exxon pled guilty in connection to federal criminal charges with the valdez spill and paid 125 million dollars in criminal fines General Electric was guilty of defrauding the federal government and paid 9.5 million dollars in criminal fines Chevron was guilty of environmental violations and paid 6.5 million dollars HCB she was guilty of antitrust violation and then paid 1.8 IBM was guilty of illegal export and paid a swim cotton window was guilty criminal of environmental violations either the drug manufacturer was guilty I've antitrust by a wallet I was guilty million-dollar food and drug regulatory violations I was
guilt in my own financial cross blue shield a tonal see the count was guilty of fraud by the base portions are accident ice cube and enterprises Department LaRouche guilty of an antitrust violation hey five hundred million dollars in criminal fines again and again we have the problem that whether you obey the law or not is a matter whether it's cost-effective it's the chance of getting caught and the penalty are less than it costs to comply our people think of it as being just a business decision and drawing the metaphor of the early attempts to fly
the man going off of a very high cliff in his airplane with the wings flapping and the guys flapping the wings and the wind is in his face in this book who thinks he's flying but in fact he's in freefall and he just doesn't know it yet because the ground is so far away but of course the craft is doomed to crash that's the way our civilization is the very high cliff represents the virtually unlimited resources we seem to have when we began this journey the craft isn't flying because it's not built according to the
laws of aerodynamics and it's subject to the law of gravity our civilization is not flying because it's not built according the laws of aerodynamics for civilizations that would fly and of course the ground is still a long way away but some people have seen that ground rushing up sooner than the rest of us have the visionaries have seen it and have told us it's coming there's not a single scientific peer-reviewed paper published in the last 25 years that would contradict this scenario every living system of Earth is in decline every life support system of Earth
is in decline and these together constitute the biosphere the biosphere that supports and nurtures all of life and not just our life but perhaps 30 million other species that share this planet with us the typical company of the 20th century extractive wasteful abusive rulinea and all of its processes taking from the earth making wasting Sinan its products back to the biosphere waste to a landfill I myself was amazed to learn just how much stuff the earth has to produce through our extraction process to produce a dollar of revenue for our company when I learned I
was flabbergasted we're leaving a terrible legacy of poison and diminishment of the environment for our grandchildren's grandchildren generations not yet born some people have called that at a generational tyranny a form of taxation without representation levied by some generations yet to be it's the wrong thing to do one of the questions that comes up periodically as to what extent could corporation be considered to be a psychopathic and if we look at a corporation as a legal person that it may not be that difficult to actually draw the transition between psychology and individual to cycle tea
and a corporation we can go through the characteristics and to find this particular disorder one by one and see how they might apply to corporations they would have all the characteristics and in fact in many respects corporation of that sort is that the prototypical psychopath if the dominant institution of our time has been created in the image of a psychopath who bears the moral responsibility for its actions can a building have moral opinions can a building have social responsibility if a building can't have social responsibility what does it mean to say that a corporation can
a corporation is simply a artificial legal structure but the people who are engaged in it whether the stockholders what are the executives in one of the employees they all have moral responsibilities it's a fair assumption that every human being real young beings flesh-and-blood when it's not corporations but every flesh-and-blood human being as a moral person we got the same genes were more or less the same but error you know our nature the nature of humans allows all kinds of behavior I mean I every one of us under some circumstances could be you know the gas
chamber attendant Dennis ain't no job in my experience with Goodyear has been as frustrating as the CEO job because even though the perception is that you have absolute power to do whatever you want the reality is you don't have that power sometimes if you had really a free hand if you really did what you wanted to do that suits you personal thoughts and new personal priorities you'd act differently but as I Co you cannot do that layoffs have become so widespread that people tend to believe that cos make these decisions without any consideration to the
human implications of that decisions it is never a decision that any CEO makes likely it is a tough decision but it is the consequence of modern capitalism when you look at a corporation just like when you look at a slave owner you want to distinguish between the institution and individual so slavery for example or other forms of tyranny are inherently monstrous but the individuals participating and them may be the nicest guys you can imagine benevolent friendly nice to the children even nice to their slaves caring about the other people I mean as individuals they may
be any as in their institutional role they're monsters because the institutions monsters then the same is true here my wife and I some years ago had a Tahoe a demonstration 25 people arrived they hung a big banner on the top of our house saying murderers they danced around outside then gas masks and so on when you say actually a little bit careful because I'm very sensitive to rush oh they're not friendly okay did you notice you being right recorded and tell me why you see yourself attention that it be polite to mention what I mean
here we are I like this which is bonding directly please which this corporation has a shin of individuals miss individual a professional the public demonstration it wasn't very effective no need to this is a very rural area to people in the Dobbin it's not a very big house which I think rather surprised them
