The Conscience of Corporations

During a recent rant discussion, I was lamenting the current situation of the members of our government being largely beholden to corporations. My main point was that corporations are not people. They don't feel sorry for individuals, or mercy, or a desire to help, because they can have no conscience. A conscience is only of the human domain. Well, most humans anyway. My secondary point was that corporations exist for a single reason: to make more money. That is it. The advertising can preach about "improving the quiality of your life" or "improving the environment for the good of us all" or some such, but that is merely the means to the end. Even if a company's service or product does improve your quality of life, the improvement is not the reason for the distribution of that service or product. They put it out there so that you will buy it, and people tend to buy (usually, but certainly not always) what actually works for them.

I frequently tend to pontificate (as you might have noticed), but it is a rare occasion when my random spoutings are so quickly backed up by cold, hard facts.

It gives me great joy to present to you Exhibit A:

Excerpts from an interview posted today on Wired.com, titled "Credit Chief Slams Free Reports":

"

Equifax's chief executive says he opposes federal legislation that lets consumers obtain a free copy of their credit report to help them monitor financial accounts for fraudulent activity.

CEO Thomas Chapman called the legislation unconstitutional and un-American because it cuts into profits that Equifax and two rival credit reporting agencies -- Experian and TransUnion -- earn from selling credit reports and monitoring services. Equifax maintains credit data on 220 million Americans. The company earned $1.27 billion in revenue last year.

"Our company felt, and still does ... that it's unconstitutional to cause a public company who has a fiduciary responsibility to return profit to shareholders to give away the product," Chapman said to reporters following a speech at the Commonwealth Club of California in San Francisco on Monday. "Most of my shareholder group did not think that giving away our product was the American way."

Chapman was referring to the Fair and Accurate Credit Transactions Act, which since last December has required credit agencies to provide consumers with a free copy of their credit report every 12 months to check for inaccuracies and fraudulent activity. Chapman said that viewing a credit report once a year wouldn't protect consumers against fraud.

"That's like turning on the smoke alarm once a year," he said."

He went on to say that he will always oppose legislation that "shuts down our economy"...

I think that the evidence pretty much stands on its own and doesn't require much more analysis from me. Although I am rather fond of the part where he says that it is "unconstitutional to cause a public company who has a fiduciary responsibility to return profit to shareholders to give away the product", especially when the product in question is your own information that they collected about you. Never mind the fact that this information, if in error, can cause you no end of problems in your daily life.

This is what I'm talking about. When corporations can effectively use the Constitution as a shield for the sole purpose of making more money, then the battle is already lost.