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The corporation is the prototypical psychopath
It meets several criteria that define a psychopath: Callous unconcern for the
feelings of others, incapacity to maintain enduring relationships, reckless disregard
for the safety of others, deceitfulness through repeated lying and conning of others
for profit, incapacity to experience guilt, and the failure to conform to social
norms with respect to lawful behaviors.
Dr. Robert Hare,
the FBI's top consulting psychologist on psychopaths
(above is a quote from the documentary movie "The Corporation")
To see there is a problem here,
one has only to look around at the current scandals with
Martha Stewart, Worldcomm, Enron not to mention the Financial corporations
that knowingly fudged their papers(broke the law) for personal
profit who were
working with Enron.
The list could go on and on including the savings and loan scandals a few decades ago.
A common viewpoint I hear and see in action again and again is as follows.
You are not really doing anything wrong when you break the law
because you are making money and this is what
you should be doing. In other words you should try to break the
law as much as possible as long as it is profitable and you dont
get caught. The only thing wrong about breaking the law is
getting caught and the only reason breaking the law is wrong
when you get caught is that you might loose money.
This is actually often company policy only they wont use the
term "breaking the law" and will keep it hidden from you.
My question to us, Is making money at any cost actually
not harmful to others? My answer is that breaking the
law is always harmful to ourselves and others in ways
sometimes that can't be repaired. First I want us to
humbly open our eyes to the true cost of making money
or seeking power at any cost then we can better understand
what the solution is in the public workplace environment
including possible changes to law.
Regarding current laws about corporations.
One of the criticisms about corporations is that they
have by law many of the same rights and even more than an
individual has.
People argue that the rights in the constitution are
for individuals and not for any other group or non-human
entity.
By nature a corporation is going to have more power than
an average citizen and less accountability, therefore
it should not have more law protection than a citizen
or even the same amount to balance it out.
It is argued that corporations do not have the same accountability
that an indivual does. If an individual breaks the law
he is automatically held responsible but if a corporation breaks the law
who should be held accountable? First it is individuals within
the corporation that are behind the breaking of the law but
how do you find them? They can pretty much have it set up
that people under them will do the dirty work and
take the fall and they will get away free. If you punish
the corporation by fining it or something it is still often
beneficial for the corporation to have broken the law in
the first place because they often make more money than they
are fined. Often the person or people most responsible for
breaking the law are most often not penalized because they
can make much personal money from breaking the law and
do not mind if their corporation is fined some.
books
The Corporation: The Pathological Pursuit of Profit and Power by Joel Bakan
here is the website for the companion documentary movie for the above book
http://www.thecorporation.com/
"White-Collar Sweatshop" by Jill Andresky Fraser
links
http://www.dontbeevil.com/
http://www.faceintel.com/
movies
http://www.thecorporation.com/
Documentary movie about corporations that is talked about some on this
page. The above quote about corporations and pathological liars is
from this movie.
The Firm
Even though this is a fictional movie and story it was written by an
astute author and it shows much of the dilemna of not seeing the
warning signs of things that are wrong or the warning signs are purposely disregarded
because of your greed and then getting pulled into
a group which does criminal activities. It shows the dilemna or
crisis of conscience where you must decide to be part of the
criminal activity for gain and safety or be against it and be
in danger of losing everything but your conscience. From
someone that has been there, I can tell you it
is always better to go with your conscience but it takes
an unbelievable amount of bravery to do that. In my
case, I would not have been able to make the right decision
if it were not for my strong conviction that God would bless
me in the long run in spite of the living hell I would have
to go through to oppose it.
This movie also shows how hard it can be to get out of
the group if you become knowledgable of their evil.
Actually one of the most unbelievable parts of this movie is that one person
or a few would be so brave and be able to bring down the Firm so
easily. It is also pretty unbelievable that the mafia
controlled company would take this smart unknown law student with so
little screening to see if he would be a good candidate for criminal activities.
While job potential/skill is a factor for succesful criminal activity, loyalty
to your "firm" above anything else, like the not so minor details of right
and wrong and truth and justice, is the most important factor.
Contact:
bruce@restoreournation.org
last updated:
Oct. 13th, 2004
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