Too Much Corporate Power?

A new survey in Business Week , of all places, finds that Americans are getting ticked off about corporate power. In fact, a whopping 72% of Americans feel that big businesses have gained too much control over many aspects of their lives.In a variety of ways, abuse of technology is the reason for their unease, the Net the vehicle by which they're expressing it.

This feeling, says the BW/Harris Poll survey, is amplified by the Net, "and the discontented who use it." It provides an early-warning system that approximates Paul Revere, says the magazine, a way to spread the word about the latest corporate outrage.

"With the Internet, information comes instantly," says Harvard University labor economist Richard B. Freeman, "so even if we don't have more people concerned about companies, those who can do more about it."

And we do have more people concerned about companies, it appears.

The Net seems awash in corporatist machinations. C-Net and other online news services read more like the National Law Journal every day, as the rise of Open Source programming and other trends -- copyright, privacy issues, a nascent movement for social responsibility -- pit the tech culture squarely against closed business practices and the runaway corporate growth that's accelerated dramatically since the 80s, then jumped dramatically again with the explosion of the Net and the Web.

The rushed, sometimes panicky entry of large corporations into a culture which is at heart architecturally open and markedly individualistic seems at times like a cultural civil war. Legal conflicts now seem to outstrip technological experimentation, advances and breakthroughs, lawyers getting as rich off the Net as they do in product liability or malpractice suits. Links are now a continuing legal battleground. Recently motion picture companies got a court order barring 2600 Enterprises from linking to sites containing DeCSS code, but that's just one item in a continuing litany of encroachment. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints asked for and received a court order prohibiting a church critic from linking to copyrighted handbooks. Mattel, which makes Cyberpatrol blocking software, took legal action after the cphack.exe program revealed Cyberpatrol's list of blocked Web sites.

Then of course there are the ongoing free-music and file-sharing fights, Amazon's efforts to copyright software and Microsoft's legal threats demanding the removal of links (on Slashdot, among other places) to its Kerberos code. Just wait till AOL and Time Warner link up. Thousands of Net-related actions are pending, and most are less about technology than corporate power. The Net evolved free of corporate and government control, but corporations and governments are racing to catch up.

In the Business Week survey, Americans gave business credit for the economic good times that have prevailed during the 90s. But the public is also becoming increasingly alarmed at corporate ethics, practices and power.

Nearly 40% of Americans surveyed said they thought profits were more important to corporations than making safe, reliable products. Only 6% said they thought large businesses treated their employees well, and just 8% said companies did a good job of educating consumers about health and safety issues related to their products.

74% said big companies have too much political influence, and more than 80% agreed that entertainment and popular culture are dominated by corporate money which seeks mass appeal over quality.

The Net is not only a prime battleground for the rising tensions between corporations and the public, it's also becoming the primary vehicle for anti-corporatist activists who have little voice in mainstream media.

Protests against Wal-Mart have erupted in more than 100 American cities, and issues ranging from the open distribution of technology to globalism to artistic control of culture to genetically altered food were cited in the survey. Without the news-spreading power of the Net, many of these efforts would probably have faltered.

The survey suggests that Americans are finally getting upset at their unchecked power and are coming to believe -- with amazing unanimity -- that large corporations need to be more responsible, ethical and regulated.

More than 95% of the survey's participants said they agreed with this statement:

"U.S. crporations should have more than one purpose. They also owe something to their workers and the communities in which they operate, and they should sometimes sacrifice some profit for the sake of making things better for their workers and communities."

This noble sentiment fails to take into account the proprietary and predatory nature of the contemporary global corporation. These companies have only one purpose. They are run by coalitions of analysts, stockholders, investors and executives whose overriding mission is to mass-market products, dominate markets and -- in the end -- maximize profits. There isn't a single CEO of a major corporation who wouldn't get fired in a flash if he or she decided to forego profits in favor of workers or community.

This conflict between an individual, entrepeneurial spirit and surging corporatism is the single most significant political conflict on the Net. And if the Net is, in fact, fostering a political/social movement designed to protest, curb or transform corporatism, that could well be the most significant and unexpected contribution to public life that technology has made since e-mail.

What's the single biggest business in the U.S.?

It's not Mickey$oft. It's not AT&T. It's not Time-Warner, nor AOL, nor Standard Oil, nor any other name that might come popping to the surface of your neurons.

It's the U.S. government themselves.

Think about it: Politicians votes are bought and sold like stocks and commodities by special-interest groups. The companies with the biggest wallets usually win (though what, exactly, they truly "win" in the long run could be a subject for a whole other debate).

Our tax dollars fund everything from the Army to the White House electric bill. What I think a lot of people have forgotten (and what corporatists would probably rather see unremembered) is that the entire purpose of a government is to TEACH PEOPLE TO RESPONSIBLY GOVERN THEMSELVES in the first place. The theory is that, once that critical mass is reached, the original government structure falls back into a simple supervisory role, a fallback for handling debates or issues that, for whatever reason, cannot be resolved at a local level.

Our own government has failed miserably in this regard, partly because people seem to have a great deal of trouble taking responsibility for their own actions, no matter how distasteful. I view our current situation as something along the lines of a collective Dr. Frankenstein suddenly realizing that he's created quite a monster.

Why do we not have a simple, flat-tax structure that everyone can handle? Because it would give too much control back to the consumer, and it would not require an IRS of anything near its current size to maintain.

Why is there not more effort to curb mega-mergers between enormous companies? Because doing so would be bad for (government) business in terms of politicians losing out on big campaign contributions and under-the-table kickbacks.

Why did the DMCA come into effect? Why was it even created, as it was written, in the first place? To help corporations and government make even more money; The corporations from royalties, and the government from patent and copyright filing fees (and kickbacks, etc).

Why is the entire planet apparently obsessed with silly little pieces of green (or other colored) paper with pictures and numbers printed on them? Why is money treated as the be-all and end-all of existence?

If you have a good answer for that one, I think we'd all like to hear it.

Keep the peace(es).

Yeah, let's be like France!

"U.S. [sic]crporations should have more than one purpose. They also owe something to their workers and the communities in which they operate, and they should sometimes sacrifice some profit for the sake of making things better for their workers and communities."


Now I'm a little bit unclear here. If I recall correctly, corporations' purpose is to provide profit for their shareholders. To have more than one purpose would necessarily dilute the focus of the directors away from the primary purpose of profits. Unfortunately, if U. S. corporations are made to concern themselves with other things, they become less competetive in the world market, and we turn into France. ("What's that work week length again?")

Yours truly,
Mr. X

P.S. Please note that a concern solely for profits doesn't negate the idea of responsible corporate citizenship. It would appear that Bridgestone/Firestone forgot the concept of long-term profitability. *snicker*

Sigh

Nearly 40% of Americans surveyed said they thought profits were more important to corporations than making safe, reliable products.

Two observations. First, the trial lawyers' definition of 'safe' is fairly different from mine. IIRC more than half of the cost of a ladder goes to lawsuit insurance. Second, the corporation's executives have a legal obligation to produce as much profit for the shareholders as they can. The point of a business is to make money, not random acts of kindness.

more than 80% agreed that entertainment and popular culture are dominated by corporate money which seeks mass appeal over quality.

May I point out to that 80% that popular culture is called 'popular' because most of the population likes it. What's wrong with seeking mass appeal? Wouldn't you rather make something that more people like as opposed to less?

Nobody stuffs Britney Spears down the throats of unwilling people. People buy it, ask for it, scream for it. They would be much upset, and rightly so, if somebody told them that this is not "quality entertaintment" and that they should go watch something that's good for them, like PBS.

More than 95% of the survey's participants said they agreed with this statement:

"U.S. crporations should have more than one purpose. They also owe something to their workers and the communities in which they operate, and they should sometimes sacrifice some profit for the sake of making things better for their workers and communities."

That's a survey? That's a propaganda job. The question is quite similar to "Do you agree that applehood and mother pie (err... you know what I mean) are good for America, should be respected by all and we should have world peace -- and don't bother replying, we know you'll say yes".

This noble sentiment fails to take into account the proprietary and predatory nature of the contemporary global corporation.

Noble sentiment? Proprietary nature? Proprietary as opposed to what -- government owned? Somebody tell Katz that it has already been tried -- there were no corporations at all in the USSR, nothing "proprietary" and "predatory". By the way, in Nazi Germany the corporations didn't work for profit alone, but rather did what had to be done for the strength of the community. I heard it didn't work out well in the end.

Amazon's efforts to copyright software

Ahem. Confusing "patent" and "copyright", plus what Katz called "software" was really "one-click shopping". Of course, it could be that he really meant what he wrote -- that software was not subject to copyright before Amazon began its dastardly deeds...

Bletch.


Kaa

Corporations Becoming the Government

74% said big companies have too much political influence...

This is the main problem. Corporations have basically been able to buy laws that make "fair use" a thing of the past, and allow trademarks to last for eternity.

Nobody in government appears willing to be a champion of individual or public rights anymore.

I may not be able to yell "fire!" in a crowded theater, but it's sad that free speech has been curtailed to the point that I can't publish some DeCSS source code. Even though the U.S. had laws against exporting encryption software for many years, it was still very legal to print out the source code for that software and export that printout! They seemed to be very careful about the free-speech aspects when they wrote that law, but nobody seems to care about that any more.

Domination

When government seeks to dominate corporations, corporations seek to dominate government. In the meantime, our freedoms go out the window. No wonder people are pissed.

Re:Corporations should be beholden to society

That's a nice sentiment, but where do you think corporations get all their money from? Customers. You're just talking about transferring money from customers to employees. For many products, they're the same thing! The only time workers don't buy what they produce is when they make luxury goods, like yachts. And gee, when the government slapped a hefty luxury tax on yachts, guess who lost their jobs? Yep, the workers.

A unified world government just means unified destruction of jobs. Instead of just having them destroyed in one country, they'll be destroyed in every country. Who is likely to be hurt the most? Yep, the people in Third World countries who have the least access to other jobs.

In any case, remember that multinationals typically pay twice the going wage rate. Stop them from doing that, and you mire the Third World in poverty. Clever thinking on your part, huh?
-russ

(shaking head sadly)

Jon, Jon, Jon... <sigh>

Every example you give is GOVERNMENT imposing too much power, not corporations.

If you folks in the media would frame this issue properly, then perhaps the general public would take away government power (especially take away those federal powers NOT enumerated in the US Constitution that they seem to think they have) and corporations would no longer have that tool at their disposal.

Granted, the corporations, owned by the general public (stockholders) in most cases try to influence that overbearing power to their interest when they can, but the bottom line is that the government holds the power and consistantly demonstrates that they do not deserve it. You list perfect examples of this above, but hide the actual offender (government).

Visit DC2600 [dc2600.com]

Re:The other side?

Hate to break it to all of them, but the treasured Free Market economy does have this exact drawback -- companies will gain power.

Actually, the problem isn't the free market economy; it's government manipulation. Once the mechanisms of government regulation are in place, existing megacorps buy control of them and use them to entrench their positions -- see any of a dozen RIAA/MPAA threads on /. for examples.
/.

Re:Corporations should be beholden to society

You're just talking about transferring money from customers to employees.

Employees get very little of the money that comes from customers. The lion's share goes to owners.

Here's an interesting bit of math. Take the Gross Domestic Product, representing the total value of goods and services produced in the US: about $US 9,559,700,000,000 [doc.gov] for 1999. Divide by the size of the American workforce: 137,673,000 [bls.gov]. You discover that the average American worker creates $US 69,438 of value per year.

All that value has to end up somewhere. Eventually it all ends up in the hands of a worker who made something - or, in the pocket of an investor, who didn't do a lick of work on making something but manages to get paid anyway.

The average American worker's gross pay, including benefits, is $US 18.50 / hour [bls.gov], or $US 38,480 / year. Leaving $US 30,958 of value going somewhere else.

In other words, the average U.S. worker gets about 45% of his or her productive worth diverted to the owning class. Welcome to capitalism.

In any case, remember that multinationals typically pay twice the going wage rate. Stop them from doing that, and you mire the Third World in poverty.

"Our new king is so nice! He give us beggars twice as many table scraps than the old king! We should make sure our king stays in power!"

Just because you leave a group of people better off than before does not mean that you are not exploiting them.

Rather than assisting multinationals to come in and pay six cents a day rather than the locally prevailing three cents, how about assisting these nations in building their own domestically-owned industries?

We only hate evil corporations

Of course we only hate evil corporations. Corporations that do things we find entertaining, like publishing games, creating episodes of The Simpsons, making big budget movies, and distributing carbonated beverages..they're all right. It's all those other corporations that we hate. You know, the ones we don't know that they do.

I saw this over 10 years ago.

I went to college to be a pharmacist.

I had envisioned to get my degree. Eventually move into my own business, with my own little pharmacy on the corner.

When in school, other people in the program did make me see the light.

"How can you do that, with CVS, Genovese and Rite Aids starting to pop-up all over the place? They'll run you out of business."

Here I am in a career I like, computers.

This was just one small story, but I bet there are millions more like it.

This is hardly news - but is it a bad survey?

The survey suggests that Americans are finally getting upset at their unchecked power and are coming to believe -- with amazing unanimity -- that large corporations need to be more responsible, ethical and regulated.

I think almost anyone would agree that even the best corporations would be better off becoming more responsible and ethical. The fact that "regulated" was slipped in with those two suggests that the survey is slightly leading. Slipping in something that a large portion of the populace will take issue with at the end of a list, preceeded by two things they can't take issue with... That's class. All class.

This isn't to say that I personally disagree that corporations need to be more regulated. But I refuse to believe 19 out of 20 people feel that way. That's too thorny an issue for any fair poll result to be that unbelievably lopsided.

*sigh*....not again....

You know, a lot of people are getting tired of the same old "Evil Big Corporation" rhetoric being spouted over and over again. Big companies do good stuff and bad stuff. Small companies do good stuff and bad stuff. Everyone does good stuff and bad stuff. We just like to rant about the evil companies because they have the facilities to do it to more people. When the Mom & Pop shop on the corner overcharges you by four dollars, nobody cares, but when Amazon does it we get a flurry of Slashdot articles about it.

Absolutely Unremarkable

Isn't this a bit like asking:

• Do you think taxes are too high?
• Do you believe that politicians should be more honest?
• Do you think that there should be better programs on television
• Are you sick and damn tired of the man getting you down?
• Do you think people should have more sex?

I mean, come on!

Re:hating nice corporations

This is a dumb question -- off-topic, yes -- but do you usually buy your dickies in pairs?

My understanding of a dickie is that little half-shirt-half-sweater thing women sometimes wear underneath blouses and what-not.

I know this because once -- a long time ago -- my grandmother used to talk about her dickies. I was confused (and disturbed) until she later offered clarification.

And I remember once -- not longer after she first started to talk about her dickies -- that we (my grandmother and I and probably my grandfather) went to Marshall Fields (a big Chicago department store like Macy's or Bloomingdales) in search of a dickie -- one -- singular.

The implication was that, yes, you could buy more than one dickie -- two dickies, three dickies, four -- but that you bought them separately (and only combined them at the checkout carrier for 'dickies' -- plural) but that you didn't buy them in pairs -- as in: "Dammit, the matching dickie is missing! I only have one dickie!"

Anyway, my understanding of dickies -- plural, singular, or whatever else -- is, as I say, limited pretty much to the events I describe above, but perhaps -- and I mean this honestly -- there is another meaning for "dickies" that you could share with us -- a meaning in which dickies are bought, sold, bartered (whatever) in pairs -- much like slacks or socks are.

And, yes, corporations are taking over way too much of our lives. I speak about this at some length in the 'Amazon' thread that was posted earlier today.

Cuba has 1st world life expectancies

Did you know that Cuba is the only third world country that has first world life expectancie (actually the same as the US, only that women live 1 year less in Cuba & men 1 year longer). They also get free cradle to grave education & healthcare. Consequently Cuba has the most highly educated citizens in the whole of the Americas. Fact is the average Cuban is infinitly better of than some Javanese Nike worker on a subsinstance wage - really the only people doing ok in Indonesia are the Soeharto cronies & the Chinese businessmen. Virtually all the third world gets from opening their countries up to foreign corporations is debt. There are many countries in Africa where the average person was heaps better off in the subsistance era, when the vllages grew what they needed, than they are now, where everyone is in debt & on poverty wages because the world bank & IMF, etc, conned them into growing coffee for the likes of us.

The "Contradict Jon Katz" game is in session!

When the Mom & Pop shop on the corner overcharges you by
four dollars, nobody cares, but when Amazon does it we get a flurry of Slashdot articles about it.

And when Jon Katz takes note of something, everybody at Slashdot lines up to disagree with him.

Look, I agree that Katz often seems like he's just recycling stuff and that his "serious journalist tackling today's tough issues" tone seems more like "trying way too hard" sometimes.

But really, some of the biggest threats to our liberties ARE powerful monied interests. We know that. That's why there's a YRO section on Slashdot and near-daily carping about this legal machination or that.

The problem, really, is that Katz is preaching to the choir. That, and this particular chorus is too proud to be told what it already knows... so it results to dischord.

Big Corporations

It amazes me that people continuously complain about large corporations, but never get as enraged about big government.

Large corporations serve the lowest common denominator; ie: the people that don't know any better. If you don't like what a company is doing, don't utilize the services of that company. Go to someone smaller, and local to your community.

The same goes for government. Gas prices too high? Blame the gov. Clinton & Gore are the ones who asked OPEC to raise gas prices in order to help Russia. The oil companies aren't raising prices. Look at how much money you give to the government. How much control the federal government has. Until people start paying attention to what's happening in their own communities, no solution will ever be reached.

I choose to use small businesses to recieve my products and services, not major corporations, who provide bland products and services. I choose to know who my local government officials are, and wish the feds would self destruct. We don't need them... they need us.

Kris Felscher

Small Businesses in a Big Economy, What it Means

People yelp and moan as they're being screwed by multinational corporations, yet they still go to Walmart, drink Coca-Cola, and eat at McDonald's.

What about going to smaller businesses?

a) Distribution of the goods is poor. Smaller hardware stores are not Home Depot; they don't have 30 hammers out on display. The small business, with a limited budget cannot afford additional capital without income.. Without additional capital, they cannot attract new customers.

b) Small Businesses often emulate Large Companies and try to pretend they are bigger than they actually are. The end result is that they provide terrible service, and an arrogant, "don't give a fsck" attitude. Their customer base dwindles because the one thing that they *can* provide, repeated good relations with the customer, has been lost. As we move more toward automating things through voice and tension about large companies grows, talking with an actual person will probably become a welcomed, value-added feature of the purchase. It's the one thing I've ever agreed with Gates about; he mentioned this in his second book.

c) Small businesses have poor accounting skills and cannot handle keeping track of inventory well, much less bookkeeping. Tax laws in America favor the corporation who has a staff of paid accountants and lawyers.

70% of small businesses fail within the first year because of two reasons - sloppy capital management and undercapitalization. I tend to also include b), since poor or dishonest customer relations will drive people away from purchasing in the first place.

This has been my experience as both a small business owner and a consumer.



--
Spindletop Blackbird, the GNU/Linux Cube.

Hypocrites yes, but not in the way you describe

When people complain about the government, I have to point out that we, not them, are the government. If there's a government problem, it's because I elected the wrong person.

Well...I don't really agree with that. We don't have many options to elect the right person. How many of our elections are between only two candidates? I live in New York. The senate primaries were yesterday, and guess what, Hilary Clinton won the Democratic Primary and Rick Lazio won the Republican Primary. I never ever HEARD of anyone challenging them. For the past month they've been running ads against each other, they both effectively ignored the primaries.

It's also difficult for anyone from the majority of the american public to achiev