No problem. Replace who, though?
ETA: Weakest company on the “Misc” list is probably Amway. Hate to lose them, but it’s the right call.
I guess my list is also slaver-heavy.
That’s a bias I can live with. Hell, that’s a bias I can lean into.
I definitely see companies on the list that I’m pretty confident won’t make it far, but that’s unavoidable. I’ll think to see if I can come up with potential replacements.
Maybe I don’t understand the definition of “evil”. There are corporations that have straight up murdered people including women and children. Why is Comcast and Disney and Amway on the list and the companies that have done far worse in oppressing and killing workers and their families are not?
Taps sign:
To be frank, I could fill the list with mining and oil companies. But that would be boring. I could also load it with a bunch of non-American companies who don’t even have to act like they need to follow American regulations. But few, if any, would recognize the names.
Of course Amway doesn’t rank in the top 48 of evil corps of all time (which is why it was replaced). But what Amway represents… an entire industry of predatory capitalism focused on draining the wealth of the striving classes… yeah, I can make the argument that ONE of those companies SHOULD be represented on this list. Same thing with Disney and how it handles IP.
So, yes, it’s not a list of pure evil, but the companies listed are representative of specific problems. Hate the auto industry? GM has your flag. Etc, etc.
Again, suggestions for replacements are welcome. That’s why I posted! 
Unless I’m missing something, I don’t see a single defense contractor on the list. There’s gotta be some evil going on there, although I can’t think of anything specific that would make one company more evil than another.
Good point! Closest I have is Colt.
Probably should be in industrials. Who should I take out?
Oh, and Comcast was the last entered, and my reasoning was “everybody hates these fuckers”, lol. I have zero problem with them being replaced.
To be honest, there’s probably only 20 that are MUST-HAVE. The slavers, the Congo company, Standard Oil, others. But I (we) will work on seeding later.
I’ll repeat this nomination. We don’t have to list every coal company (although we probably could) but read up on the Ludlow Massacre and I’m sure you’ll agree it will beat out many companies on the list.
And again, Lincoln Savings & Loan instead of a company with just bad customer service.
I’m going on the record here as saying I think the list is wrong. It reads more like “Corporations I don’t like” rather than “Evil Corporations”.
Why is AT&T, Morgan Chase, GM, etc. on the list? What have they done that’s evil? yet you don’t have IBM and their work with the Nazis. That’s in addition to the two I recommended just above.
After all this singling out of “Most Evil Corps”, no one has yet mentioned the German Third Army Corps responsible for the massacre of civilians at Dinant and the burning and looting of Louvain in Belgium in WWI.
Nothing unique about it.
ETA, I see they were mentioned already, but I only saw the West Indian one listed in the table.
My addition: Ethyl Corporation, brought the world the scourge of leaded gasoline!
I honestly don’t know what evil AT&T is supposed to have done. Strictly because it was a monopoly for a long time? Instead, maybe ITT (International Telephone & Telegraph), which as I recall engaged in political shenanigans in Latin America not unlike United Fruit.
Not sympathetic about Walmart being on the list, though I’ve hardly ever set foot in one. I know the rap is “killing” small-town merchants, but that’s been going on since Sears Roebuck and Montgomery Ward started their mail-order catalogs in the late 1800s. Economy of scale ain’t a crime or a sin.
Probably under “Miscellaneous” but consulting firm Mckinsey should probably be on that list.
I feel like the Big 4 accounting firms (Deloitte, EY, KPMG, and PwC) should be in there somewhere
I think it is about their anti-union policies and refusal to pay a living wage. Apparently that’s on par with torture and murder.
Yeah, I’m with you. There’s a distinct lack of definition going on here, and what seems to me to be a lot of branding of companies as “EEEVILLL!” because there were unintended/unknown consequences to their business plans. And/or a certain degree of unrealistic hindsight expectations for these companies from decades in the future.
Not to mention the absolute differences between doing something absolutely evil like using concentration camp slave labor to manufacture Nazi war materials, and merely being relatively unfriendly to their workers.
I mean, IG Farben ought to be on the list for using concentration camp slave labor for war materials, and not as much for Zyklon-B. I know that sounds strange, but Zyklon-B predates the war- it was an insecticide originally. It’s not like they schemed up a lethal chemical for Holocaust purposes and then got named the sole supplier- the SS just used an existing chemical. Meanwhile, Auschwitz is where it is, because IG Farben and the SS collaborated to find the best place to put it for industrial purposes, including slave labor.
Meanwhile we’re counting Disney in with this company because of what? They’re not perfectly and entirely woke? They market stuff toward young girls with Princess imagery that may not be ideal for body imagery? Get real; that’s not even in the same league as some other historical companies.
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!
I did. Three of them that are more evil than many on this list and they were not accepted.
Colorado Fuel and Iron Company: Murdered men trying to form a union for safer working conditions and a fair wage along their wives and children. How does that compare to Walmart?
Lincoln Savings and Loan: Their shady dealings were far worse than anything JP Morgan Chase ever did.
IBM: Helped the Nazis systemize the Holocaust, and continued doing so up until the end of WW2.
Yet these did not show up on your list. You pointed out Disney’s work to protect their IP. What’s wrong with that? It was Congress and not Mr. Mouse that ultimately passed those laws. If you’re going to include them on the list, it should be because they remade films to screw their animators but is that evil? Corporations screw employees all of the time. Why is Comcast evil? Replace them with Wells Fargo who, to this day, still participate in racist practices. Why is AT&T evil? They had a monopoly because it was felt that one long distance company was for the best to have transcontinental communication and when necessary it was broken up into baby bells. Why not Western Union and their monopoly of telegrams? Or what about Thomas A. Edison Inc. not making the list after the way they abused the patent system?
And Monsanto is on there twice. Yes they are evil but only deserve one entry. I don’t know which sugar corporation you would hold responsible for overthrowing the Hawai’ian monarchy and taking away native Hawai’ian rights but I’m sure you could put someone on your list for that.