I've lost complete faith in corporate America. This loss of faith has been building for many years but seems to have crystallized over the past couple of years. From a health care industry that has us by the balls (and knows it), to Wall St. making bets so risky, they look like a first time card player at the World Series of Poker, to the latest massive boondoggle, the BP oil disaster. To be perfectly honest this is not a spill, it is a disaster.
Over the last few year British Petroleum has been shifting it's brand to appear as if it's the only oil company that is interested in the environment. The commercials discuss green energies and protecting the Earth. They changed their logo to give it a "greener" look. They even had me wondering if they really were an Earth friendly company. Because I'm such a cynical prick, I hadn't bought in yet, but they did have me wondering. Now we all know this image makeover is complete horseshit.
Not only is the image equine scat, BP may be the worst safety and environmental offender there is. Consider this, over a three year period BP racked of an amazing 760 "egregious, willful" violations handed out by OSHA. Compare that to the next biggest violators, Sunoco and Conoco-Phillips each had 8!!!!! Exxon another huge energy company had 1!!!!! So to sum up BP 760 violations to 19! The rest of the field has a lot of catching up to do. Just so we're clear these aren't little piddily violations, like "not wearing a hard hat" these are serious safety violations. The kind that lead to workers being killed and entire enviroments being destroyed. In the past five years 3o BP workers have been killed in two seperate oil rig explosions a helicopter crash and other accidents. With 760 violations and 30 deaths you would expect the full weight of the federal government would be pressing on them and they were. BP for all of it's corporate malfeasance was fined $373 million. Now to you and I, $373 million is a shit ton of cash but to a company that makes billions a year, that kind of cash is just a cost of doing biz. So what about the current disaster? I'm not going to tell you anything you don't know. We all know they didn't have a real plan for preventing and fixing a disaster like we have now. We know that they are uncaring company hell bent on only profits. This is the point of this blog. Companies aren't built for caring, they are built for profits.
A corporation is designed and run to make money. They aren't designed to plant flowers and make little girls smile. OK, some are but you know what I'm saying. The main purpose is to make money for their shareholders. Every single dollar a company spends on safety measures is a dollar which is taken away from the profits which then go into shareholder pockets. So, when the profits are so high and the accidents are spread out by years and across the globe the impact doesn't seem so great. Except of course when the disaster is so large that an entire region is going to be devastated.
Let's be clear, corporations by themselves aren't evil. They are led by people who's goal is to make money, which isn't evil either. These people however, make decesions based upon making money for the company this quarter.This short sighted approach, often it's at the expense of everything else. Due to the complexity of the business world and the lack of governmental oversight, these same people are insulated from the repercussions of their actions.
In the end one would hope that those running these corporations would have more of a social conscience but they don't. The only entity which can reign them in, is government and we've done a horrible job. We've allowed regulations to be weakened in favor of business and in turn at the the expense of "we the people". We've allowed our regulatory institutions to be underfunded and devoid of talent and in most cases staffed by industry veterans who then go back to that industry to fat six figure salaries for a job well done. This happens and we don't seem to care. Also, let's be clear this isn't a GOP or Dem thing, they're both complicit. Nobody seems to give a shit until the entire economy stares into the abyss or an ecological disaster threatens to destroy a vast eco system and in turn ruining a way of life for millions of Americans.
I love the capitalist economic system we use. I've been a small businessman for a long time. I love the opportunities our country has to offer. But I hate thinking that corporate control of government is real and is becoming a reality.
So yes, I've lost faith in corporate America. They will never do the right thing unless made to do so. With that said, I guess I'm losing faith in government as well. The game is stacked and business has a bigger checkbook than I.
