The Good Thing About Corporations

Corporations are sometimes evil. Sometimes they are not evil but they still do evil things. Today, I’m going to tell you why corporations are good, especially when compared to, say, politicians.

And here is why: corporations have to pay attention to their constituents.

And their constituents are you, the consumer!

If you are not buying their product, corporations have to change in order to give you what you want (otherwise, they will not make any money). If they are out there being evil, shoving processed food out on the market, hiring slave labor, etcetera, then you have only yourself to blame (collectively, as a population of consumers, that is - I’m sure YOU, personally, never support such corporations). Ultimately, if all consumers purchased responsibly, corporations would behave responsibly (with a few exceptions - see below).

Politicians, however, only need to pay attention to you during election time. And even then, they know that having money for TV commercials will be much more important than any stand they can take on any particular issue. So, essentially, their constituents are wealthy lobby groups and…corporations. Hmmm. But the corporations are supported by US! That means we could take over this damned country! We only need to purchase responsibly and our attitudes toward commerce will “trickle up.”

Exception to the rule: In cases where corporations only sell to politicians (I’m thinking of defense contracts, here), the “trickle up” theory breaks down. Too bad. We almost had them.