Corporations Are People… That I Wouldn’t Be Friends With
If you’re like me, moments ago you were asked if you wanted to join the office lunch order. It was a nice gesture but I had to decline. I don’t mind the food they were ordering, I didn’t have any other plans for lunch, and my wife keeps encouraging me to learn my coworkers’ names. My reasoning, which I didn’t offer to my friendly office neighbor, was more on principle. The owners of the company they were ordering from have engaged in monstrous behavior, and I choose not to support monsters.
Now, before some of you out there start getting worried that this is going to be a tirade against a particular business or group of businesses and that I’m going to ruin your favorite midday hangout, relax. I have no intention of naming specific companies, (though the examples of behavior I use are real.) I didn’t even mention to my coworker that that the owner of the company she was ordering from hunts elephants, leopards, and other big game. Just because I behave a certain way, doesn’t mean everyone should behave that way. I think I have a pretty solid argument for my consumer practices but I’ve been wrong once or twice before.
The argument breaks down pretty simply for me as follows: If we’re supposed to treat corporations like people, (like the courts keep insisting that we should,) we have to ask ourselves if we would be friends with those people. The next three examples are personalized versions of real behaviors taken by organizations that still enjoy widespread consumer support.
If I knew someone who was responsible for the declining rhino population, I wouldn’t go to his pool party, no matter how good his sandwiches were.
If someone thought that racial slurs were fine to use as long he had been doing it for a long time, I wouldn’t share weekends with him no matter how good his football tickets were.
If Sam’s employees asked for a raise so they could buy food for Thanksgiving and Sam’s response was to instead put out baskets asking shoppers to buy extra food and donate it to the employees, I’m not going to go to Sam’s no matter how many items he has under one roof. Especially when I find out that Sam had enough money to buy every turkey in the country, if he wanted to.
Whatever the cause you individually think is worth fighting for and defending, whether it’s unions, animal rights, marriage equality, freedom of religion, or preference of bubblegum flavor, it means nothing if you continue to support organizations that actively fight against that cause. That doesn’t mean that we all need to go out and find dirt on every organization we encounter and if they don’t agree with everything we think, we should burn it all down. But if you find that a corporation/person is actively participating in suffering in the world, however you define that, there is a significant moral force against engaging with that company.
Keep in mind, I didn’t attack my coworkers for enjoying their sandwiches. But if they ask me why I didn’t order, I’ll be happy to tell them.
I don’t know that one person choosing not to support one corporation is going to make a measurable difference. But I do know that if we keep allowing monsters to exist because it’s inconvenient to resist them, that will make more monsters. If we’re going to decide that it’s more convenient to not only allow but support monsters in the world, we can’t act surprised when monstrous things happen in the world.
