The Corporation is an outstanding institution nowadays; it is dominant and constraining. The Media plays an important tool in brainwashing many human minds into believing perceived truths, but also into feeling the need of making unnecessary purchases. The Corporation is the greatest paradox of all times, it creates huge assets but causes, many times, great harm.
People at the corporation work, like a family unit, to achieve a common goal; their goal is to dominate the market. Nevertheless, it is extraordinarily powerful and can influence people´s lives easily. It is also, in negative perspective, a a monstrosity that wants to swallow as much profit as possible and sees no stop in trying to take the whole business sphere, stepping over people´s good intentions and over the well-being of the planet.
The corporation is the most important daughter of the Industrial and modern revolution that seeks efficiency and profit of surplus value. It is the quaint essential house of Capitalism and can be traced form its beginnings. Limited liability is intended when creating a Corporation or a legal person. Persons are no longer responsible by its failures and danger can be barrelled into a legal manipulation of immaculate image. Their only concern is to profit properly for its shareholders and owners.
Recently they have come to care about the environmental issues that should concern everybody. Living in a world with limited resources and having nowhere else to go as a planet, Corporation must be concerned about not spoiling, affecting or damaging the Earth. Many corporations are only profit motivated that even if they do something good for the community, it is all for self advantage.
The problems of the Corporation vary in range from Toxic waste, Misery wages, Union busting, among others, and they all come down to the idea of Corporation not caring for the human being but only for their pockets. Chemicals and especially fungicides are polluting the environment and making crops poisonous. Transgenics are also a big risk to human and public health. And they just don´t care, they replace one problem with a solution which is a new problem and so on.
Finally, in other words, Corporations will so anything to convince you that they are doing a noble job, when in fact they are profiting from your work, your health and your time, to become richer and richer not caring for the next person around.
Lies are rampant. They lie to convince you, to tranquilise the public and to keep on profiting without caring. They feel no guilt. Be careful.
Now let solve the questions that were formulated in the presentation...
1. How can we ensure corporations are held accountable for their actions “ethically” and “legally” ?.
Only if we change the legal system and the political framework in which Corporations operate we will be able to punish Corporations when doing harm. In the movie somebody said “if I pull a gun and kill you, that is criminal... now, if a spray some chemical that causes death on you but many years after, that is criminal too”, therefore Corporations must be held responsible the same as any other person in the legal system.
2. Should individuals (directors, employees, shareholders) bear any responsibility for the actions of a corporation ?. If so, to what degree ?.
Of course, anybody that represents a company, speaks on its behalf a must be account responsible for its malfunctioning. The degree of responsibility that the professional must be accountable for depends on the hierarchical scale of its job.
3. What are the benefits of the corporate form ?. Could an alternative model offer these as well ?.
The benefits were told in the movie... a Corporation has no soul so it cannot be condemned and it has no body so it cannot be imprisoned. It is like a inmortal person on the legal field.
4. Search for a foreign multinational corporation that has operations in Colombia. Research if they are run under Colombian rules or regulations or if they have special regulations ?.
Every was worried when the USA military bases were going to be opened in Colombian soil, the US Army could be treated or seen as a Corporation and the big debate was: What if an American soldier committed a fault in Colombia, would he be judged under American or Colombian justice laws. That was the biggest jurisdictional dilemma in the opening of these bases.
5. Should economic efficiency (Main argument for privatization) be the primary concern for commons and public services ?. Are there other criteria to determine who should own or operate them ?.
I think privatization is a good tool to make former State owned enterprises become more efficient. They tend to modernise their processes and equipments in order to keep up and not being left behind by competence. I think it is fair to say that privatization is quite convenient for the public in general.
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