The Corporation2003

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 na?ve 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.