On Wednesday, Nov. 24, a small group of clubbers met at the Ward residence in Murray to view a documentary titled, "The Corporation." The documentary was a great presentation of whistle-blower style video-journalism. Few of us were suprised by the rhetoric of the film and many of us were in strong agreement with the conclusions made therein...which...if i may be so bold as to try to articulate them, were as follows: corporate culture is poison to the environment and to public economic welfare.
A few things that were high points for myself in the film included the discussion on the significance of the legal responsibilities of an incorporated entity to society, which responsibilities are few. Another important point were the exact ramifications of the legal representation of the corporation as an individual in a court of law. The more people in the corporation the more people who can legally hide behind the corporation.
I was thoroughly fascinated by the fact that the primary contributor to the commentary in the documentary was a CEO of a major corporation. He seemed to be playing both sides of the ball quite well.
Overall I found this documentary to be quite effective. It did not however seem to direct our group discussion at all. We quickly found other political topics much more enticing...(probably my fault).
If you have more to add to this post please make sure you do...either with a posting of your own or in the comment box below...I was thinking that whoever presents should be primarily responsible for posting something on this blog...let me know what you think!
I you-tubed the first half of the documentary and was floored. Having spent the past summer probing deeply into economic theory (a couple titles of Friedman and Schumpeter made me an expert, naturally), it was good to acquire some more vocabulary to make me hypercritical of the capitalist superstructure once more.
ReplyDeleteTo the direct face of all the pro-business model, "wealth literally appears out of nowhere" argument I've heard in my days, I feel the term "externalities" gave an effective repose. Of course two parties can reach an agreement that will be mutually beneficial, but their material/services pull from a pool of resources can be considered "nowhere" only in the perversely imperialistic sense the global north has claimed to move beyond. Philosophically, I unsurprisingly view this as flowing in the same myopic vein that drives Tea Partiers to believe that the materialistic star alignment of the 80s, 90s, and 00s was representative of human history, in accordance with God's plan for his white and delightsome people, must be preserved at all costs, and, duh, gave all those little sweat shop people something to eat. But I digress.
Armed with the new piece of vocabulary and conditioned by the reading from "Environmental Literacy," I immediately began to ascribe externalities to every commercial transaction I saw going on around me. I saw the environment getting the short end of the stick at every turn. The Wikipedia article summed up negative and positive externalities; the negative generally being environment-based and the positive, with the exception of education and those blessed bees, each supported the perpetuation of a market economy that will invariably compound the negatives.
While I have enough overly-simplistic Chicago economist in me to believe that a free market will eventually deliver water and education to everybody on earth (even as the distribution of wealth gets more unequal), my feeling is that we don't have much time left. Perhaps I'm being duped here, but as I'm currently in litter-ridden India and en route to gray sky China, it's easy to channel abrasive criticality.
And if you'll excuse me now, I've got a plane set to burn thousands of gallons of jet fuel to catch.
Erin, can I get some recommendations on good readings about carrying capacity, ecological recovery (natural and artificial), "green consumerism," or anything else? The documentary said that there hasn't been a single piece of research performed in the past twenty or thirty years that concluded industrialization is good for the environment. Have you read anything else?
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