Kenversations™
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They own a share, and are not satisfied. Misleading you about the condition of the company you have invested in is definitely evil. However, it may be just a handful of people who are evil, and not the company in general. Making decisions you don’t agree with isn’t necessarily evil. As an owner, you and other owners can band together to change things. Or, you can sell your ownership.
They don’t like the labor practices. If someone has freely agreed to work for a certain amount, no matter how small, it is not evil for a corporation to employ them at that rate. It is evil to lock them in a room against their will, beat them, or knowingly subject them to harmful conditions without informing them of those conditions ahead of time.
They don’t like where the corporation is doing business, their environmental practices, or political causes to which the corporation contributes. Moving work from one country to another is not necessarily evil. Enabling and supporting oppressive, genocidal tyrants is evil. Improper disposal of harmful substances is definitely evil, and if it is corporate culture or policy to do that, then the corporation is evil. Donating to political causes and candidates that the public will freely decide the fate of via election is not evil.
They don’t like how they do business, their prices, or their products. As long as a corporation is open and honest about their prices, the corporation is not being evil no matter how high those prices are, because you are under no obligation to purchase what is being sold.
As long as a corporation is open and honest about their goods and services, they are not being evil no matter how much you don’t like their products, and you’re under no obligation to purchase what is being sold. It is evil to offer a product and conceal the harmful effects of using that product as you present it should be used. It would be evil for the Company to knowingly sell DVDs that are labeled as “Rated ‘G’�? but actually play pornography. It would be evil for the Company to knowingly allow guests to ride an attraction that is unsafe beyond the typical possibility of unavoidable freak accidents. It is not evil for the Company to offer products you don’t like or discontinue the ones you do like. A crying shame? Yes. Evil? No.
It’s not evil for a corporation to move into a new area and offer lower prices to customers than
competitors. It’s not evil for a corporation to have lousy customer service. It is evil to promise good customer service when a corporation doesn’t deliver it.
The final reason someone may think a corporation is evil is that they work for a competitor. Offering lower prices than yours isn’t evil. Not treating their employees as well as your organization isn’t evil. Offering products that are not as good as yours isn’t evil. Competing against you isn’t evil. Stealing your intellectual property, slandering or libeling you, physically harming your facilities or employees, tampering with your products once they’re in the marketplace- that IS evil.
When you sit back and think about it, many times when we declare a corporation to be evil, we’re expressing an emotional reaction to something we don’t like, as if what we prefer is the standard of good and evil. There have been some evil corporations, to be sure. There have been many more cases where evil people within corporations do some evil things.
Has Disney Gone Evil?
There are plenty of people who think The Walt Disney Company has gone evil. Some
think it is evil for promoting “magic�? or because animated characters don’t have
both parents around, or because of things they think have been deliberately and
secretly hidden in films, or because of how it offers benefits to employees, or
because of who visits the parks as a group on an annual basis, or because it
charges what it does for a hot dog in the theme parks, or because it does
business with China, or because it should pay more for labor, or because it
keeps animals in captivity and feeds them and gives them health care when they
should be out in the wilderness fighting off predators and starvation and
poachers, or any number of other things.
Most of those people aren’t Disney fans.
There are some fans, however, who ask if the Company has gone evil because of the continued use and invoking of the Disney name while doing very un-Disney things. Misrepresentation is indeed evil, after all. There are some people who think certain individuals in the Company corporate management are evil, or at least terribly misguided, but not the Company as a whole, because there are so many people still in the Company who are doing great things.
If you’re reading this, you probably have some interest in Disney, and may even be a fan. Maybe you aren’t comfortable with the label of “evil�?. Maybe you think using the label accomplishes nothing. Regardless of labels, most of us fans can cite things we don’t like about the Company.
Yes, it is a corporation, but being a corporation doesn’t have to be a bad thing. It is what allows us to own a piece of the Company, and it in no way should prevent the Company from producing wonderful works of art and wondrous places of family fun.