Corporations as psychopaths

It's just so inspiring to know that this little nook reaches as far as Manhattan. My previous column (which was an encapsulation of the "The Eleventh Hour" movie documentary) prompted a Filipino couple (Mr. Darwin and Mylene Tormis, who were originally from Toledo City, Cebu) to "why not send this poor fellow a video about pyschopaths." The video contains an interview with Joel Bakan who is the author of The Corporation: The Pathological Pursuit of Profit and Power, published in 2004 and analyzes the evolution and behavior of modern-day corporations from a critical perspective. The book was made into a documentary film the same year and easily won 25 international awards.

The interview begins with Corporation 101 and compares it (corporation) to be no different from a "psychopath" in which he admits as "rather inflammatory and controversial" but finds no other necessary metaphor to describe his thesis where he argued that a corporation is incapable of possessing any "feeling or concern for others" as it is specially created by law and society to look only after its own interest. Thus, being a juridical person, the nature for which corporations are deemed to exist, operate and behave all throughout out its corporate life, is to become greedy and competitive even at the cost of public interest and the environment.

Bakan continues that the lack of guilt, moral conscience and its inability to adapt or obey social conventions make or confirm that corporations are "relatively and literally psychopaths."  And because of this, Bakan goes on to say that corporations in fact enjoy better freedom and lesser liability compared to a natural person because the law cannot put to jail a corporation much less a "psychopath."

Worse, since pain of incarceration cannot be forced or imposed upon corporations and the persons behind it, it can choose to break the law when it so thinks (if cost-benefit analysis comes out breaking the law is much cheaper) without compunction and just pay the penalties later, no-sweat! The example he cited was the design flaw of one car model of GM that was already out in the market in which it decided to just pay for the deaths as a result of the design flaw than to fix them. 

Another problem is that its behavior is hard to undo as it is deeply rooted in history and strengthened by the legal system for centuries – it is a man-made construction that has been accorded with legal benefits, rights and protection. And to go against its nature is neither right nor safe from the economics of it – thus, the state can do no other but to offer temporary remedies like fines or temporary closure. While damage was already done, the worst it can get is permanent closure but corporations can reincarnate under other assumed names or merge with another making it even more formidable as a psychopath.         

While Bakan admits that corporations were primarily created towards public interest or benefit, the balance to which the public derives benefit from is rather skewed because the public even gets more harm than good from the many products it gets: junk food, cigarettes, drugs that kill, genetically modified staple, etc.                

Although I have so much to agree with Bakan's findings, I think the case is still reversible. The state, being the maker of [a corporation], it also has the power to also unmake it. The makings of a good corporation rest upon good laws that regulate and control actions of corporations prior to production of goods or rendering of services. Thus, a corporation's behavior can still be determined beforehand with stringent laws that require them to produce or serve the public in standards that would ensure the most benefit and safety. 

But of course, laws and regulations may also remain as merely paper tigers when culpability evades those who intend to break them. The reason why corporations behave like psychopaths is because the law in itself is the easiest route to their escape. Corporate laws must be revisited to ensure that culpability and retribution do not escape those (within the corporation) who digress the very purpose to which a corporation was originally deemed. 

Henry David Thoreau, that famous 19th century civil libertarian, once said: "It is said that a corporation has no conscience. But a corporation of conscientious men is a corporation with conscience."  Political or economic structures, no matter how perfect they all seem to be can only be perfect when the people that wield them have the will to fulfill its fullness and essence.  Shareholders must elect those they seem fit or has the moral fortitude to lead its corporation to stand for moral grounds without fear of compromising their profit.     

Finally, consumers must also be vigilant to get back at those businesses that profit upon the weakness of our laws and the vulnerability of its customers. It must now learn to condemn and boycott those corporations that thrive upon the environment's defenselessness and the exploitation of a corporation's workforce.     

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