For someone with an MBA, I tend to have a fairly negative opinion of American business leaders. So watching The Corporation was right in line and held few surprises for me; despite relying a bit more on Michael Moore, Noah Chomsky and Jeremy Rifkin than I would have the material is well-organized and delivers clearly the message that modern corporations have simply become uncontrolled and unhinged.
Mark Achbar, Jennifer Abbott and Joel Bakan were the documentary’s key collaborators and realized that the story is so provocative that restraint in its telling was the best choice. Mixing interviews with CEOs, labor leaders, political activists and academics in between onsite footage, the first half is structured as a checklist of symptoms that add up to what would be diagnosed as psychotic in a real person.
Especially effective were the comments from Ray Anderson, Chairmen of Interface, Inc., the world’s largest carpet manufacturer. This is a man who realized that his products were literally plundering the earth and decided to overhaul the entire system to completely change its environmental impact. One scene was a clip of Anderson speaking to a group of North Carolina business leaders and I was sad to see many of them yawning out of boredom.
recommended
[...] Let’s say your a secretary of a lobbyist, the product marketing manager, or the accounts payable clerk. You people are the unmentioned yet vital factors in your company’s success; the entire machinery would fall apart without you and your peers. I know, everyone needs a paycheck, but that doesn’t mean you can’t stand up to your bosses when you see this kind of pathological behavior! I’m not suggesting these companies, or at least most of them, be put out and shot, corporate lobbyists being the key exception. Data handlers and, even more so, large financial institutions provide incredibly valuable services to our society. They just need to start operating within boundaries so that people (not counting the executives and large shareholders) are treated as more important than the interests of some business. [...]
Pingback by bill:politics » Blog Archive » Today’s example: Why greed-driven law sucks — January 9, 2006 @ 4:59 pm