The Corporation is a 2003 Canadian documentary film and book critical of the modern-day corporation and its behavior towards society. The topics addressed include the Business Plot in 1933 when General Smedley Butler confessed his role in planning a coup against then U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt, the enclosure of the commons, economic externalities, the suppression of an investigative news story about bovine growth hormone on a Fox affiliate television station, and the Cochabamba protests of 2000 brought on by the privatization of Bolivia's municipal water supply by the Bechtel corporation. Other topics include corporate social responsibility and corporate personhood. The film focuses mostly on the concept of the corporation in North America, especially in the United States. Please support the film and the film makers.
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Farhad2000Part 2 is at http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=7365345393244917682&hl=en-CA
Current University academia unfortunately coincides with about everything outlined in this documentary. The corporate operating principle is pursuit of profits at all costs (at 16:30).
However this is changing as the consumer base realizes that it doesn't need to accept everything the corporate environment passes down on them (this is seen through the large net-roots movement). And new corporate innovators realize that a good public relationship and good community standing sells the brand with people, e.g. American Apparel and it's vertical integration.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/6369171.stm
OatmealThanks for posting this. Amazing (and kind of depressing) documentary.
Farhad2000Please understand one thing.
At 1:05, the discussion turns to Pollution Permits. This is not explored or explained fully. The fact is that we cannot force companies to stop polluting without attaching a market incentive to it. This doesn't mean that we sell off the entire world to corporations or private interests as the documentary states. The personal interests could be the American people just as well, keeping certain areas free of corporate development as part of say the US congress program on the preservation of American locales.
What it means is that we apply market principles to the Pollution, so pollution has a cost that can reflect on the company. This is important, as long as externalities are not accounted in the calculations of it's profits and revenues, nothing will be done about pollution. Because now, it's considered a external cost not considered within the company structure. Reducing pollution has to have a monetary benefit for the company and social benefit in the wider community with respect to company. Because the less the company pollutes the more it is allowed to trade it's pollution permits for profit, companies who don't go down this path only increase their costs to the point of being unprofitable every year. At the highest levels thus the need for minimizing pollution arises.
Remember that the public can always ascertain it's demands via it's politicians. By making certain issues central in the political climate and not just be receptive to the issues that politicians push on the people. Such as Bush's plan for Social Security. It was shot down because the people did not agree with it and the politicians reflected that, because if they didn't they wouldn't have been reelected the next year.
And this doesn't stop at pollution permits, this also applies to corporate taxes in the US that allow companies to have unreasonably high profits at the expense of loss of the tax base, and passing on these on to the middle class base which is rapidly diminishing.
That is why it's important to know these issues.
choggieserious change comes with sacrifice, ...if only for a week of withholding all commerce......But it's probly' going to take cataclysmic change to initiate something cause folks are too drunk with staying busy and obeying.......
Dragthe thing from the high tower, and beat it in unison with many small sticks....
theo47The fact is that we cannot force companies to stop polluting without attaching a market incentive to it.
Oh, yes we can. And do.
Markets are nice where we can create them, but Milton Friedman is dead.
It's time to stop bitching about regulation, already.
Farhad2000You can't force a CEO that is beholden to his shareholders to provide profit over social good to follow regulatory schemes, one needs to make it reflective in current business accounts for this idea not to get shot down in the current pro-lobby organization of goverment currently in Washington.
Nor is the public or media ready to be informed about the intricate nature of what pollution permits or regulation would mean for the American people. Big Telco in the US fighting Net Neutrality shows this.
Until I see this in the peoples concerns I will not give merit to simple idealogical assumptions that if it is right we must do it. The rest of the ruling class does not operate this way, because they act as economic agents of self service to their own wealth. Ironically they are usually the people who sit in control of these energy firms. So yeah...
Constitutional_PatriotGreat sift! *promote
Watch part II.. amazing journalistic work.
siftbotPromoting this classic video back to the front page; last published Monday, February 19th, 2007 9:43am PST - promote requested by Constitutional_Patriot.
bamdrewFarhad;"Reducing pollution has to have a monetary benefit for the company and social benefit in the wider community with respect to company. Because the less the company pollutes the more it is allowed to trade it's pollution permits for profit, companies who don't go down this path only increase their costs to the point of being unprofitable every year."
How could this work on an international stage, though? If you levy a strong system like this on U.S. businesses that sell products to, say, Wal-Mart, the monetary incentive to move to mexico/taiwan/china is inadvertently increased, right? Because God knows its gonna be a while before China starts taxing polluters... their still riding their industrial-age boom right now.
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calvados*promote
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calvados*documentaries *history *worldaffairs
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siftbotTags for this video have been changed from 'corporate, influence, capitalism, shareware, 86 mins' to 'corporate, influence, capitalism, shareware, award winning, 86 mins' - edited by calvados
siftbotTags for this video have been changed from 'corporate, influence, capitalism, shareware, award winning, 86 mins' to 'corporate, influence, capitalism, shareware, award winning' - edited by calvados
calvados^Oops, not a mere 86 mins long, I hadn't noticed the link to Part 2.
ThrobbinI know I'm not qualified but this could be *Canadian World Domination...
9651says...Democracy Breeds Greed...
Fedquip*promote
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fissionchips>> ^bamdrew:
How could this work on an international stage, though? If you levy a strong system like this on U.S. businesses that sell products to, say, Wal-Mart, the monetary incentive to move to mexico/taiwan/china is inadvertently increased, right? Because God knows its gonna be a while before China starts taxing polluters... their still riding their industrial-age boom right now.
Necro-reply: That's where the fascinating world of international relations comes in. It's a game theorist's wet dream, coming up with scenarios of who should act first, who should cut their trade barriers, who should enact barriers. A perfect storm of economics and politics.
Local pollution can be handled on a country by country basis, but global scale pollution (GHGs being a perfect example) requires a global framework that everyone can agree to. In that sense, climate change has nothing to do with the weather and everything to do with economic equality between nations.
calvados*canada
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eric3579*dead
Fix http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=3203253804055041031&ei=_vJSSqebGKCeqwOZ2qDDBg&q=The+Corporation&dur=3
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Norsuelefantti*dead atm
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BoneRemakeFUCKIN BURN IT !
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