Summary: I hold forth shamelessly about the heartless conduct of corporations. My holding forth involves an apocryphal story with real life, personal roots.
I start with my personal focus: an advertisement for Camel cigarettes. The point I'm making, however, is general: it is commonplace--and even seen as legitimate --that amoral and immoral actions will be taken by, and on behalf of, corporations. While there are corporations, no doubt, that justly pride themselves on their civic presence and their ethical code, there are still too many (tobacco companies, arms dealers, food chains, etc.) that act in a manner which rejects (or is indifferent to, casual with) morality, the truth, the environment or any clearly applicable ethical code. Such corporations will use whatever tools are at hand, even if tainted, to achieve a bottom line that is pleasing to their boards and their stockholders. To the extent that they have done harm deliberately or through negligence, they are criminal. And, I would argue, we are all accomplices to the extent that we allow such callous corporate irresponsibililty to continue.

My starting point is, for too many, a familiar one, the death of a loved one via tobacco-related causes. My father was a doctor and because of that well educated. Nonetheless he had smoked since his teens. He smoked Camels*. Because he was addicted he couldn't quit and eventually died of a progressive emphysema-like disease. The disease was clearly caused by his 30 year, two-pack-a-day habit.
*As you'll see below, the brand name, in this case Camel, is a connector in the chain of associations that led me to write this entry.

This entry began with my memory from 30-40 years ago(check out the bedside telephone in the ad), a billboard catch-phrase which somehow stuck with me. The claim, on the part of Camel cigarettes, was that more doctors smoked Camels than any other brand of cigarettes. (The Camel advertisement was found through a Google image search and is presented below)

There is a supreme and painful irony here. Someone who is selflessly commited to wisest care of the health of others has so little control over his own self-destructive habitual behavior. Further, this paragon of nurturance and symbol of health care, is being used to lure others into the same life destroying trap!

To a very real extent (and even he would have said) my father's death was "his own damn fault"! He should have quit. Yes, even so, it's the fault of some others, too!

Nicotine is an addictive substance. Nicotine levels have been routinely been boosted in tobacco, boosted past the natural level of the tobacco itself. The intended consequence: unlike with quitting, say, potato chips, the power or "will" when it comes to stopping cigarettes has been reduced even further. In short, once tobacco gets you, it's very hard to quit. (I can quit any time I want!! Ha!! :o[ )

In this situation, how would you characterize the corporation that capitalizes upon and even enhances this nicotine-related incapacity-to-quit ? Benign or friendly? Certainly not! Would you call that corporation"good" or a "good citizen"? No, right? If you'll forgive the analogy it's like putting a loaded and cocked gun in the smoker's hand and supergluing the trigger to finger and the muzzle to head. The fact that the smoker is part of the causal chain that causes the gun to go off, by tripping, say, has been widely trumpeted by tobacco companies in litigation. This is a smokescreen, however. No "good citizen" would have placed the sticky gun in hand in the first place.

In the US we have cracked down on smoking. Thus tobacco companies have been forced into the position of advertising and educating about the hazards of tobacco. This out of one side of their mouths while hawking their product, still loudly, out of the other.

To this day these same tobacco companies are marketing in countries with less health-targeted governments and are making huge profits. No change of heart here! No siree! Simply killing people where they're allowed to do so is no change in compassion, no increase in sensitivity to "greatest good for the greatest number". Stockholders, corporate officers, employees, those are the folks to whom they owe accountability(employees far less than corporate officers or major stockholders, naturally); that's it! Clearly that's not enough!

Yes, I did say "killings". If you advertise and glamorize smoking, even focusing in particular on the most vulnerable, i.e., those thinking about, craving the status of, "looking cool", then you know what you're doing! Doing this is a smart income-maximizing decision. Any other sociopath would do the same thing; knowing that once the first pack is consumed the next pack is, say, 10 times more likely to be purchased and that the third pack 100 times more likely to be consumed you can do no less. You're locking in cash-flow for cigarettes. You leave it to the marketing department to maintain market share.

By these strategies you show yourself a significant and conscious cause of the addiction and of consequent premature death. That being so, then aren't you guilty, at least, of negligent homicide and , if we're being really accurate, of a particularly cold blooded and on-going process of mass murder? You've pandered to the weaker sides (addictive tendencies, psychosocial vulnerabilities of the young) of the human constitution with the knowledge that addiction will follow and that an early death will follow from the addiction. You're a killer! In a suit, maybe, but a killer nonetheless!

Now here's where the difference between the law as it applies to individuals and as it applies to corporations is inexplicably and monstrously different. If I, as an individual, did this to the water supply of my city --- with the same sort of results --- I would be a mass murderer. Right? Not so with a corporation. Why is it that, because a particular corporation is socially responsible in some ways, e.g., it pays retiree pension checks and stock dividends on time, that same corporation can do the absolutely inexcusable with the full focus of its business might? Mass murderers have shown a level of civility for a major portion of their lives and to many people and yet they were still imprisoned and punished.

Why is it that a corporation is so hard to restrain? It seems to me that, since any corporate entity has greater powers to act--it has greater responsibilities to ensure the social benefit of its actions. When it fails to carry out those responsibilities the individual members directly responsible should suffer harsh consequences and the corporation as an entity should be dissolved. Those aware of the crime should tell and be heard! Those responsible should be prosecuted! Those looking the other way? They end up without a job.

If there are members of the corporation neither aware nor responsible, those members will have to suffer loss of employment when a corporation is dissolved as the consequence of wrong action. Any employee who has given others too much responsibility for monitoring the level of civility and responsibility of company action will have to reap the consequences of "looking the other way". This would probably translate into a loss of job and employment when the corporation is "bad". Read this possibility as a disincentive for keeping silent. Whistleblower rewards would be a direct incentive for the reporting bad action.
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In case you think this is a tobacco problem and not a problem with corporate responsibility, generally. Let me start the train of general thought with the assertion that drugs have been rushed to market, genetically modified plants and animals have been put in, we would argue, premature circulation because of the power and self-involvement of corporations. Enron executives, clearly guilty of wrong-doing, walk away with ill-gotten gains while employees' retirement plans are wiped out. Weapons manufactureres make and market hand-guns and use very expensive teams of lawyers to wave constitutional arguments with the ultimate result being the continued blood bath on american streets. There MUST be a real and powerful method socializing corporate behavior. When they go bad the consequences are insufferable. (Stephen Downes touts Joel Bakan's book, The Corporation: The Pathological Pursuit of Profit and Power as a profoundly developed essay on this same topic.)
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You might also want to read my entry describing Mark Twain's concern for the "lie by silent assertion"

Also: I'll continue searching using the following Google search Google---- Alternative Political Systems"
and I'll go to the following link for articles and analyses of the role of corporations in society(with clear progressive slant). I'll go here for articles on progressivism, generally. Finally, I'll revisit Oligopoly Watch for a knowledge upgrade on multicorporate oligopolistic shenanigans.
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3rd draft, 2/21/2005