Monsanto - An evil giant?

[Lerxst]

Here's part 1 of a documentary to get you started:

[youtube]fvGddgHRQyg[/youtube]

As an organic farming environmentalist, I view Monstanto as one of the largest, most evil corporations in the world. Their goal sounds like something out of Pinky and the Brain - world domination - and with owning 90% of the seeds in the world, they're well on their way.

I don't know if this clip highlights it all, but here are some of what they do:

It is illegal to plant their seeds without buying from them. If their seeds and/or product end up in your field, garden, or even your lawn, they can (and will, as proven) legally sue you.

If farmer A plants Monsanto seeds and farmer B plants organic crops, any signs of a Monsanto plant showing up in farmer B's crop makes him forfeit everything he plants and owns.

Their plants, being genetically modified to be resistant to Round Up (Monsanto's own brand of weed killer) also make them an invasive, uncontrollable weed. Once a Monsanto plant does start to grow, there's no way to remove it other than pulling up by the roots.

They started off as a chemical plant and produced Agent Orange (weed killer linked to huge numbers of cancer and disease cases) for the Vietnam War (and now we actually allow them to produce food?!?!).

Say what you will about Microsoft or IBM's business model, when it comes to the human race, we can't exist without food; computers are a luxury. Monsanto figured this out before anyone else and cornered the market ahead of the others.

 

[Reon]

Monsato: An evil giant? Yes. Yes they are. I've never been one to care about companies bending the laws and trying to assert their power but I genuinely think that Monsato is a threat to the American farmer and to America itself. I've heard rumors of the things they do to people who don't comply with their...way of life. It's scary. They act like superficial garden variety thugs. Monsato reminds me of a serial killer on SVU; the serial killer was a man infected with HIV who was intentionally spreading it throughout his girlfriend to fulfill some sick twisted plot. Monsato seems to be doing the same, like you said, they make it so that Monsato seeds can spread everywhere but you can not protect your crops from them. If they find seeds in your area, say good bye to your stuff.

And agent Orange was a terrible terrible thing. It's just one more blemish to add to their record

 

[Lerxst]

Just to top it off, most of their products aren't labeled. You can't go into a grocery store, for instance, and see the Monsanto brand next to the Soy Lecithin listed in the ingredients for a product. Most of the time we end up eating and buying their products without ever knowing we are.

Which also means, most people have no clue what this company is or what they do. I know before I started growing a little of my own food and taking more of an interest in what it was I was eating, I had no idea who or what Monsanto was.

 

[Jill Hives]

I have known of Monsanto for a while and it is one of the scariest things I've heard lately to be honest. A company whose goal is basically to control the entire Earths food supply? No fucking thank you!

Also, the terminator seeds. WTF??

 

[Feelings]

Say what you will about Microsoft or IBM's business model, when it comes to the human race, we can't exist without food; computers are a luxury. Monsanto figured this out before anyone else and cornered the market ahead of the others.

I have known of Monsanto for a while and it is one of the scariest things I've heard lately to be honest. A company whose goal is basically to control the entire Earths food supply? No fucking thank you!

Also, the terminator seeds. WTF??

With regard to their corporate strategy, I would do the exact same thing, as would every other profit maximizing business in the world. Market share domination is pretty rudimentary business strategy. Every business in the world wants to be a monopoly.

Although Monsanto's practices are clearly unethical, I think that it would be a mistake to direct outrage at this figurative "corporation" entity. So who are you going to blame, specifically? The non-management personnel? They're just trying to make ends meet, grinding out their rent money, and savings for their kids' college tuition. The supervisors or middle managers? They report to the executives of the company, and have to follow their direction. The executives of the company? They're on payroll too. They indirectly report to the shareholders through the board of directors. If shareholders don't see value added in the shares they paid so much money for, those executives will get fired. Can you blame the shareholders? If they don't buy the share, then they're a sucker because somebody else is just going to snap it right up, so what difference would it make? Can you blame the government for not properly regulating the corporation? Well a big company like that has a LOT of resources to lobby public officials. They can really put the public officials' back against the wall if said official doesn't have a lot of public support. And how can you blame the average joe? They didn't even know this company existed.

All in all, you're looking at an age-old tale of human greed. Most people in the world are greedy, and everybody involved only has to take a very small part of the responsibility for Monsato's unethical practices.

And to those of you who are angry with Monsanto, ask yourselves: If Monsanto came up to you, and offered to double your salary doing a job in their company in some sort of support role (perhaps finance, accounting, clerical work, customer service, distribution, or maybe something else that you are good at) would you decline? Think of all your financial problems dissipating just like that. And they have hundreds of qualified applicants. If you decline the job, they're just going to take the next guy who's just as qualified. My point is, you're not as noble as you think you are.

 

[enfp can be shy]

One of the many counter-productive corporations (in terms of producing well being and truly good living for humans), but none of them are evil - they are trapped in a vicious short-sighted game that cares about nothing but maximizing profits from consumer demand. It's self-destructive for the people who work in those companies as well, but they can't get out of the paradigm easily, and that's understandable.

Compare with the guards from the Stanford Prison Experiment: those are any average people you pick up, and they inevitably end up acting evil, because that follows from the rules of the game.

 

[~jet]

Yes; Monsanto is evil. The laws they pushed into India and Iraq have sextupled the suicide rate among farmers... their GMO strains have turned up in even in the most protected of wild corn sanctuaries, et cetera. Control the food and you control the people, and when one of their hirelings isn't in his or her offices, is because they're sitting as a representative or senator, having gotten there through myriad barely-legal campaign donations.

 

[Lerxst]

I can sit there and understand/tolerate Microsoft manipulating contracts with IBM to get their Operating Systems on the market (how Bill got started in the 80's). Only people getting hurt from a practice like that are some business owners who enter into that field with some level of expected risk.

Buying out, shutting down and taking over companies is also fine and good. Hell, I watched Wall Street and was rooting for Gordon Gekko the entire time. But again, the only people getting hurt in situations like that are the ones directly involved with the company, down to the janitors. The collateral damage is minimal.

Monsanto's actions don't just end at their bank account though. They destroy economies, agriculture, ecosystems and even health; all of which has much further and lasting results on a global scale than even the debacle that became Enron.

Even the farmers growing Monsanto plants don't necessarily want to be growing their plants. If one of those "weeds" so much as invades their property line, they have little choice but to sell out or shut down.

Who's to blame? Yes, the guys sweeping the floors are just as responsible as the consumers who don't bother learning about their products who are equally responsible as the stockholders and executives. Basically, anyone who's allowed and supported the existence of this company, known or otherwise, is responsible for the giant they've become.

You're talking to a person who quit the corporate field to work for the non-profit sector. I've quit good jobs for less reason than a fraction of what that company stands for. If they ever offered, I'd spit it back in their face so as to not leave any question about the subject.

 

[Detective Conan]

Yes. Monsanto is one of the few companies that actually makes me mad. I've even heard stories of them suing farmers for not using Monsanto seeds (which is no small task in itself with today's market), even though the limitations listed above weren't in violation. I don't remember all the small details to tell the story in great detail, but that's essentially the gist of it. I believe there might've been an issue involved with the equipment used to store the seeds, which wasn't Monsanto equipment.

As unethical as their practices are, it's hard to deny how successful they are to this very day (from a business perspective). I find it ironic how the most successful businesses tend to have more unethical backgrounds (you don't have to dig too deep into Microsoft or Apple's history to find their more rotten roots, for example).

 

[acd]

With regard to their corporate strategy, I would do the exact same thing, as would every other profit maximizing business in the world. Market share domination is pretty rudimentary business strategy. Every business in the world wants to be a monopoly.

Although Monsanto's practices are clearly unethical, I think that it would be a mistake to direct outrage at this figurative "corporation" entity. So who are you going to blame, specifically? The non-management personnel? They're just trying to make ends meet, grinding out their rent money, and savings for their kids' college tuition. The supervisors or middle managers? They report to the executives of the company, and have to follow their direction. The executives of the company? They're on payroll too. They indirectly report to the shareholders through the board of directors. If shareholders don't see value added in the shares they paid so much money for, those executives will get fired. Can you blame the shareholders? If they don't buy the share, then they're a sucker because somebody else is just going to snap it right up, so what difference would it make? Can you blame the government for not properly regulating the corporation? Well a big company like that has a LOT of resources to lobby public officials. They can really put the public officials' back against the wall if said official doesn't have a lot of public support. And how can you blame the average joe? They didn't even know this company existed.

All in all, you're looking at an age-old tale of human greed. Most people in the world are greedy, and everybody involved only has to take a very small part of the responsibility for Monsato's unethical practices.

And to those of you who are angry with Monsanto, ask yourselves: If Monsanto came up to you, and offered to double your salary doing a job in their company in some sort of support role (perhaps finance, accounting, clerical work, customer service, distribution, or maybe something else that you are good at) would you decline? Think of all your financial problems dissipating just like that. And they have hundreds of qualified applicants. If you decline the job, they're just going to take the next guy who's just as qualified. My point is, you're not as noble as you think you are.

The word, capitalism would have sufficed.