A point to ponder

The lunatic you work for
If the corporation were a person, would that person be a psychopath

The Economist commenting on award-winning documentary film, “The Corporation”, says, “Unlike much of the soggy thinking peddled by too many anti-globalisers, “The Corporation” is a surprisingly rational and coherent attack on capitalism's most important institution.”

The documentary attempting a balancing act, has some room for the business empires, referred to as The Corporation here. It states the problem does not lie with the people who run the companies. For instance it sympathises with Mark Moody-Stuart, a former boss of Shell, Sam Gibara, boss of Goodyear and Ray Anderson, boss of Interface carpets.

Although the doucumentary claim ownership of the company-as-psychopath idea, it predates them by a century. It evinces that bureaucracies have flourished because of their efficient and rational division and application of labour. However as cogs in any powerful machine, here people in pursuit of the collective organisational goal—profits— parcel out their soul or alienate themselves from human.

Yet, the greater potential tyranny comes out as not the bureaucracies of capitalism, but the state bureaucracies of socialism, according to documentary. The Economists quotes, “The psychopathic national socialism of Nazi Germany, communism of Stalinist Soviet and fascism of imperial Japan (whose oppressive bureaucratic machinery has survived well into the modern era) surely bear out. Infinitely more powerful than firms and far less accountable for its actions, the modern state has the capacity to behave even in evolved western democracies as a more dangerous psychopath than any corporation can ever hope to become.”