The world is becoming more and more corporate every day. Whether we like it or not, we yield more control of our lives to these corporations. It is essential that we pay attention. These corporations do not care for our well being, they only care about a) the perceived value of their company, and b) the bottom line: profit margin. If we're not careful, the laws will change so much that corporations will be the ranchers, and we'll be the cattle.
It doesn't have to be like this. See, corporations are chartered by the government to exist, and the last I heard we had a government of the people, by the people, and for the people. Thus, if the corporations do not keep the best interests of the people in mind, the government has the right, nay the responsibility, to force the corporation to comply or be shut down.
The problem here comes down to the level of control that the corporations have over the government. Like it or not, the corporations have most of the money in this country, and money is power. Thus, if the corporations use this influence to try and sway the political system in their favor, the people lose out. This whole system is predicated on the apathy of the people. If we all got up and made some noise about this, we wouldn't have problems like finding out that FDA approved diet pills cause heart problems (the Fen-Phen problem). We're more important than profit.
The cycle can also be broken if people start corporations that keep the people in mind and don't sell out to larger corporations. The latter part of that sentence is difficult if the company is at all successful. Having a few million dangled in front of your face can make it *real* hard to say no. And the stock market is the source of that problem. If going public weren't such an allure for these companies, they might actually have to make money and produce a successful product before sucking the life out of people. There's a hope that if you have to make a good product, you'll have a hard time cheating and stealing from people. But if all a company is worried about is convincing some investors that they're valuable, then lying is easier than being ethical. I'm referring to the only documents less accurate than the tabloids: the Business Plan.
Here's how to write a successful business plan about gumball machines:
Ok, so over time, gumball machines have gone up in the amount of money that they charge per gumball. If I could make gumballs cheaper and get them into every grocery store in the country, this steady increase in price would guarantee that I would make millions and continue to do so from now until the end of time! And while I can continue to raise the price of my gumballs, I will never have to worry about my cost of operation increasing at a similar or greater rate! (Oops, Miss Hotbod, don't type that, please!). Thus, with the cost of gumballs increasing in the past, we can be sure that it will continue to do so forever!
The logic there is precariously balanced on fifty faulty assumptions, but that doesn't seem to stop some idiot from writing up a faulty business plan in a more hot area than gumballs (can you say, TECH STOCKS?) and conning some poor, innocent venture capitalist (sarcasm, sarcasm) into investing in his company. And when the money comes in, do you think it will be spent wisely and invested in order to make the most money for the VC boys? Nope, I'm getting me a hot office, a fountain, and my own mahogany desk that's big enough for me to have sex with both of my assistants on!
What it comes down to is a way to run an ethical company. If the profit is the only thing worried about, then ethical companies are impossible. I know, I can hear it now: "But Joe, if one company uses an advantage like cheap foreign labor, how can other companies afford to do it?" That's a good question, but we must look at two factors to answer that question: 1) the *right* to use said advantage, and 2) what companies can 'afford'. To answer the first part: we control, as voters in a so-called 'democracy', what the companies can and cannot do. If we feel that something that will save money violates the social contract that the corporations have with the government/people, we outlaw it. That simple. Second, if I'm a computer game company, and another computer game company goes to Russia and uses cheap and qualified programmers to make a game, good for them. If they want to pass the savings on to the people, good for them. If they're interested in their profit, they won't, they'll save the money for themselves. Anyway, if my games are good, people will pay for them. If the market gets together and decides that the cost must be cheaper, then so be it. But this hasn't happened in many industries, so the argument about the consumer suffering the cost if companies can't do things cheaper doesn't hold water. Look at games vs. music. Games switched to CD's rather than disks and the cost hasn't dropped. If a band can sell a CD for $13 and a company can sell a game for $50 and the cost to produce is similar (studio time ain't cheap), then why the cost difference? The game companies obviously didn't feel the need to pass the savings on to the consumer. And with operating costs being *so* different for different companies, you can't compare. Either way, profit can be made. If I'm making $4 million a year with my company, and EA is making $500 million a year, who cares? I still *made* $4 million. I don't have to grow if I'm not a publicly held company (back to the stock market problem again).
Point being, we don't *need* to exploit people, and neither do companies. It's just easier for them to do it, and we're letting them. It's our country, and if we care, we'll do something.