Big Businesses

[Holywolf† 0]

So for my business speaking class I had to write on this subject and I just thought I would share it with the rest of you guys to see what you think.

 

Benjamin Franklin once said that the first mistake of public business is the going into it. Before my research for this project I probably would not have agreed with that statement but after the things I have read and the pictures from all around the world I have seen I cant help but think that he was most defiantly right. This speech is not intended to change the minds of anyone here in regards to big businesses but I wouldn’t feel right if I didn’t say that my mind wasn’t changed as a result of this project and by the end of my speech I hope you will understand the impact that major businesses that we all use every single day of our lives has on not only us living in America as a developed country but also the massive affect that these corporations are having on countries and people less fortunate that us those being the 3rd world or developing countries.

First up is developed and as an example I thought I would use America as we are all familiar with it. As most of the references of large businesses are quite frankly way to complex for me to understand lets first take a look at McDonalds and its affect on America. since its start in 1940 it has grown exponentially as a corporation becoming the number one fast food company in the world with over 1400 stores in the united states according to McSpotlight, a site detailing information about the McDonalds franchise. According to the movie “Supersize me” which was about the effects Fast food has on the human body McDonalds feeds more than 46 million people a day which is more than the entire population of spain. Now something like that wouldn’t be much of a problem if the food being served was healthy or even capable of maintaining bodily functions, however that is not the case, according to their own nutritional facts which can be found in any restaurant there is quite literally not a single healthy thing on their menu, and because of their ease of accessibility to virtually everyone could be said to be a major contributor towards modern obesity.

Now lets look at the impact of a few well known businesses on developing countries. Gap, Old Navy, Abercrombie, Adidas, and Nike. These companies are all very well known and their products are a staple of American society today, but apart from their commonalities in what type of merchandise the offer the have something else in common. Each and every single one of them gets a large percentage of their merchandise from a sweatshop located in a developing country, For those of you who don’t know a sweatshop is defined in the Webster’s dictionary as being a shop or factory in which employees work for long hours at low wages and under unhealthy conditions, these conditions can range from unsafe working environments to unrealistic work demands. According to the Paly voice an amateur journal, these sweatshops routinely hire small children as young as 8 years old to work as much as 12 hours a day or longer, these children work in deplorable conditions to supply Americans with the name brand merchandise that we value so highly and while we may pay 100 dollars for a pair of jeans the one who made them may make as little as twenty five cents for them or less, and awhile most of us may think “well it doesn’t really matter if I go and buy things from those places after all what difference could one person make?” this is unfortunately the mindset of the majority of consumers not only in America but in developed countries the world over and until it changes the vicious cycle of this atrocity will remain unchanged. There are also records that many of these sweatshops have forced their employees to take amphetamines and while these drugs can keep their workers awake longer so they can endure longer work shifts the can also cause negative long term affects such as toxic psychosis, difficulty breathing, convulsions, coma and death.

These are the affects that the corporations whose products we all but worship are having on us and the world around us, and while I was only able to talk about the affects of Mcdonalds on us and major clothing stores on other countries. I would strongly suggest that each and every one of you go out and do your own research to see for yourself just what these companies are doing.

[Saz 0]

but also the massive affect that these corporations

 

These are the affects that the corporations

 

Effect. I only call you out on it because professors view this as nails on the chalkboard and you will get points knocked if you mix up effect/affect My internet grammar/spelling is horrid but I noticed you used that twice. I mostly agree with you, big business is very exploitative of most countries without labor laws. However, there are a few points I'll bring up.

 

1) It is exploitation on a global scale, but often being paid so little in a local economy is still significant to the workers. When I was in Cambodia, I talked to alot of people about this, and many people in these workshops consider it a huge boon compared to other jobs they can take (prostitute, drug dealer, or join the army). They're working dirt cheap by American standards, but it's lucrative to them. They have plenty of local jobs to work, but the standards are often worse than large multinational companies. You have to remember how cheap things are in a developing nation compared to what they're being paid.

 

2) totally agreed that labor conditions are horrid and children are being exploited....but thats also the case with small scale in-country jobs. What a country really needs to do is outlaw the exploitative practices and enforce adhesion to them so that the people inherently have basic workers rights. But in many of the Third world countries I've visted, it's corrupt enough that police are the ones happily selling prostitutes and drugs, so a place will keep being exploited by corporation, corruption, and malaise until things change at the local level.

 

3) Absolutely, the goal of any pure-capitalist endeavor is to get the maximum amount of labor for the lowest wage they can pay the worker. This is why things like child labor and worker rights laws are so important (insert lawl libertarians rolleyes emoticon here), because developing countries have absolutely no way to compete with what corporations offer them, even if it literally means working to death for your family. In some Asian countries, girls are treated as total trash (and sometimes killed at birth in rural areas) because they're seen as economically useless to the family. But if a family can legally send an unwanted daughter into a sweatshop all day against her will and with no laws restricting it, you can bet they will.

 

It's all very circular. A country's laws and living conditions are terrible, so corporation X moves in and exploits it for profit, country's standards remain horrible because corporation X has brought economic benefits to the country, no progress is made. Sometimes big business drastically improves life quality and wage though, even if it is extremly exploitative, very rarely does it turn a cesspool area into more of a cesspool. It just goes from "I'm starving in a field and missing most of my limbs because I stepped on a 30 year old UXO" to "Working in a sweatshop for 12 hours straight but at least I can afford to drink myself to sleep every night"

[Holywolf† 0]

about to go in and give the speech... crazy nervous right now