical that is not only inhuman for animals, but also causes health problems for humans who are exposed to it. This is likely due to a conflict of interest between the news network and Monsanto.
d) The documentary creators believe that the modern corporation has many problems, but there isn’t a single person to blame. We saw examples of CEO’s, who were not aware of the problems that were occurring from their company’s success. In the case where a protesting group targeted the CEO of Shell’s home. They