Why are people so suspicious of Big Business in the Western world ?

[Az]

nye you commie...

[VetLegion]

Originally posted by Hueij
Hmm... India... Union Carbide India, Limited (UCIL)...

Wasn't there this little incident in 1984?

aneeshm you didn't reply to this...

[VetLegion]

Originally posted by aneeshm
A small clarification - these businesses have almost no political power . These family businesses have never had any such scandals associated with them yet , and though it may be just a matter of time , how is it that no such scandals have occurred even though some of these families have businesses going back over a hundred and fifty years ?

Who owns the press and other media?

[:) Smiley]

Union Carbide was not exactly an Indian company either.

[Lefty Scaevola]

Re: Why are people so suspicious of Big Business in the Western world ?

Originally posted by aneeshm
Why are people so suspicious of Big Business in the Western world ?

Because many people know how wickedly they would behave if they had the money and power of big business.

[aneeshm]

Originally posted by VetLegion


aneeshm you didn't reply to this...

Because I wasn't there . And two things :

a) Union carbide was not an Indian company . What the Bhopal Gas tragedy accomplished was to make Indians view foreign multinationals with suspicion , and look with even more pride/expectations to Indian owned companies .

b) Union carbide is not family-owned .

[Zkribbler]

Originally posted by DRoseDARs
Two words: Robber barons
Three more words: The Gilded Age

The story of corporate corruption and just plain bad citizenship goes must further than that.

In the ealiest railroad dates, laws were passed granting railroads immunity from their smokestack sparks setting buildings on fire.

For decades they fought off any attempt to regulate them. When a state try to impose health and safety regulations, the railroads succcessfully blocked them with the interstate commerce clause, arguing that only the feds could regulate them. When the federal government tried to regulate railroads, they successfully argued that federalism mandates health and safety regulations to the states.

There was that infamous fire in a New York sweatshop, where hundreds of young seamstresses perished because the exit doors had been nailed shut.

The Union Pacific, in its early days, had one asset--enough money to send a lobbyist to Washington. He obtained such large government subsidies that permitted the entire railroad to be build. And of course, the railroad then drove farms out of business and so snatch up their lands at firesale prices.

During the 20's & 30's, American "muckrakers" turned up abuse after abuse. My favorite was selling a diet aid that turned out to be tapeworms.

Right before the stock market crash, it was discovered that the largest corporation traded on the Pacific Exchange (Julian Oil) consisted of watered stock.
But only three men when to jail -- the coporate President and the Treasurer got short sentences; and then the LA District Attorney was successfully prosecuted for taking bribes.

Investigations into the Chash of '29 reveals a plutheroa of banking and corporate frauds. A whole system of safeguards were inacted, which have largely been repealled in the past few years as part of "deregulation."

The go-go years of the 80s, Milken and those crooks were robbing people blind. The Lincoln Saving & Loan Scandle alone resulted in losses greater than all the bank robberies in US history put together.

The corporate and energy crisises of a few years ago shook out more corporate thieves. There's that great voice recording of Enron people laughing because grannies were losing their life savings. Enron along with others stole billions from Californians by illegally manipulating energy prices.

At the beginning of the Bush administration, the oil companies were invited behind closed doors to write America's energy program. Since then, gasoline prices have nearly doubled.

[MRT144]

Originally posted by aneeshm


Because I wasn't there . And two things :

a) Union carbide was not an Indian company . What the Bhopal Gas tragedy accomplished was to make Indians view foreign multinationals with suspicion , and look with even more pride/expectations to Indian owned companies .

b) Union carbide is not family-owned .

"because I wasnt there". india is doomed because of people like you. DOOMED!

[notyoueither]

Originally posted by aneeshm


Because I wasn't there . And two things :

a) Union carbide was not an Indian company . What the Bhopal Gas tragedy accomplished was to make Indians view foreign multinationals with suspicion , and look with even more pride/expectations to Indian owned companies .

b) Union carbide is not family-owned .

You may be missing a point.

a. Union Carbide is far from unique among corporations that have been involved with catastrophes.

b. Family owned doesn't mean much to many

Does this help you understand why some people are suspicious of corporations? Some more and some less, but there would be very few who would grant a blank cheque of trust.

[Odin]

A corporation exists for one purpose and one purpose only, to maximize shareholder profits by all lawful means, everything else be damned (which is why trickle-down doesn't work, only the shareholders end up benifiting, not the workers or consumers). Why shiouldn't people be suspicious of such entities?

[General Ludd]

Originally posted by Odin
A corporation exists for one purpose and one purpose only, to maximize shareholder profits by all lawful means

[VetLegion]

b) Union carbide is not family-owned .

Are the family owned businesses in India incorporated? Meaning, are the shareholders personally responsible for debts of the company?

Mittal for example, has companies around the world, and all are incorporated. In that case, it hardly matters who the owners are.

Mittal's steel mills certainly pollute, pay little and if need be - are shut down, like any other company's. I see no reason why Mittal Steel should be trusted simply because it's a family run business.

[Urban Ranger]

Originally posted by Patroklos
I think the propblem is that for some ungodly reason people assume buisnesses have social responsibilites.

They indeed do.

Only a Randroid would deny this.

[JohnT]

Re: Why are people so suspicious of Big Business in the Western world ?

Originally posted by aneeshm
Well - why ? Why are mega-gigantic businesses looked to with so much suspicion and distrust in Europe and America ? I find it rather strange , considering the system we have .

I don't live in India and wasn't raised with your cultural assumptions so I can't presume to tell you about your life. Unlike some in this thread.

I'm also not going to worry about the discussion of whether companies "do bad things." Of course they do, as well as they do great things (it was ATT, after all, that invented the transistor, laser, cell phone, and discovered the Big Bang, all in a 25 year period). I do note that the list that Zk derived are crimes of property (except the Triangle fire), unlike governments who tend to commit crimes of person, or individuals who commit both.

To answer the general question, Western peoples tend to distrust powerful institutions almost from birth. The principle of starting from doubt, the attractiveness of being "anti-establishment" while young, Rousseauian Romanticism, the history of the Protestant Reformation/American Revolution/French Revolution/etc, all of it comes together to teach us not to trust any of our institutions, regardless of type. (Combine that with a growing number of people who don't trust anybody else and you have a Civilization with some issues. But that's another thread.)

However, the specific question, about why businesses are "loathed" so, I think it is because they are the perfect boogeyman - fierce seeming, but in actuality utterly defenseless against the political whims of the countries/states/cities that they do business in.

Exxon is a perfect example - today it's being projected as a "greedy beast" for the sin of having a 10.6% profit margin (of that $11 billion in profits, btw, another $1 billion is going to the government in the form of dividend taxes). What isn't mentioned is that Exxon was once part of a company that controlled 90% of the world oil market in 1871, one that still had 70% of the US market in 1911, when Standard Oil was broken up into seven major oil companies and hundreds of smaller producers.

That one act denied America the ability to even think about being a swing producer in 2006. Once the oil producing countries realized the size advantages gained in the market by nationalizing the infrastructure largely built by American, French, and British firms, they took control of the market by supporting the very same economies of scale that the Western world threw away.

Today there are seven oil companies larger than America's largest. Aramco, the Saudi national oil company, is five times the size of Exxon. Aramco would still be larger than Standard Oil if SO weren't broken up (Exxon, Chevron/Texaco, the US unit of BP (formerly Amoco), Unocal, others) - but not too much larger.

But... still, Exxon is viewed as being almost overwhelmingly powerful, this company to whom government measures drove their market share from 90% to 3.

So, imho, as a general rule I don't think that they are as deserving of the amount of vitriol they receive as their actual power deserves. I think they make a perfect whipping boy for opportunistic politicians, and a perfect vehicle for other opportunistic politicians. It is painfully obvious to anybody looking at the long-term picture that companies are political creations, completely and wholly at the mercy of their hosting governments. Even in situations where the company is in seeming dominance of the government (United Fruit is the one always trotted out) the control is never lasting, nor deep.

[JohnT]

There's also the nature of the corporation itself. Unlike governments and religions, corporations inspire little loyalty through generations: one would reasonably expect a American, Catholic Democrat to raise American, Catholic, Democratic kids, but, all jokes aside, one does not expect an Microsoft employee to raise Microsofties.

The combative nature of corporate intra-relations doesn't do much to inspire loyalty either. Who loves an organization where you sometimes seem to have to fight to get your job done, much less get recognized for it?