Name: THE CORPORATION [21/23] | Democracy Ltd.
Uploaded: 2026-02-28T01:27:54.000Z
Duration: 8 min 33 s
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As today's chairman of Goodyear Tire knows, for corporations to dominate government, a coup is no longer necessary.

Corporations have gone global and by going global, the governments have lost some control over corporations.

Transition words & phrases

Regardless of whether the corporation can be trusted or cannot be trusted.

Governments today do not have over the corporations the power that they had and the leverage that they had 50 or 60, 60 years ago.

So governments have become powerless compared to where they were before.

Capitalism today commands the towering heights and has displaced politics and politicians as the new high priests and reigning oligarchs of our system.

So capitalism and its principal protagonists and players, corporate CEOs have been accorded unusual power and access, which is not to deny the significance of government and politicians.

to attend this meeting that was being put together by the National Security Agency called the Critical Thinking Consortium.

I remember standing there in this room and looking over on one side of the room and we had CIA, nsa, dia, FBI, Customs, Secret Service, and

then on the other side of the room we had Coca Cola, Mobil Oil, GTE and Kodak.

And I remember thinking, I am like in the epicenter of the intelligence industry right now.

I mean the line is not just blurring, it's just not there anymore.

And to me it spoke volumes as to how industry and government were consulting with each other and working with each other.

As 34 nations of the Western hemisphere gathered to draft a far reaching trade agreement, one that would lay the groundwork to privatize every resource and service imaginable, thousands of people from hundreds of grassroots organizations join to oppose it.

Canada's top business lobbyists and its chief trade representative discount the dissent in the streets.

For them, the America's 800 million citizens speak with one voice.

Here is strong advocacy of truth, justice, wisdom and all those things.

I was looking yesterday at the statements at the inauguration, the opening ceremony.

What an extraordinary progress over the last 15 years when you heard such a common language.

And from the most developed to the least.

It was extraordinary that now that we see the benefits trade, more and more people want to buy it because we do realize that it helps everyone from the poorer to the better off.

So a lot of these countries are not saying we want to get off, they want to get on.

So what do you think when you look at all this?

Does there need to be some measure of accountability?

Yes, and I think business community recognizes that.

But that accountability is in the marketplace.

It's with the public perception and the public image that they are projecting.

If companies don't do what they should be doing, they're going to be punished in the marketplace.

These guys and gals aren't out there because government's putting a gun to their head or because they've suddenly read a book about transcendental meditation and global morality.

My inner voice has honor, my inner child.

My inner voice says, I like a Wendy's bacon mushroom Elk.

They're there because they understand the market requires them to be there, that there's competitive advantage to be there.

But we are prepared to work with you, with society, with NGOs, with governments to address it.

So you rebuild the trust so that you come back to a new kind of trust.

And then the ultimate goal is then to become a corporation of choice.

He believes that almost half our energy could one day come from renewable sources.

And I've been called a hippie and more recently a project manager for Shell.

I ask myself oftentimes 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 seem to be responsible.

It's better that they make some public profession than the opposite.

Social responsibility isn't a deep shift because it's a voluntary 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.

What business is it of the corporation to decide what's socially responsible?

That isn't what their stockholders asked them to do.

So I think they're going out of their range.

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

He doesn't have any power to speak for me.

These are decisions that must be made by government and not by corporations.