I’m thinking James Bond Style, Scorpio from the Simpsons, Dr Evil from Austin Powers.
But not the mafia or terrorists organisations.
Has there ever been a truly evil corporation who would seek to overthrow governments, detonate bombs and generally hold the world to ransom for money or other evil gain, or are film references to this type of organisation completely fictitious in every way.
A corporation is a group that has filed paperwork with a government. Corporations can be private or public, but they are still legal entities, with at least some front people whose names are on the documents.
Why would a group of evildoers do that? So they can claim tax deductions from the IRS? To make it easier to go to a bank for a loan to buy the hollow volcano for their base?
In any case, no. Evil corporations are strictly fictional. And no one has ever held the world for ransom. It’s easy enough to be evil illegally, or to use a legal front to hide criminal activities. There are plenty of those, for everything from mob activities to drug cartels. But their whole point is to make a show of legality to launder the money and hide it from the feds, not to proclaim their evil desires.
Of course, when you put it like that it makes perfect sense.
Wishful thinking about a real Dr Evil somewhere in the world I guess.
Microsoft?
Sure they exist. Corporations exist to further their own power. Look at how they have corrupted our “democracy.”
well there was United Fruit Company - Wikipedia with the whole over-throw the president and all
I quite like this cracked"““article””" too
The Chiquita company funds 3 terrorist organizations.
The Shell company pretty much runs Nigeria, and spent 15 millions on settlements to villagers claiming that Shell ordered the Nigerian army to perform atrocities against them.
Then there’s the mining companies of the early 1900s who gunned down men, women, and children because they went on strike.
The Medellin Cartel’s aim was not just to make trillions on cocaine sales but also to destroy America from within. That’s at least what Pablo Escobar said.
Mr. A nailed mine, although their worst excesses were as United Fruit, back in the day.Yes, there have absolutely been, and still are, corporations that will use almost any extralegal tactic they think they can get away with to profit. Especially when the tactics are to subvert the government or have laws rewritten in 3rd and 4th world nations to permit them to plunder the local resources.
Another company that was involved in government coups is the old ITT Corporation; the Wikipedia article mentions its role in a 1964 coup in Brazil and a 1973 coup in Chile (which is how Pinochet came to power).
And there were companies like I G Farben that worked with the Nazi regime.
I can’t believe this thread made it this far with no Halliburton!
Dr. Evil: “Here’s the plan. We get the warhead and we hold the world ransom for… ONE MILLION DOLLARS!”
Number Two: “Don’t you think we should ask for more than a million dollars? A million dollars isn’t exactly a lot of money these days. Virtucon alone makes over 9 BILLION dollars a year!”
No. As Exapno Mapcase pointed out, a corporation is a legal entity subject to various laws and regulatory agencies. What you described would be considered a terrorist organization.
That said, a number of corporations are extremely controvertial, either because of the nature of their business, the way they conduct business, who they conduct business with or actual crimes they have committed. Off the top of my head:
Enron - Energy - fraud, misrepresenting earnings.
Worldcom - telecom - fraud, misrepresenting earnings.
Halliburton - Oilfield services - Just sort of shady in a Weyland-Yutani sort of way.
Arthur Andersen - Accounting - Enron’s auditors.
Blackwater (now called Academi) - Basically a corporate mercenary army.
Goldman Sachs - Investment banking - Nothing specific, but has a repuation as a “vampire squid” with it’s tenticles into everything.
HSBC - Investment banking - money laundering (for terrorists).
Monsanto - Agro-tech - Agressive business tactics associated with genetically modified food products (which sounds evil by itself).
PG&E - Energy - Poisoning townfolk. The subject of Erin Brockovich.
Archer Daniels Midland - Agriculture - Price fixing. The subject of The Informant.
Bechtel - Construction. Contracted to build chemical plants for Sadam Hussein.
Corporations are by definition amoral, not moral or immoral. Their purpose is to maximize the income of their stakeholders (shareholding investors plus major creditors). Individual corporate actions may be moral or immoral, but their purpose is not definable in moral terms.
Conremplate a $50 million donation to a disaster relief program. One made by a generous, good-hearted CEO without authorization by the Board of Directors is by definition wrong, as he’s giving away what is properly the money of others. But consider a venal, self-serving CEO who makes the same donation out of a desire to have his company seen as a ‘good corporate ccitizen’ with Board endorsement, and although the motivation is less than moral, it’s an appropriate thing for the corporation to do.
See why I say they’re inherently amoral?
(Semi-Hijack) I second Microsoft. A legally established company that occasionally does illegal things ( they’ve been succesfully sued, right?) and/oror does things that benefit themselves at the expense of the public.
Apparently Micrsoft owns Hotmail and is in the process of converting all users over to a Microsoft-Outlook-like interface. This brings no functional benefit to the end users and in fact is a penalty - its hard for many to learn the new interface, and even when they do it ends up (in many opinions) being harder to use then what they had before.
The only one benfitted here is Micrsoft - its a step in their attemp to maintain or establish the market share of the Office products.
Really? In a thread where we have companies overthrowing governments, funding terrorist organizations, and shooting striking workers, your example is a company tweaking its online web mail interface? 
Bechtel gets extra points because they have a comic book evil corporation logo (including the oceans full of blood).
Jesus people, what commune did you grow up on? The term ‘evil corporation’ is redundant. Didn’t your tribal elders teach you ANYTHING?
The ceremony revoking all of your native American Indian names will be held at sundown tomorrow (and you better have your own sage for the smudging ceremony too :mad: )
United Fruit Company was the one that came to mind immediately upon reading the thread title. I don’t think there’s any doubt that they were evil in many ways.
That’s not true. Corporations are headed by and composed of people, who are perfectly capable of being outright immoral. Or moral for that matter, but the nature of corporations tends to select against moral people rising to positions of authority.
There was the East India Company, which came closest to military world dominance of any company, but had to settle for control of a country* instead.
*meaning “geographic and cultural region” rather than “nation state”.
