Big Business and Crime

BIG BUSINESS! It affects all of us. It helps us​—and it harms us. And there are things we can do about it.

A giant, or “big,” corporation may have assets worth $1,500,000,000. Many have far more. That kind of money represents power. Giant corporations have tussled with countries​—and won. No wonder so many are suspicious of them!

Yet in some ways big business has created the world we know. It builds railroads, controls oil and in many lands provides electricity, gas and transportation. Because of it, a person can wear shoes made in Brazil and clothes made in Hong Kong, drive a Japanese automobile, eat tropical food, and drink German wines. Thanks to big business, foreign travel is no longer the exclusive privilege of the rich. And if you possess an automobile, a television or a telephone, likely it is because big business mass-produced them and thus made them cheap enough to own.

But there are problems. These articles discuss a few of them.

THE problem of crime in our streets is not new. Every day we hear of muggings, knifings, murders and other indications of a general breakdown in law and order. However, were you aware that each day other crimes of almost unimaginable scope are committed? Each year a staggering sum of money is lifted from your wallet or purse without your even noticing. In the United States alone, these insidious crimes net at least 200 billion dollars a year. Who commit them? The big corporations, whose executives turn to illegal methods to make themselves or their companies richer.

Big business crime affects everyone. Often it is deadly and destructive. What kind of people commit such crimes? Often the highly respected “pillars” of society.

Big business crime is so commonplace that most officials cannot cope with it. “Corporate crime remains an obscure and seriously misunderstood phenomenon,” said Connecticut law professor Leonard Orland. If accurate figures were available, he feels, they would show that “the amount of ‘hidden’ corporate crime is vast, and that true corporate crime is substantially underprosecuted.”​—U.S.News & World Report.

When white-collar criminals are prosecuted, what happens? In contrast with the prison terms routinely handed out to muggers and burglars, this kind of criminal usually gets off lightly. For example, 25 milk companies in the New York metropolitan area admitted that they had overcharged their customers for ten years. It was impossible to determine how much they had gained from the crime, but a $6.7-million customer refund was imposed on the companies. What happened to the executives whose misdeeds had cost customers millions of dollars? They simply pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor and were fined.

Another example: One of the largest drug-discount firms in the United States was discovered double-billing the state of Ohio for prescriptions filled under the Medicaid program. This corporate crime robbed the taxpayers of more than half a million dollars. Yet the guilty company was merely fined and obliged to return the stolen money.

Guilty executives may very well argue with those who maintain that crime does not pay. To them it obviously pays very well. U.S.News & World Report tells of one case where a company’s board chairman and president were found guilty in a $12 million tax-evasion case and were sentenced to perform public service in lieu of prison time. While they served this time, they continued to enjoy all the company fringe benefits, and the president drew $100 an hour as a consultant.

Sometimes the public pay with their lives. For example, in 1981 a new, low-priced cooking oil began to enter food markets in Spain. Hard-pressed working-class people began buying it as a bargain. Alas, consumers began to have strange symptoms! More than 20,000 became sick, and as of May 1983, according to government statistics, 339 had died. Why? Because businessmen were purchasing cheap industrial oil in France and processing it to sell as edible oil in Spain.

Corporate crime is also involved in the dumping of toxic chemicals. Five years ago the Love Canal section of New York State was featured in the headlines when people were driven from their homes by noxious poisons seeping out of their backyards. Where had the chemicals come from? A large chemical company had dumped hazardous wastes in the area.

Five years later the inhabitants of the town of Times Beach, Missouri, had to leave home, and barricades were put across the streets with skull-and-crossbone signs and large-lettered words: “DANGER! DO NOT ENTER.” Why? Because the town was contaminated by dioxin.

Despite these experiences, some businesses are found to be, with criminal irresponsibility, disposing of toxic wastes. Using “midnight dumping,” poisons are released into storm drains, mixed with ordinary garbage, or even mixed with heating oil for sale to landlords at bargain prices. “Midnight dumping . . . is not just another white-collar crime. It directly threatens the health of the unsuspecting​—and the unborn,” commented an editorial in The New York Times.

Big Business and Morality

HOW can people be victimized even when big business stays within the law? Because the natural goal of business is to make profits. Many businessmen do not appear to view it as their job to make moral judgments about where the profits come from.

For example, test after test has demonstrated that many people suffer lethal consequences from tobacco smoking. Nevertheless, the big tobacco corporations continue to reap huge profits from producing and marketing their dangerous product. And they continue to advertise to encourage more people to take up the habit. Seemingly, the fact that it makes money is an unanswerable argument in their mind. And when the corporations do business with other countries, they can be even more heedless of the results of their actions.

Big business can victimize people in another way. In order to sell a product that no one really needs, some corporations spend a lot of money on advertising to create a need, to make people feel that this nonessential product is somehow a necessity. An example of this surfaced in recent years in the marketing of baby formulas​—preparations for bottle-feeding young babies—​in poor countries.

All experts agree that the perfect food for a newborn baby is its own mother’s milk. Nevertheless, big corporations have been accused of aggressively marketing baby formulas in poor lands so that mothers are persuaded that their babies will be healthier if they are fed on the formula. The result? Mothers spend scarce money on this usually nonessential product. Often they cannot understand the instructions and do not appreciate the need to sterilize the baby’s bottle. Hence, the baby may end up with malnutrition or diarrhea.

It is reported that one way used to promote the sale of infant formulas was to give a free sample to a mother soon after the birth of her baby. When the free sample ran out, the mother found she could no longer nurse her baby and had to keep on using the formula (at the store price, of course). Why? Because a mother’s milk may dry up in about a week if suckling is discontinued.

It’s Legal But . . .

In fact, the big corporations have come under much criticism for their dealings with the poorer lands. For example, what happened to 2.4 million sets of children’s pajamas banned in the United States because they had been treated with a flame-retardant compound discovered to be cancer causing? They were shipped to countries not so highly regulated.

The British newspaper The Guardian recently announced: “The international drugs industry, including leading British firms, was accused by Oxfam last week of systematically exploiting the Third World poor for commercial profit.” The newspaper went on: “Its most damning indictment concerns the willingness of the major drug companies to sell highly dangerous and potentially toxic preparations to the Third World​—frequently with claims about safety and efficacy which they have been forced to withdraw in the West.”

Reports tell of drugs shipped to Third World countries by Western companies even though they are banned in the Western world because of known dangerous side effects. An antibiotic widely sold in Asia can produce a fatal form of anemia. A steroid hormone sold in Africa can cause beard growth and baldness in women and clitoral enlargement in young girls. An antidiarrhea drug sold in Indonesia was withdrawn in the United States and Japan because it may cause brain damage and blindness.

Moreover, some drug-company representatives have gone to great lengths to get these products on the shelves of the sellers. Doctors and hospital administrators have been offered bribes that included “cars or free university educations for their children.”

However, the moral problems of big business are nowhere more evident than in the biggest business of them all​—the business of selling arms.

Big Business and Warfare

THE international selling of armaments became big business in the 19th century. Steel producers like the German firm Krupp and the English firms Vickers and Armstrong began producing armaments in large quantities. When home governments could not or would not buy enough armaments, these firms developed an international trade and soon became huge multinational institutions.

From its early days, doubts were voiced about the morality of producing and exporting armaments. Alfred Nobel of Sweden discovered a form of cordite (a smokeless gunpowder called ballistite) for guns and, at the age of 60, he purchased the Swedish gun company Bofors. Yet he professed an interest in pacifism and bequeathed the famous Nobel Peace Prize, to be given to those who did the most to promote friendly relations between nations. When William Armstrong died in 1900, a British newspaper commented: “There is something that appals the imagination in the application of a cool and temperate mind like Lord Armstrong’s to the science of destruction.”

Nevertheless, any qualms were soon overcome by consideration of either patriotism or profit. By the beginning of the first world war, arms salesmen were swarming in most of the world’s capitals, vending their wares. However, that war did show up a serious moral problem with the arms trade.

During the war, weapons of British and French manufacture were used against British and French soldiers on the battlefield. Germany fought against Russians and Belgians who had been armed by Krupp. Most of the navies involved had armor plating made under a Krupp’s patent, and in the Battle of Jutland, both sides fired shells with Krupp’s fuses.

Armaments firms made huge profits from the war​—so much so that many suspected they had tried to prolong the war for their own benefit. A 1934 magazine article calculated that during that war it cost $25,000 (U.S.) to kill one soldier, “of which a great part went into the pocket of the armament maker.”​—The Arms Bazaar, by Anthony Sampson.

Since that war the arms trade has persisted, and today it flourishes as never before. Some still question the morality of dealing in weapons of death, but no one denies its profitability. “War is good business again,” said one Wall Street analyst. The New York Times, referring to modern high-technology weapons, added: “More than a miracle of technology, electronic warfare is lucrative business.”

“The arms trade is . . . booming, with the USSR having overtaken the US as the leading exporter of major weapons,” confirmed the British magazine New Scientist, adding: “And no doubt the next year or two will see an upsurge in British arms exports after the shop window provided in the Falklands.”

In fact, to the corporate heads of the companies producing modern weapons, the Falklands and Lebanese conflicts must have seemed like a godsend. The Guardian comments: “European and American companies see exciting new prospects after a war [in the Falklands] that provided a classic demonstration for their wares.”

This must also have been obvious to those who are looking for some safe place to invest their money. New investors in armaments are “coming out of the woodwork,” as it were. One defense analyst quoted in The New York Times said: “The stocks have performed well since these incidents [the Falklands and Lebanese conflicts]. Clearly this has attracted more investor attention.”

During the 1970’s, while war was raging in Southeast Asia, Protestant churches​—some of which had protested against the war and against the growing military buildup of the United States—​were among those taking advantage of the lucrative arms market. In a booklet on the subject, the National Council of Churches said: “The investments identified here are with the ‘big business’ of military production and procurement. The amount of Church investment is almost $203 million . . . These investments are big business for the churches, representing an important if not the most important portion of their holdings.”

What makes corporate heads of arms-producing companies rub their hands with special glee is that for the most part they do business with the military and not with commercial clients. Their advantages are thus many. Most large nations have already appropriated billions of dollars for defense, so money coming into the tills of the manufacturers is assured. Since these components must meet military standards, the price is four to five times higher than that of those sold to commercial clients. Generally speaking, the military will purchase products made within the country’s own borders rather than from outside sources, thus reducing the threat of outside competition. American companies in particular, in their quest for military contracts, are in the unusual position of seeing no competition from Japan. Armaments are indeed lucrative business.

Standing squarely in the middle of this big business of war are the arms salesmen who peddle the destructive wares like door-to-door vendors. “The great thing about making weapons compared to making cars,” said one, “is that they’re always getting outdated or used up: there’s infinite scope for expansion.”

Arms shows, where buyers and sellers converge to look over the latest styles in war weaponry, are popping up all over the world like fashion shows. Producers are developing what are called the third generation of weapons​—high-technology projects involving an increase in military spending for research and development. Christopher Paine, of the Federation of American Scientists, called this “a perilous ruse perpetrated by the weapons builders to keep them in business.”

The moral problems of the arms trade have not changed. For three years before the Falklands war, the British sold over 200 million dollars’ worth of warships and electronic weaponry to Argentina, much of which was fired back in their faces when the war broke out.

Big Business and You

BUSINESS is a human activity, and humans are liable to make serious mistakes. Hence, big business, too, often makes serious moral errors. Big business involves huge sums of money, so it will inevitably appeal to the greedy and the power hungry. And as an integral part of this world, it will naturally reflect the thinking of the god of this world. Remember, “the whole world is lying in the power of the wicked one.”​—1 John 5:19.

Nevertheless, those who commit the wrongs are responsible. Any who take advantage of huge financial power to cheat the man in the street should remember the warning: “He that is defrauding the lowly one has reproached his Maker.” (Proverbs 14:31) Even if the consequences of their acts are only visible in a distant country, perhaps never seen by them personally, the Bible principle holds true: “He that is defrauding the lowly one to supply many things to himself . . . is surely destined for want.” (Proverbs 22:16) Any wealth coming from such victimization will not shield the criminals from God’s final judgment.

This is especially true of the arms producers and salesmen. True, they do not actually pull the triggers or throw the bombs that take innocent lives. But in supplying the weapons, they share the guilt. The truth is, much modern warfare would be impossible without the cooperation of big business. Because businesses have cooperated, the whole globe is like the ancient land of Israel, “polluted with bloodshed.” (Psalm 106:38) Eventually, as happened in those days also, Jehovah will judge the guilty: “You will destroy those speaking a lie. A man of bloodshed and deception Jehovah detests.”​—Psalm 5:6.

But what can an individual do? Should all contact with business be avoided? Not necessarily. Business as such is not condemned in the Bible. (Proverbs 31:18; Matthew 25:14-27) Nevertheless, how business is conducted is important. “The one making unjust profit is bringing ostracism upon his own house,” warns the Bible proverb. And the moral dangers awaiting anyone whose chief goal in life is to get rich are clearly underlined in the statement: “A man of faithful acts will get many blessings, but he that is hastening to gain riches will not remain innocent.”​—Proverbs 15:27; 28:20.

A conscientious businessman should not be motivated by greed, and he should avoid doing anything to encourage greed in others. (Ephesians 5:3) He would not invest his money in things that are harmful. A Christian prays: “Deliver me from bloodguiltiness, O God the God of my salvation, that my tongue may joyfully tell about your righteousness.” (Psalm 51:14) Hence, how could he deliberately allow his money to be used for producing armaments, tobacco or anything else that causes death and disease to others? This would bring bloodguilt on him.

There is something else to be considered too. The apostle John said: “Everything in the world​—the desire of the flesh and the desire of the eyes and the showy display of one’s means of life—​does not originate with the Father, but originates with the world.” (1 John 2:16) “The desire of the flesh,” “the desire of the eyes,” “the showy display” of one’s wealth​—these are the very things encouraged by big business in its remorseless quest for profits. But a balanced person will avoid being victimized by falling for subtle advertising campaigns or other forms of pressure designed to make him part with hard-earned money to buy some unnecessary item that has suddenly become fashionable.

In this way, to some extent we can avoid being deceived by the big corporations and imitating the wrongs often committed in their name. Of course, there is little we as individuals can do to redress many of the huge moral and legal crimes committed by some big businesses.