What's the worst company ever. Period.

sociablefish@lemm.ee to Asklemmy@lemmy.ml – 167 points –

Nestle? Spectrum? Some random company nobody knows about?

148

Bayer. They knowingly sold HIV infected blood to Latin America after the blood was rejected in Europe. This still blows my mind. Some corporate waste of oxygen actually decided to do this. It wasn't an accident. That guy needs to get stabbed with thousands ten fucking thousand of AIDS needles.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2003/may/23/aids.suzannegoldenberg

And the Essure permanent birth control device, causing persistent pain, bleeding and other health problems to thousands of women. Withdrawn from the US market before the Netflix documentary released

https://www.theguardian.com/film/2018/jul/25/the-bleeding-edge-netflix-documentary-medical-devices

'moral issues above profit' .. yeah, I can't believe that of all things is an issue

They also bought Monsanto and, if anything, ramped up the evil from THAT murderous shitshow!

Why am I suddenly thinking about Norm Macdonald and Hitler? 😉

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Did a little bit of digging on that one, before being bought by Bayer, the Cutter biological division was responsible for another pharmaceutical disaster. They accidentally (?) sold 120 000 doses of polio vaccines containing the live polio virus.

They also acquired and still run the business previously done by Monsanto known for things like agent orange and eliminating corn biodiversity. Their legal department is also infamous for bankrupting small farmers.

Also inventing heroin and marketing it as cough medicine.

Lots of drugs started out as medicine. And heroin is a great medicine, still used in this sense today.

Does it work as cough medicine at all?

As a kid I had really bad asthma, which led to a lot of chest congestion. Had codeine around for when it got bad. Worked quite nicely, indeed.

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Dutch East India Company - The original corporate raiders.

MASS ATROCITIES!

They are the Bug Bad Evil in my pirate themed DnD campaign. Or a proxy of them at least. What better justification for becoming a pirate than them? To quote a real pirate captain from the 1700, "They rob the poor under cover of law, we plunder the rich under the cover of our own courage."

And no. 2 is The British East India Company

Yea I probably got them mixed up. The British one is what I meant. It's probably number 1?

came here to say this. though if American slave traders had actually been a unified corporation I'd be pointing at them.

Ok so Nestle for child murder, Bayer for AIDs blood, Union Carbide for Bhopal disaster and its parent Dow Chemical for Agent Orange (Monsanto too).

IBM for helping the Nazis with concentration camps and Degesch for Zyclon B. United Fruit Company and Dutch & British East India Companies for colonization, also everyone that was shipping rubber out of the Belgian Congo.

Everyone who makes landmines, cluster bombs, etc.

I think when this question is asked in 100 years Palantir is going to feature.

United Fruit Company because they manipulated several countries in Central America and helped the CIA overthrowing the democratically elected government in Guatemala

So many to choose from...

DuPont Chemical?

Wells Fargo?

Wal-Mart?

Coca-Cola?

My pick would be Bank of America for their illegal foreclosure practices which have ruined many families' lives, and especially for their role in the subprime mortgage crisis which destabilized the entire global economy and which we are still trying to recover from. Everyone on the entire planet was impacted by the Great Recession.

Chiquita bananas. They literally stole entire south/central American countries and used death squads and the CIA to enslave the workers and kill them when they asked for such unreasonable demands like being paid in actual currency

Banana Republic is a term coined for all the countries where this company operated.

As someone who lives in a banana republic that now has banana republic stores in its malls, this is a perplexing and sort of insulting end result, and I don't understand how the name of the store ever took off

Don't forget Dole. They caused the annexation is Hawai'i.

Both have paid terrorist organizations in the last couple decades.

And we'll never even get to know what the Gros Miguel Banana tasted like!

It tastes like the marshmallow banana candies/"fake" banana flavouring

Google

They made private data the „new gold“ which it is today long before social media started exploiting it. Changing their motto /code of conduct „Don’t be evil“ into „Do the right thing“ (for our shareholders) didn’t benefit their reputation either…

Changing their motto /code of conduct „Don’t be evil“ into „Do the right thing“ (for our shareholders) didn’t benefit their reputation either…

It's still in their code of conduct, though.

I'm sure there are worse, and it's not one company, but the companies that provide malware to dictatorships are pretty bad, and western countries are sheltering them/not doing much about them.

Examples:

Saudi Aramco or ExxonMobil

Fun fact. Saudi Aramco got hit with malware that took down basically their entire computer system. The hackers then demanded $50m in ransom.

The virus was used for cyberwarfare[4] against national oil companies including Saudi Arabia's Saudi Aramco and Qatar's RasGas.[5][2][6] A group named "Cutting Sword of Justice" claimed responsibility for an attack on 30,000 Saudi Aramco workstations, causing the company to spend more than a week restoring their services.[7]

That's the problem, really. Numerous companies do unspeakable evil, which makes it very difficult to name and shame any one of them.

Right. Corporations aren't the problem, they're just a symptom of the real problem. Even though they're evil, they're just a product of their environment. The "good" corporations aren't profitable and go out of business.

I don't know if there's a phrase in english for it, but in slovak we say a fish stinks from the head, basically meaning company is whatever the very top managers are like.

We have "a fish rots from the head down", so very similar.

Dave's Electronics at 4th & Elm

It really is just a matter of scale. I've known some evil little fuckers, but they lack the resources to commit full scale atrocities. They're not employing children in hazardous conditions or selling tainted blood, but that's only because they don't have access to a steady supply of either.

The ethics is actually very simple. Taking those two examples:

Kids love to work if you just give them the chance. What kid wouldn't want to go and show how they can do grownup things and at the same time make money to help their family survive? It happens all the time with family businesses. Just because I'm a wage slave means my kids can't contribute? What kind of elitist bullshit is that?

The rest is just regulations meant to strangle the small businessman. You've got some pencil neck in an office somewhere who wants to stop LIFE SAVING MEDICATION from getting to people who need it. Bitter little fuck cares more about swinging his dick around and writing "laws" than actually helping people. Most of that blood is perfectly fine but the paperwork got fucked up and sure - maybe some isn't fine - but if you ask the guy bleeding out from a stab wound if he wants some, he'll say "YES!" In any case, malaria will probably get the poor fucker before the AIDS does. And he probably already has the HIV anyway.

/s for those last two paragraphs because it's not an argument that I'd make, but it very much is a parallel to arguments that I've seen being made in real life by seemingly normal people.

And then of course people tend to operate on a spectrum of
*literally does not care
*only cares if it's happening to me
*only cares if someone else finds out (because then I'll have to pretend I never noticed)
*cares, but not enough to lose my livelihood over it
*cares, but is really good about not thinking too hard and/or focusing on all the nice things instead of the things that probably aren't even all that bad
*will think about quitting, but realizes that they other guys are just as bad (or worse)
*will quit and go live in a cave

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I can't believe you even put Spectrum in the same tier as Nestle lol.

One let babies starve for profit, the other has shitty internet service /customer service. Seems equal /s.

I'm guessing it would some of the big companies of colonial times, like the British East or Dutch India Companies.

A lot of good choices here already so ill throw blackrock into the ring

Everyone's already mentioned some of the more popular ones so I'll throw coke in their for the whole Columbian death squad and workers right violations in south America as well as Amazon. I don't think I need to explain that last one.

long island jewish northwell 23 hospital monopoly chemically tortured me October 2005 for being bisexual, 2013 and 2014 banned Quran, July 2019 "Muslims, Blacks are a delusion," May 24, 2020 liquid poison and religious interrogation for questioning overdose death of African American; has admitted stalker gang member employees; 9/5/2022 perjured 10 times rather than listen to my Advance Directive or history, 9/26/22 11 AM doctor and staff pushed me for no reason while hands in the air; contempt of court overdosing for 2 months ending with will "destroy your ambition" to marry a foreigner.

Meat producers.

Trillions of animals killed for profit every year.

And they are delicious

What a disgusting thing to say.

You just told us that selling meat is worse than slavery.

..?

Did everyone else replying in this thread do the same then? Did the person who answered "google" say that google is worse than slavery?

Besides, is forcing someone into existence only to trap, abuse, exploit and kill them for profit not slavery?

...And how exactly do you think people are going to be able to eat meat otherwise? Or have dairy, eggs, wool, etc.? Do you think that people should e.g., raise chickens in the city?

And that's ignoring the small obligate carnivores that make up most of the pets in the world.

Hey, I'd rather hunt my own food too, but we no longer live in tribal or feudal societies where you can reasonably expect to engage in animal husbandry yourself.

We very much so do live in a society where you can easily engage in animal Husbandry on your own.

Almost everyone I know raises their own food and sells the excess to City Dwellers.........but, to be fair I manage a 40k bird turkey farm

No offence fam but thats just straight up generational wealth. I live in an extremely farmer filled area and there's not a chance me in my 1.4 k monthly apartment could ever dream of owning even a small farm - much less have the time to and still pay bills.

I know a couple people who produce 70% of their own consumption, and are only able to do so cause theyre loaded as tits.

Im glad you're able to be shielded from the economy, but not everyone has that privilege (and ngl im even well off in my area)

Lmao no I said I manage I don't own it but, even when I owned my own house (all wealth I have is self gotten my parents are broke too) we still grew most of our food and raised a flock of birds.

I bought my first house with money I saved when I was in the Army. Then when I got my job at the farm they provided housing. Lived in my truck for almost 6 months after getting out of the Army before buying my house. Which was a POS and I slowly rebuilt it. Sorry you live in a apartment

If you don't mind me asking what year did most of this happen? Its all pretty important even in the past like 5 years things have changed insanely. To have enough land to grow your own food is insane, and definetly not broke lol

19' I'm not saying it's easy I'm saying it's not that hard and not unapproachable for people.

We shouldn't be eating meat or any other animal products.

Animals are living and feeling beings who experience the world much like humans do, we shouldn't be exploiting, abusing or killing them for profit/taste when we can easily avoid it.

And it's terrible for the planet.

Environmental Impacts of Food Production

First: How do you reconcile that view with the idea that animals also experience the world as people do with the idea that animals kill and eat other animals? Bears, for instance, are roughly as intelligent as a kindergartener, and yet happily kill and eat any other animals that they can. Pigs and crows are also omnivorous, and will eat any source of meat that they come across. They can all likewise avoid killing if they choose, yet they don't. Are they immoral? Or does morality only apply to humans? (Even animals that we traditionally think of as herbivorous are opportunistic meat eaters.)

Second: What would you propose replacing animal products with, when there are no alternatives that function as well? What about when the alternative products also cause greater environmental harms?

Third: So you would not have a problem with, for instance, hunting and eating invasive species, since those species cause more harm to existing ecosystems than not eradicating them would? What about when those invasive species are also highly intelligent, e.g. feral pigs? Or is it better to let them wreck existing ecosystems so that humans aren't causing harm? To drill down on that further, should humans allow harm to happen by failing to act, or should we cause harm to prevent greater harm?

Fourth: "Exploiting" is such an interesting claim. Vegans are typically opposed to honey, since they view it as an exploitative product. Are you aware that without commercial apiaries, agriculture would collapse? That is, without exploiting honey bees, we are not capable of pollinating crops?

Would you agree, given that all food production for humans causes environmental harm, that the only rational approach to eliminate that harm is the eradication of humanity?

I'm not a vegan, not even a vegetarian - but your message is so full of logical fallacies and whataboutisms, it's enough to drive someone to veganism. Is that really the best you can do?

The first sentence is like when a child has done something wrong, and their mother tells them off, so the child says "Well, <friend> did it too", to which the mother responds, "Well, if <friend> jumped off a cliff, would you also jump off a cliff?"

Isn't it crazy the kind of things people will say and upvote as soon as it's about owning vegans?

Such obviously flawed arguments would never fly for any other topic lol.

I copy paste the first two from the bingo board.

First:
Yes, animals kill in the wild - to survive. We humans are, as opposed to predators, omnivores. We know how to grow crops, vegetables, etc. and cultivate fields. We have a choice, a conscience and have morals.
Are you identifying with the intelligence and life situation of that of a lion? Do you also commonly ask yourself "What would a lion do in my place right now"? Are lions that kill newborns of other lions, for example, really good role models?

I can add to this regarding your question about more intelligent animals. So because some animals choose to kill, does that justify you doing so when you know it causes suffering? That does not make sense.

Second:
There are no nutrients that stem exclusively from animals. Originally derived from bacteria and microorganisms, they are accumulated in the food chain via plants and animals. You can leave out the middleman, which is the animal. Accordingly, a balanced vegan diet can meet needs at any stage of life. For certain chronic diseases (type 2 diabetes, some cancers and heart disease), positive effects are even to be expected. Admittedly, it requires an initial conversion effort, since you have to get your nutrients via other foods and sometimes supplements. But don't worry - it's not rocket science and it's for a good cause.

See also: https://www.pcrm.org/news/health-nutrition/academy-nutrition-and-dietetics-publishes-stance-vegan-and-vegetarian-diets

Third:
I actually didn't find this one on the bingo board, so kudos. And this is sort of a grey area argument that isn't really the core of the vegan proposition. But anyway my personal opinion is that it is ethical to kill for self defense (depending on the situation), even for an animal of "higher intelligence". The same way as killing a person in self defense can be ethical in certain situations. But at the same time I don't think we have an obligation to "step in" and save animals that are subject to predation etc in the wild, see the argument under "first". This argument is quite close to the common one about killing for conservation, which is quite hillarious when you think about it. We have killed off all the natural predators, so the prey animals become overpopulated so we have to step in to kill them off for their own good.

Fourth:
Not directly on the board, but anyway. We don't need a honey bee industry for crop production. There are alternatives. And it makes more sense to use native pollinators anyways (see also here https://doi.org/10.1890/02-0626 ).

And bee farming is exploitative. We cut off the wings of the queen to force her to stay. Forcibly impregnate her, and steal the honey. See more here https://youtu.be/clMNw\_VO1xo

And as for your last point, ofc we cause environmental harm, that is unavoidable. Don't let perfect be the enemy of good. Should we just give up and torture and kill sentient beings because we can't avoid causing some harm to the environment? How does that make any sense?

Except it's not only just to survive. My dog can eat vegetables and a vegetarian diet just fine. But if I put meat in front of it it's gonna eat it.

Also your second point: B12 doesn't appear in plant based diets.

Thank you, I couldn't be fucked to reply to these ridiculously cliche anti-vegan comments lol

Haha no worries, and yes they are so painfully cliche. We should make some bot that auto-replies to the most common ones.

Genuinely curious: How do you feel about the lab-grown meat technology? Would you consider being an omnivore if no animals suffered or died to provide the meat?

Currently to produce lab grown meat they still need a fair amount of biological material for input into the process. So while it does appear to be the lesser of the two evils, especially from an environmental perspective, it's not a purely ethical process. So I'm not sure how many vegetarians/vegans would be convinced to incorporate lab grown meat into their diet at this time.

Not the OP. I'm not a vegan, and not even a vegetarian - however, I have hugely cut down on meat consumption because our western diet expectation of having meat in every single meal is absurdly excessive, and in my case resulting in increased cholesterol and other health risks. So I've cut back massively on meat such that it's once a week, and something very lean.

Lab grown meat has all the problems that farmed meat has, by and large, in terms of health impacts and energy intensiveness.

The other thing is that since going to a mostly plant based diet, is I've found I simply do not miss meat, in particular I don't miss red meat at all. So even if lab grown red meat could be less unhealthy, I'll still give it a miss because plant based food is to be honest perfectly enjoyable. I would imagine many vegetarians and vegans won't eat lab grown meat because they just don't need it to enjoy food. I think it's such a shame that so many eat lots of meat "politically" that they won't even try reducing their meat consumption and finding other foods that are just as pleasurable, and a lot less damaging to their long term health.

If no animals were harmed in the process I wouldn't mind but it's not something I really want all that much, I'm good with plant based stuff.

Wait just a hot second there. Plants are living, breathing, creatures as well. The largest organism on the planet is the aspen tree.

Why do people always pretend to suddenly be stupid when talking about veganism?

You know damn well that plants don't experience anything, pretending to be dumb isn't a gotcha.

I do enjoy how you went straight to insults to deflect your lack of knowledge. Then followed by implying I'm missing the same knowledge.

Just because we have yet to understand how plants experience life, does not mean that they do not. We know that plants respond to pain. We know plants respond to music.

Wife and I have been following the vegan eating habits for about 2 years now. We just don't feel the need to proselytize about it. Yes, proselytize is the correct word. You're trying to "save the animals because they feel pain", we're just trying to get in better shape in our 40s. We are not the same.

When you make bad faith arguments you can't expect well worded replies lol.

Even if this argument made any kind of sense(which let's be clear, it does not) then going vegan would still be the answer.
A plant based diet uses way less plants than a meat filled one because you get to skip the inefficient middleman of animals.

Ah yes, asking people to not needlessly abuse animals is the same as trying to force people to join your religion, totally!

You're right, we're not the same, I'm standing up for beings who are getting abused and killed by the trillions because of profit and taste, you're just not eating animals so you don't die quicker.
Not sure why you brought that up.

See how you skiffed right off of the "plants feel pain" and dug your heels into "I'm protecting the innocent animals"?

Edit: You realize that anyone can see that you're self-upvoting right?

Plant do not feel pain.. they respond to stimuli.
It's like saying antivirus software feels pain when it reacts to a virus on your computer.

And again, a plant based diet uses less plants, so even if plants did feel pain(they do not) veganism is the answer.

Yes, why wouldn't I upvote my own posts? Obviously I like what I myself post.

Just because you do not understand it does not mean it does not exist.
Pain is a human defined "experience" to specific stimuli.
You cannot state definitively that plants cannot experience something equivalent.

"Plants respond to herbivore attack through an intricate and dynamic defense system that includes structural barriers, toxic chemicals, and attraction of natural enemies of the target pests. " -- Nih.gov

So I mean they're just "defending" themselves for no reason, right?
https://bestlifeonline.com/how-do-plants-protect-themselves/

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Youd hate herbivores then, they have the most expendable energy for defence and obviously don't need to kill - they're herbivores

Just look at how deadly fucking hippos are

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Man, this is like going against slavery in the past, you are going to be downvoted to hell, but, in the future you will be on the right side of history, cheers.

Holy shit you just compare meat eating to actual slavery? And you guys wonder why people think you're fanatics.

Change "animal" for "jew". If it's an atrocity with a human it is an atrocity with another being. Sorry if you can't see it, it's not our fault.

You should probably take your holocaust denying whataboutism back to Reddit there chief.

Holocaust dennying??? LMAO man, I wasn't expecting that on todays list. I'm not denying anything, nothing further from reality.

It's so damn exhausting, I'm just saying we should stop needlessly abusing animals, for some reason that's controversial..

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