Corporations Without Conscience

There once was a time in the US, when actions had moral consequences. The book “The Gentle Infantryman” by William Boyd Young is about an American soldier fighting in Germany during World War ll, and while the names are fictitious, the book states the events are real.

The soldier writes of an officer planning the moves of the troops using push pins on a bulletin board without fully realizing that the push pins represented real people. His bulletin board movements are difficult to accomplish on the battlefield and wreak much suffering upon the troops doing the actual fighting. The commanding officer is later encouraged to tour the scene of battle, and after seeing all the carnage resulting from his bulletin board strategy, this officer resigned immediately.

Unlike the General who was willing to observe the consequences of his actions, there is a great disconnect between actions and consequences of global corporations. The leaders of these corporations push us around like we’re pins on a bulletin board. Just as the WWll officer was detached from his actions, so aren’t the CEO’s of banks and mega corporations. They have no clue what their actions inflict upon real people. Furthermore, unlike the officer, they don’t care about the suffering the consequences of their actions bring to millions, as long as they make the most profit possible.

When the Supreme Court said corporations are people, they created a moral inequality based on money, considering the fact that the corporatists (the corporate people) have more money than many citizens will ever earn in a lifetime. They used this wealth to build an industry of financial tactics to dismantle all New Deal banking regulations, bringing millions of Americans into economic hardship and financial insecurity.

After decades of this legal onslaught, it’s now just a handful of men who control giant industries upon which we all depend. And they will have no argument to their decisions, much as the WWll officer heeded no warnings and men died needlessly.

This is why corporations are not people, unlike the officer of a different time, they have no conscience. They exist only to maximize profits at whatever the human cost. They are detached from real human beings and think only of mega profits and who’s “earning” the most.