The Real American Monster: Corporate America
by Dan Leinung
My project represents the monstrosity of corporate America and its exploitation of the public. The symbols of the project represent various groups and people that make corporate America seem evil and corrupt. These pictures are supposed to represent the greed, corruption and utter disregard for the common man. Corporate America is what people from other countries see as the basis for all American thought which is one reason why some view us as monsters, because they are basing their assumptions of America on Corporate America.
The project itself is in the shape of a dollar sign, as well as having many
dollar signs and pictures of money in the collage. This represents the greed
and profit making at all costs of these mega corporations. The words surrounding
the dollar sign put these ideas into words as well as stating some other problems
that appear to be monstrous associated with corporate America. The words “Greed”,
“Profit”, and “Corporation” all seem today to have
a negative meaning because of how Corporate America uses these ideas to perpetuate
their own success.
What seems to be ironic is that these corporations are given
their power through the public. The relationship between the corporation and
the public is actually somewhat of a symbiotic relationship; both need each
other to succeed. Without the public, these corporations would have no one
to sell their products too, while “The great corporation exercises public
power, power that affects the health, well-being, and general happiness of
those who are subject to it.”(Nader, 6) The corporation is in fact greatly
responsible for the society’s well being because of all the power it
holds over them through their mass amounts of capital. But because of their
intent on maximizing profits, these corporations disregard the individual’s
rights and do not respect the individual customer. Even though some of these
people are actually investors in their company, the company is almost run
like a non-democracy government. A very select number of people are in charge
of all the decisions made for the company ( (Leibowitz 21). Very few companies
actually take into account what their “subjects” say (the workers
and stockholders). Instead they run the company to make more money for themselves
without taking into account how their actions affect their own workers and
patrons. The exploitation of the “weak” or not as fortunate by
these corporations is why they are viewed as monstrous by American society.
Their abuse of power, by taking advantage of those who support them, is why
these corporations seem to not be concerned with the greater good of society,
thus making them monstrous.
Some corporations in trying to perpetuate their capital become
too greedy and go too far. One of these companies is AOL, which is represented
by the little AOL guy in my collage. AOL merged with Time Warner in 2000 in
order to increase both of their profits. At first the merger seemed to be
going well, sending Time Warners stock up to $90. However, AOL started to
lose money and its executives sold a half-billion dollars worth of stock in
order to save their money. This sent AOL-Time Warner stock plummeting to about
$10 a share, about what it is now. The greed from the executives to merge
and then sell their stocks, shows how the greed of these people overwhelms
their values and responsibility to their company. (Bogle) Another one of these
giant corporations failing because of its greed is Enron. Enron executives
showed fake profits in order to keep their company stock high. However this
eventually caught up to them when it was found that they had gone bankrupt
through the executives greed in having multi-million dollar salaries and accounting
irregularities. This time however, the entire company shut down and all of
its workers were out of jobs as well as all of their pension and retirement
plans which were invested in the company stock. The greed of the executives
of this company again proved to utterly destroy them. But, this time everyone
was affected, from the top executives (who still have millions of dollars
because they sold their stock before it started dropping) to the janitor.
Other companies that have performed similar actions such as Sprint (cell phones)
and Martha Stewart are represented in the collage as well. This sort of monstrosity,
risking everyone’s job and the future of the company for better stock
prices is what epitomizes the problem with corporate America and must be fixed
otherwise another case like Enron will happen again.
The actual corporation is not the root of the monstrosity of
Corporate America, but instead, the Corporate Executive seems to not have
any responsibility to their company and all those who work under them. “When
executives are paid for raising the price of their company's stock rather
than for increasing their company's value, they don't need to be told what
to do” (Bogle). Since the executives are paid for just getting more
shares of their company out to other people, they are being rewarded for making
more money for themselves, not for the betterment of the company. These executives
in this case have monstrous characteristics in that they only do what is in
the best interest for themselves, not the greater good of their company or
those that they are responsible for. This leads the executives to believe
that they can do whatever they want, because they have no one to answer to,
not even the laws and rules of the government.
The government, who should be a sort of gatekeeper and overseer
of these corporations has been faltering in making sure that these companies
don’t take advantage of their position and exploit others. The political
parties are mostly at fault for this, which is represented in my project by
the little discs with the political parties symbols (the elephant and the
donkey). The corporations somewhat “pay off” the political parties
by giving them millions of dollars in campaign funds. This is what the words
“donation”, “political”, and “Campaign Finance”
represent on the project, the buying out of our government by corporations.
Mega-Corporations such as the cigarette companies give millions and millions
of dollars to these political parties to either look the other way or to help
them out when they are in legal trouble. This is called Campaign Finance and
is represented in the project in the words “Corporate Finance”
and “Donation”, as well as in symbols such as money and dollar
signs. This is why a lot of law suits against the cigarette companies are
thrown out, because they have given money to politicians to get into office,
therefore they expect that they would support them if they go into trouble.
This in itself is one of the most monstrous aspects of corporate America as
well as politicians. They both abuse their power in order to perpetuate their
own success. The corporations do this by using their money and power to manipulate
the actual rules and laws of the government so they can take advantage of
others legally. The politicians are just as bad, maybe even worse then these
corporations. They also use their power and the money from these corporations
to better their position. They are worse then the Corporations in this aspect
in that they are put into their position by the people that the corporations
want to exploit. The politicians have a moral as well as legal responsibility
to the people they represent, but because the corporations give them more
money, some seem to favor the corporations over their own people. Since some
of these politicians decide to ignore their responsibility to their own constituency,
they are acting just like the corporations and are monstrous for helping the
companies to continue their exploitation of the common man.
The monstrous actions of these corporations might not appear
to be monstrous to some, but just in human nature. It is natural for people
to make as much money as they can, that’s the point of Capitalism. In
the words of the great English Economist Adam Smith, in his famous work “The
Wealth of Nations”, “The uniform and uninterrupted effort to better
his condition…….. Each individual neither intends to promote the
public interest, nor knows how much he is promoting it” (Smith, 4) So,
according to Smith, it is in human nature to do whatever it takes to make
profit, without knowing how he would affect others around him. However, in
our contemporary American society, we have a moral responsibility as well
as a legal responsibility to not exploit others to benefit oneself; this why
the giant corporations are viewed upon as monstrous. Since they only care
about profits and making more money for themselves, these corporations are
just like monsters in that they only care about themselves and don’t
seem to take into account how their actions will affect others, or in some
cases do (cigarette companies) and just don’t care because profits are
more important
The purpose of my project was to show the monstrous aspects
of Corporate America and how it is viewed by the American people. The greed
of these corporations and its utter disregard for the consequences of its
actions create a form of monster which is not typical of common monsters,
but a sort of modern day American monster. This monster is based upon the
greed and disregard of fellow human beings and seems to be created by the
public itself in its investment in these corporations which seems to be ironic.
However, this monster that is created by these corporations has taken over
the American ideals of profit and self-betterment by manipulating the views
of the public and government by creating false images of themselves as well
as using their financial power to bend rules and laws. My project depicted
the monstrous aspects of these companies through words and pictures that were
symbolic of different companies and their actions. Hopefully this will show
how Corporate America is taking over the country and creating a very negative
image of the U.S. throughout the world. Corporate America is one of the integral
parts of our society, but things have to be changed in order for it to go
back to the way it is supposed to work and promote Capitalism without the
corruption.
Works Cited
Boggle Financial Markets Research Center. Online. What Went Wrong in Corporate
America? February 24, 2003 (April 23, 2003) http://www.vanguard.com/bogle_site/sp20030224.html
Lebowitz, Arleen “Are Corporations Undemocratic, Private, Minigovernemets?” The Attack on Corporate America: the corporate issues sourcebook. M. Bruce Johnson ed. New York : McGraw-Hill, 1978.
Nader, Ralph. Corporate Power in America, Ralph Nader's Conference on Corporate Accountability. New York: Grossman Publishers, 1973.
Smith, Adam “Wealth of Nations”, J.S. Nicholson, Introduction. London, Pornaonrs Row, 1878
Time Magazine. Magazine Issues (September 23-March, 2003). New
York
(Used for pictures and symbols in project)
