I am surprised at the antagonism that is shown here and, obviously, I’ve done a bad job of expressing the goal here.
I am creating a NCAA tournament style game of 48 “evil”/“worst”/“most hated” companies. I am not creating a list of the most statistically-provable evil/worst/most hated companies.
As a person who literally has a degree in economic history, I am quite aware that a list of the 48 all-time, absolute worst corporations in modern history would be dominated by:
16th-18th century slavers
17th-19th century colonizers
19th-21st century resource extractors
Plus IG Farbin, maybe a bank or two, perhaps IBM.
Which would be a great list, but it would be a fucking boring game. And I’m trying to create a game here. And a game requiring the players to look up at least 70% of the corporations is one which will not get a lot of participation, even here at the SDMB.
(Also, game-wise, you need some low-hanging fruit, as I discovered in my 100 Greatest People game.)
There’s also the issue of representation. One of the questions is about Disney (and the thought that I, JohnT, would put Disney on this list because of “wokeness” is pretty damned funny to a lot of us). There are reasons to put Disney on this list as there are plenty of people who detest how they are manipulating the copyright laws in this country, many who hate how Disney has perpetuated an image of white hegemony across the globe since 1926, and how they have mastered the business function of buying and establishing vast art franchises which, shown on Disney’s own distribution networks, drown out smaller voices. In short, I included them as a representative and participant/driver of the growing capitalist dominance of art and the art pipeline over the past 100 years, an issue millions are concerned about.
Does the above make Disney eligible for inclusion in an academic list? No, almost definitely not. Does it make Disney eligible for a list where I want popular participation, a lively discussion of the issues above, and some low-hanging fruit for people to vote off in the early rounds?
Most definitely.
And so that’s why there are companies who are NOWHERE near as “evil/hated/worst” as the others. Companies like Amway (just fucking vulture capitalism at it’s worse, people), General Motors (a representative of the vast global auto industry, a polluter of the highest order, their actions which led to the 1937 sit down strike, hell, even what they did to Nader and the electric cars in Los Angeles), and others. They’re here because I need names people have heard of, companies which are representative of issues beyond slavery/pollution/colonization (like Disney and copyright, Walmart and labor practices), and companies which can be easily voted down.
Also… to let a little exasperation through… I literally and repeatedly asked for suggestions. The request is in the thread title. When I revived this thread, I did so noting that I rushed through adding companies to the list, noted it was weak because of that, and asked for people to suggest replacements.
In every post I have made.
So… please suggest replacements. Don’t just complain about Walmart (the shrinking of choice, the implosion of the small town shopping district, wage and labor practices performed in a country where we had actually discovered that if you pay people more, they have more to spend (but yet Walmart (and others, but again, only 48 slots) refuses to acknowledge this advance)), suggest a replacement for them and make your argument why.
Oh, and as for ATT:
The Kingsbury Agreement of 1913 allowed ATT to destroy the competitive environment for long-distance telephony via creating a government-approved monopoly (which existed for 70 years) which wiped from existence over 2,000 companies extant in 1913, stifling global innovation in the area of long-distance person-to-person communications for seventy years (including wireless technologies invented in the 1960s), more. It was a true moment in the history of regulatory capture.
When you factor in the added cost to consumers for the monopoly (the cheapest advertised long-distance rate in 1970 is $5.52 per minute (inflation adjusted)), this simple company was a brutal… but in the American way, i.e., legal and out in the open… rentier. And if you ever have the pleasure of reading 1950s-1970s Cold War fiction, almost nothing happens without the implied approval of the telephone company, that’s how powerful people thought they were.
So, yeah: ATT.
Anyway, I hope that clears some things up:
- I’m doing this for a game
- I want accurate answers, but I also want companies (modern) which are representative of issues other than the big 3 (slavery/colonization/pollution).
- Don’t focus on “evil”. Perhaps the wrong word on my part, it, too, is up for modification.
In short, I just want 48 companies in these categories which will inspire discussion, doesn’t require the audience to spend 2 hours on Wiki just to complete the first round, and will have participants hang in from beginning to end.
Thanks to you all!