“An evil corporation is a term which frequently appears in science fiction and or dystopian works to refer to corporations that ignore ethics, morality, laws and social responsibility in order to make a profit for its shareholders.”
Just thought everybody should know.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evil_corporation
Also, see: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_company_(Japan)
Do you work for an Evil Corporation? Do you know anybody that works for an Evil Corporation?
Would you work for an Evil Corporation?
Are people that work at Evil Corporations evil people?
How much time do you have?
Pretty much all companies above a certain size become psychopathic almost by definition: they’re shaped by the ultra-capitalist environment they have to operate in. Almost mechanically, they try to lower their operating costs, and when human lives are impacted by the cost-cutting, it doesn’t factor in because there’s no “humans matter more” clause in capitalism.
It’s less severe in Europe, where social democracies (still) impose limits on the immoral streaks of businesses, but the relentless pursuit of efficiency at all costs - including human costs - is relentless, and the regulators are easily corrupted. So it’s a losing battle.
Once I heard a comparison: a big enterprise can last forever, doesn’t like too much light (on its accounts) and tries to bleed everything in their reach to gain power… So they are real vampires.
Every one of them, that is on stock exchange and cares about shareholders or is funded by venture capital.
Any company that goes public and takes on Shareholders is immediately evil.
Once shareholders are involved, nothing else matters.
- Giving your employees a raise will make the shareprice rise slightly less than it would have? Fuck you…no raises.
- Providing Healthcare means a lower profit margin which will hurt the share price? Fuck you…die in a ditch.
- Paying a living wage means having to take something from the CEO’s bonus that year? Fuck you…that’s what food banks are for.
The moment shareholders enter the picture, by LAW, they become the only entity that matters. Corporations are legally required to increase shareholder profitability by any means necessary.
Welcome to Capitalism.
Corporations are evil by definition.
It’s literally illegal for a publicly traded company to consider any of the things you mention: ethics, morality, or social responsibility if doing so would have a negative effect on profits.
There are B corps, but they are depressingly rare.
B corps don’t enjoy a legal exception to the above though. The only thing that sets them apart (if publicly traded, most aren’t) is that they could conceivably argue that doing evil would be bad for their brand and therefore lead to reduced profits.
Of course, Google used to claim “don’t be evil” as part of their branding, so I’m not convinced that a B-Corp brand is worth much once it goes public.
Any company with shareholders attached. Companies will get up to all sorts of fuckery just to please the shareholders. Stock markets are broken and meaningless and need to go away.
Most people who work for evil companies are not automatically or inherently evil. They start out just trying to survive in a world that gives them little other choice in how to do so, and probably have responsibilities (such as to their families) to fulfill as well. It’s not like it was a couple hundred years ago where they could just go somewhere else - virtually every place to go on the planet has been claimed & is under the influence or outright control of evil people.
Google, as noted in the article, took “Don’t be evil” out of their credo like taking down a warrant canary long after they stopped trying to be good.
Android was invented because a hobbyist, Andy Rubin, heard Steve Jobs say the iPhone will run OS X (what is now known as macOS). So he figured he could make a Linux distro for phones. It was never gonna go anywhere because he’d need hardware partners and more resources than he had. But he did make it. Google bought it because they saw the potential for more data collection than they could achieve with Gmail. Today, Google makes a phone (“Pixel”) that lags behind the iPhone in performance by several years, collects a ton of data, which Google recently valuated at around $1700/year/person on average… and somehow costs the same as the current iPhone. And what’s worse, they have people online advocating for buying them! Meanwhile, while the iPhone maintains Steve Jobs’ original vision of an end-to-end closed ecosystem (in the Macintosh), it’s still basically just a pocket Macintosh. It does run macOS, just a stripped down, limited version of it.
Windows Phone was a thing for a couple years, but it never didn’t suck.
Linux phones are a thing in Europe, but they’re few and far between, and they lag behind the iPhone in performance. While you can technically install any app from the web or from internal storage after downloading it, there aren’t that many apps available for it. Despite the fact that most people don’t use their phone app as the primary phone, phones are still phone-sized. I mean nobody’s sticking a cellular modem in a Steam Deck and putting a phone on it. A Steam Deck, or the Asus ROG Ally X (the handheld Xbox) could be “phones” that don’t run iOS or Android and have a ton of apps (games), but no one’s trying that for some reason. Why can’t a Steam Deck be my next phone? Hell, why can’t my MacBook be a phone? Why should it be a 6-7" brick that fits in my pocket?
If Valve had the foresight to put a modem in the Steam Deck, you wouldn’t need any other computer in your life
I work for an evil corporation.
I joined because I thought I could make a difference on the inside.
This was obviously not smart, as I’m at too low a level to improve the system internally.
Everyone I work with: super nice. No evil mustache twirling men at my level. The higher ups: less so.
That being said, the industry was a whole is bad for my country.
If I could offer one piece of advice: unless you’re able to be hired into a position of influence: changing the system legally from the inside is likely a pipe dream.
Or the opposite; genuinely good corporations that provide excellent benefits and pay and promote from within. I work for one. They even go against industry practices and pay attention to environmental concerns.
Thee has never been a nonevil corporation
