final essay

Griselda Mercado

Susie Huerta

English 1A

June 8, 2012

Corporations: A Terrible Entity

Our lives are full of propaganda telling us that we desperately need products that are

being sold. We are being charged the most that a corporation can charge for its product, while

the cost of production is much cheaper than what people are paying for the product. The

corporation is doing this tactic to reach its bottom line, which is to make as much profit as it can

for the least amount of expenses all for the sole purpose of increasing profits, and to please its

shareholders. Joel Bakan, author, and professor of Law at the University of British Columbia,

writes a novel, The Corporation, in which he reveals the true identity of the corporation. Bakan

goes in full detail of the mishaps that Corporations have done, some of which include exploiting

their workers, and putting profit above all else, including the safety of its customers. He also

describes how corporations build new companies in developing countries, because the cost of

labor is cheaper, and they can easily exploit the workers making them work in difficult

conditions, for multiple hours seven days a week. Joel Bakan also talks about social

responsibility, which is the obligation that corporations have towards society in which they don’t

emit much pollution into the air, and try to use recyclable material. Unfortunately, corporations

aren’t being socially responsible to society. The responsibility corporations should have to

society is to provide beneficial products to the general public, products that are safe and

efficient. The production of such products shouldn’t emit wastes, or pollution into the

environment, and corporations shouldn’t exploit the employees that provide their hard labor and

time for the production of such products.

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The customers are the ones that make it so corporations can continue selling products,

yet the products that are made are sometimes unsafe, and dangerous to the consumer. Bakan

points out in The Corporation that corporations have to pay large amounts of money to correct

their wrongdoings. Instead of paying for their misconduct they should make their product safe

for the consumer, it’s selfish and immoral for a corporation to put money over the safety of its

consumers. Joel Bakan says that in the view of corporations, it is immoral for the company to put

the safety of their consumers above their profit. If more profit comes by producing their product

in a way that is harmful for the consumer, then the company will make the product in the

harmful way. Bakan writes in his essay the example of a woman, Patricia Anderson who was

driving her 1979 Chevrolet Malibu car with her four children and she got rear-ended and her

vehicle burst into flames. Anderson and her children got terrible burns from the accident. The

reason why the car exploded was because the company who had made that car, General Motor

realized that if they inserted the gas tank a few inches closer to the back of the car, it would be

cheaper to make the car, and it would also make it faster which in return would make it so they

could sell more cars and earn more money in less amount of time. General Motors endangered

the lives of its consumers, and the only thing they did was pay the lawsuit, and their debt, they

still continued to make the cars in the way that was hurtful for the consumer. (Bakan 61-62)

Cars aren’t an essential product, yet they are beneficial to people, when they aren’t exploding

from the smallest bump. If people are paying large amounts of money for a product they should

not be paying for defective materials. Patricia Anderson is one of many people that have been

taken advantage of by corporations, because it is more convenient for a company to harm others,

rather than make the product safe for its consumers. Unfortunately this rip-off is not the only

way in which corporations are causing harm to its consumers.

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Even though, I don’t agree with corporations putting profit above all else including the

safety of its consumers, it has a valid reason for using this tactic. Anyone in their right mind

would do what’s best for them, I would make decisions based on what is better for me, the only

difference is that if my decision endangers others I wouldn’t make that decision. I can see why

corporations do this heinous crime, yet I believe that there should be a line as to how far

corporations should go in making their products, and putting other people’s lives in danger is

definitely crossing that line. It’s murder in disguise, the corporation is killing people and all they

have to do is pay a few fines for harming others. When a court ruled that General Motors had to

pay a significant amount of money to Patricia Anderson, the woman who got rear-ended in a

vehicle that had the gas tank positioned a little closer to the rear of the vehicle, the Chamber of

Commerce sent the jurisdiction to an appellate court arguing that the jurisdiction was unfair. The

Chamber of Commerce pointed that jurors are, “not well positioned to make accurate risk-utility

assessments in cases involving complex engineering issues… that they are sometimes led astray

by the fact that they see before them the injured plaintiff…” (Bakan 65) What the Chamber of

Commerce is trying to prove is that the lower level courts are basing their decisions on feelings,

and that they shouldn’t be that way, they have to look at the case in a different way. Bakan later

points out that the courts aren’t putting into account that the way of producing the cars is more

beneficial to the company and that it is “immoral” for the company to not manufacture the

product in such way that is harmful to the consumer. Although I believe that this argument about

lower courts deciding on the jurisdiction based on feeling is a very valid point, I still believe that

corporations should not put their profit above the safety of the consumer, and my judgment is not

based on feeling, but rather what I see as moral.

Corporations not only harm the general public by providing products that are defective,

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but the production of such products cause a lot of pollution and waste, corporations also lack the

courage to admit their misdeed. Bakan writes in his book about externalities, which are costs that

people pay when an entity produces something, those who pay are the ones who had nothing to

do with that production. These costs aren’t only financial; they also include the poison

surrounding people, and health issues that come with these emisions. These inconveniences are

causing problems in society, it is killing people, yet there is no stop to these pollutions,

corporations are finding loopholes to the laws placed against harming the environment. Pavan

Sukhdev, is the Founder-CEO of GIST Advisory, which is a firm in which they help

corporations manage their impact on natural, and human capital. He writes an

article, “Sustainability: The corporate Climate Overhaul”, in which he says how corporations

harm the planet, not only by emitting pollutants, but also by putting it’s wants and needs above

the consumers’. Then he talks about how sometimes people blame the consumer, when in reality

the problem of these externalities is caused by corporations.

As Sukhdev mentions, “Consumerism is often blamed, and consumers can indeed

make crucial choices on the basis of how much material and energy is used for

making, packaging and transporting goods. But on this road of economic choices, it is

corporations, not consumers, in the driver's seat, and they are driving us in the wrong

direction. Corporate advertising converts our insecurities into a chain of wants, needs and

excessive demands, which have made our ecological footprint exceed the planet's ability

to produce resources and absorb emissions — by more than 50%”

-WWF Living Planet Report 2012 (WWF, 2012).

Corporations are driving us toward destruction, and they even have the decency of blaming

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others for their decisions. This quote explains how corporations inflict insecurities and a lack of

confidence upon people for there to be high demand on their product, which takes away from

natural resources. Not only is our environment being polluted, but resources are being extracted.

The environment isn’t the only thing corporations are taking advantage of they are also

taking advantage of their employees. The employees are being forced to work the most that

corporations can make them work for the least amount of money. The corporations are

overworking their employees, and paying them way below the minimum wage since these

horrific conditions wouldn’t be allowed in developed countries, corporations have resided to

build their companies in developing countries. Joel Bakan, the author of The Corporation,

mentions how corporations build a company in developing countries with the public intent of

providing jobs, and bringing the developing country’s economy up, but their real intent is to

exploit the workers so that it can bring the corporation more profit. Bakan writes in his book how

the working conditions are in places like Honduras, Nicaragua, China, or Bangladesh.

“Behind its locked doors, mainly young woman workers are supervised by guards who

beat and humiliate them on the slightest pretext and who fire them if a forced pregnancy

test comes back positive. Each worker repeats the same action-sewing on the belt loop,

stitching a sleeve-maybe two thousand times a day. They work under painfully bright

lights, for twelve-to fourteen-hour shifts, in overheated factories, with too few bathroom

breaks, and restricted access to water (to reduce the need for more bathroom breaks)...”

(Bakan, 66)

It is more convenient for corporations to have companies in developing countries due to the

fact that the employees have no rights, whereas in developed countries they do. Such working

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conditions wouldn’t be acceptable in developed countries because people have more power,

while in developing countries the people have to be submissive to the corporation’s rules or be

fired, and because the people need the little money they earn they can’t afford to fight for their

rights. Once the corporation has exploited the workers so much that there is underproduction the

corporation closes the company down, and all the employees are left without work. Corporations

advertise that they help the developing countries by providing jobs, and money, but in reality the

only ones who are seeing money is the company, and when it stops earning as much as it was

before; it just picks up its belongings and leaves the country in worse conditions than how it was

before the company had arrived.

Corporations are taking over our world, and we have no say in it. Their emissions are

ruining the air we breathe, and no matter how much people fight to put more regulations on

them, they have enough power to override our fights. We are not safe; their products could be

defective and dangerous. Corporations cannot be trusted, yet they provide us with products that

benefit us, yet at the same time their products can harm us. Everything and everyone is in the

corporations grasp, even if a corporation has a company in the developed countries, countries on

the other side of the world are at risk of being exploited by corporations, not only their citizens,

but their natural resources as well. They can be deceiving and say their intentions are to help

countries, and provide beneficial products for people, but their actual intention is to earn as much

money as it can to make its shareholders happy.

Works Cited

Bakan, Joel. The Corporation: The Pathological Pursuit of Profit and Power. New York: Free, 2004. Print.

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Sukhdev, Pavan. "Sustainability: The Corporate Climate Overhaul." Nature. (n.d.): n. pag. Nature.com.

Nature Publishing Group. Web. 13 June 2012. <http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v486/n7401/

full/486027a.html>.