The Corporation (2003)

Milton Friedman: Self - Nobel Prize Winning Economist

Quotes 

• Dr Robert Hare : One of the questions that comes up periodically is to what extent could a corporation be considered to be 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 psychopathy in the individual to psychopathy in the corporation. We could go through the characteristics that define this disorder, one by one, to how they might apply to corporations. They would have all the characteristics, and, in fact, in many respects, the corporation of that sort is the proto-typical of a psychopath.

  Narrator : If the dominant institution of our time has been created in the image of a psychopath, who bears the moral responsibility for it's actions?

  Milton Friedman : 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 an artificial legal structure. But the people who are engaged in it, whether the stockholders, whether the executives in it, whether the employees, they all have moral responsibilities.

• Ray Anderson : I ask myself often times why so many companies subscribe to corporate social responsibility. I'm not sure it's because they necessarily want to be responsible in an ultimate way, but because they want to be identified and seen to be responsible. But who am I to judge? It's better that they belong than not belong. It's better that they make some public profession than the opposite.

  Elaine Bernard : Social responsibility isn't a deep shift because it's a voluntary tactic. A tactic, a reaction to a certain market at this point. And as the corporation reads the market differently, it can go back. One day you see Bambi, next day you see Godzilla.

  Milton Friedman : How do you define social responsible? What business is it of the corporation to decide what's socially responsible? That isn't their expertise. That isn't what their stockholders ask them to do. So I think they're going out of their range and it certainly is not democratic.

  Robert Monks : I don't really care what the chairman of General Motors thinks is an appropriate level of emissions to come out the tailpipe of General Motors' automobiles. He may have a lot of scientists, he may be a very good person, but I didn't elect him to do anything. He doesn't have any power to speak for me. These are decisions that must be made by government and not by corporations.

• Sir Mark Moody-Stuart : People accuse us of only paying attention to the economic leg, because they think that's what a business person's mindset is, it's just money. And it's not so, because we, as business people, know that we need to certainly address the environment, but also we need to be seen as constructive members of society.

  Michael Moore : There are companies that do good for the communities. They produce services and goods that are of value to all of us, that make our lives better, and that's a good thing. The problem comes in the profit motivation here, because for these people, there's no such thing as enough.

  Sir Mark Moody-Stuart : And I always counterpoint out, there's no organisation on this planet that can neglect its economic foundation. Even someone living under a banyan tree is dependent on support from someone. Economic leg has to be addressed by everyone. It's not just a business issue.

  Narrator : But, unlike someone under a banyan tree, all publicly traded corporations have been structured, through a series of legal decisions, to have a peculiar and disturbing characteristic. They are required, by law, to place the financial interests of their owners above competing interests. In fact, the corporation is legally bound to put its bottom line ahead of everything else, even the public good.

  Noam Chomsky : That's not a law of nature, that's a very specific decision. In fact, a judicial decision. So they're concerned only for the short-term profit of their stockholders who are very highly concentrated.

  Robert Monks : To whom do these companies owe loyalty? What does loyalty mean? Well, it turns out that that was a rather naïve concept anyways as corporations are always owed obligation to themselves to get large and to get profitable. In doing this, it tends to be more profitable to the extent that it can make other people pay the bills for its impact on society. There's a terrible word that economists use for this called 'externalities'.

  Milton Friedman : An externality is the effect of a transaction between two individuals on a third party who has not consented to, or played any role in the carrying out of that transaction. And there are real problems in that area. There's no doubt about it.

  Ray Anderson : Running a business is a tough proposition. There are costs to be minimised a every turn, and at some point the corporation says, you know, let somebody else deal with that. Let's let somebody else supply the military power to the Middle East to protect the oil at its source. Let's let somebody else build the roads that we can drive these automobiles on. Let's let somebody else have these problems. And that is where externalities come from, that notion of let somebody else deal with that. I got all I can handle myself.

  Robert Monks : A corporation is an externalising machine in the same way that a shark is a killing machine. Each one is designed in a very efficient way, to accomplish particular objectives. In the achievement of those objectives there isn't any question of malevolence or of will. The enterprise has within it, and the shark has within it, those characteristics that enable it to do that for which it was designed.

  Ray Anderson : The pressure is on the corporation to deliver results now and to externalise any cost that this unwary or uncaring public will allow it to externalise.