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Tough call, I like jackpots and Jeopardy!.
It’s a trust thing. There’s obviously massive benefit in GM food, but not when you’ve got profit-driven mega-corporation like Monsanto doing most the development. Then you get crops that don’t regrow every year and that poor farmers have to keep buying.
I’d settle for being poor and alive.
Evan said:I’d settle for being poor and alive.
You would. Quitter.
I vote Sammy do all the testing of new crops.
Corporation hating is lame. Blaming them is blaming yourself in most cases.
Until you do the research and make a conscious effort to change your own ways, yes, I agree.
But you do have a rather defeatist view of your own role in corporate responsibility. Do you vote, or do you just sit back and hope for the best on that, too?
And yes, before you say it, I’m aware that I have my own levels of hypocrisy. It’s inevitable in all of us.
Hell, even Gandhi had his guilty pleasures.
I’m not following you on the corporation hating thing. I mean… 3/4 of their wikipedia page is just evil shit they’ve done. Take a look:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monsanto
How am I blaming myself for hating a company that creates non-annual versions of previously annual crops so they can make a profit — usually off of far less than wealthy farmers and countries.
hahahahahahahahahahaa He loves those Doritos!!!
CHUCK!!
Because people often harp on corporations doing evil things, sometimes assuming evil intentions. But really, they do these things because they make money. They make money because the consumer approves by buying. And it seems evil because the bad things are much easier to dwell on. Everyone hates Exxon because they spill oil and destroy the environment. Nobody mentions that they get most of us to work everyday, supply the raw material for many of the things we use everyday, and are responible for countless innovations and technologies that have made their own impact on the environment far less than it could be.
You will say “well they could do more, they could stop all those things with a negative impact until they develop a cleaner and/or safewr method.”
Yes, they could, but then another company won’t, will make greater profits, will take market share, and suddenly Exxon will be less competitive and less able to make said advancements.
The same goes for Monsanto. They could stop hazardous research and testing and product development, but then another company will pick up the slack and be more successful in the marketplace.
Corporations are designed and run to make profit, the products and services they produce are only the method. The place where greivences should be addressed is to the government, who has the power to regulate. Thats they way the system is supposed to work.
Again your argument is boiled down to “well, that’s the way it is” and it doesn’t hold water when the opposing argument is “things need to change!” We label corporations as “evil” for doing evil things, regardless of their motivations. Pleading self-defense doesn’t work when millions of lives and the future of our ecosystem are at stake.
Corporations have a social responsibility. It’s Business 101. It’s simple ethics. It Exxon spills oil all over Prince Williams sound, it should be expected to pay retributive fines and clean up the spill instead of fighting the lawsuit almost 20 years later. When Monsanto sells poor farmers wheat crop that require replanting every year ignoring the danger that the plant could crossbreed with untreated wheat crop and wipe out an entire country/continent’s worth of wheat, you’re damn fucking straight people are going to get mad about it and demand that the practice stop.
Requiring that big business behave responsibly despite profit motivations to do otherwise is not some new hippie bullshit. It’s our responsibility as consumers living in a consumer society. It’s the only voice we have.
That Doritos bag makes it appear that Gandhi has a boner.
It would be fabulous if they did have ethics and responsibility, but they don’t and never will.
Think about it. If Rex Tillerson decides tomorrow that Exxon is going to do the right thing and clean up the sound, eventiually when it begins to effect the balance sheet, the board is going to start calling for him to get lost. If they agree that its the right thing to do, shareholders eventually start to get unnerved and calling for the board or CEO to change.
If they don’t, large institutional investors dump their investments, not because they don’t want the sound being polluted, but because they have to. The fund manager pulling the investment has to worry about the pension fund depending on the continued rise in the stock. Once that rise ceases, Exxon is no longer a sensible investment.
The nearest off hand example I can think of is Airbus. As a French company, they’re not big on cutting wages or firing people. But when their reluctance to do so resulted in a drop in profit, the people managing the California pension fund pulled out of the stock, causing a massive drop, forcing the company to cut back.
No one in that equation had anything but the best motives, yet people lost out. The gist of that is right on, but I don’t have the chance right now to double check.
The problem has nothing at all to do with what a coporation should do, or even wants so badly for the sake of their concious to do. They must make profit no matter what. If you were talking about a privately owned firm it would be a different story. But in our modern, supercompetitive, short term based economy, the market demands any and all chancers to increase profits are exercised.
If you want responsibility and ethincs, regulation and oversight from the government are where you need to direct your ire.
Evan said:If you want responsibility and ethincs, regulation and oversight from the government are where you need to direct your ire.
While I understand your argument, I really see this statement as the equivalent of “I’m telling Mom!”
That’s a spin some people put on it. What it really means is that the government is supposed to do what the people want.
You can hope your crying foul will change some minds in corporate boardrooms, or
I love those movies.