On Mon, 30 Jul 2001, Gregory Himes wrote:

> A major reason many see govt (vs. corporate) as evil is because of the
> power involved, both in the ability to corrupt -- in govt and civil
> servants you find people abusing others to make themselves fell better,
> in corporations, this may occur internally, but the power aspect
> usually involves some sort of monetary theft more than trampling
> hundreds of consumers.  Also is the scope -- in abuse by the
> government, unless you are powerful or rich (almost the same thing),
> the typical citizen is powerless against whatever the faction involved
> does -- in corporate form, doing this in an obvious fashion gets you
> unwanted media coverage (just look at the recent Firestone stuff), and

So what? People don't really care if it happens far away. Large companies
do *easily* as serious shit as bad governments. Everyone who cares knows
that a lot of Nike stuff is made by children under horrid conditions in
third world countries, but people keep buying it because they run cool
ads. Shell pollutes an entire country (Nigeria), killing hundreds of
people indirectly, and when someone mounts a protest, they get
assassinated. Yet if they stopped doing it, people would protest violently
against having to pay more for gasoline.

The difference is that a modern government is at least *in theory*
required to strive for the good of all its citizens, while a publically
traded corporation is not required to do anything except make profit
to satisfy the shareholders who care about little else except the value
of their stocks. It's a fine way to profit from heinous crimes without
even having to know that they happen.


Michael "Brazil" Borgwardt --- Member of #WASHU# and Her would-be guinea-pig.
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