Corporations Cause all the Problems

Falling off cliffsAs you can see by watching that video, there were no warning signs or safety barriers. By failing to erect them, corporations caused the problem. A corporation could have chosen to prevent that problem but didn't, and can therefore be said to have caused it. The "simple mistake" of the bikers would never have been made if it weren't for the passivity of engineering corporations. Inaction is problematic.2. ForgetfulnessCon cites a site that explains how to improve memory without the aid of corporations. That's all well and good, but that only tackles the symptoms of forgetfulness, not the cause. Humans are bombarded with thousands of pieces of new information every minute, and the vast majority came from a corporation. You're looking at an advertisement for a corporation right now - several in fact - even though you probably don't realise it. Corporations create the problem by deliberately overloading us with data in favor of brand recognition. But they can solve it. The PDA was a rudimentry attempt to do that, with integrated apps to make it more appealing, but it didn't sell well because customers didn't believe the device had much value to them. That's why I don't think this is a significant problem. But if it is, then it is totally the corporation's fault you are not organised, because they have the ability to organise your life, and they didn't. It's like this - suppose you have the power to save a person's life, and you choose not to. Are you not then responsible for their death? If you agree with that, then you agree that by not acting, corporations are culpable.3. VirusesMy opponent asks why poor people can't afford medicine. Well, where do people get money from to buy medicine (or anything else for that matter)? Ultimately it comes from wages. Where do wages come from? Corporations. Corporations are thus solely responsible for all the income inequality in the world. Furthermore, that's only half my argument. The other half is that corporations exclude availability of medication not just through money, but just by not exporting to the third world. That causes viruses to spread. Medical corporations make more profit if lots of people get infected with desease, so in profit terms, it's in their best interests.4. Alcohol/drug addictionNobody chooses to be addicted. Addiction is a side-effect of use. If you drink alcohol regulary and in sufficiently large quantities, you will become addicted, regardless of whether you choose to or not. The only choice you make is whether to abuse alcohol. The real problem is the fact that people have that choice in the first place. Corporations are the ones who give them that choice. By providing us with alcohol, corporations allow us to be addicted. They therefore cause the problem - the cause the fact some people will choose the alternative of excessive consumption by allowing it to happen. After all, it's in their best interests, as it means more profit for them. Whether any given individual is addicted may be influenced by personal issues, but the overall problem of alcohol and drug addiction remains fundamentally premised on the existance of alcohol and drugs, both of which are provided by corporations.5. Sea DisastersWaiters and hotel managers don't cause ships to sink. The other positions are entirely un-necessary. Computers are not only entirely safe, as has been demonstrated by the lack of accidents, they're also so advanced they can compensate exactly for the motion of each individual wave before it even happens using a near-perfect prediction model (. http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu...). They're extremely cheap (. http://www.alibaba.com...) and have been in use on ships since the 1920s (. http://en.wikipedia.org...).The fact is that corporations have it in their power to prevent all sea disasters. Not only could they stop hiring incompetant sailors, and transfer most of the ship's running to computers, but they could simply stop building ships. Everything to do with shipping is ultimately a corporation's responsibility. As with all of these points, my opponent has failed to show even a single example of where a corporation was not at fault - except that he can't, because all the poor decisions made by people are vindicated by a corporation's hiring process, all the poor decisions made by computers are vindicated by a corporation's programming (not that there are any, of course), and all the problems associating with shipping are vindicated by corporations who encourage shipping, and are indeed the sole cause and reason for all shipping today.6. ObesityCorporations do not simply make a hamburger. They make it in a particular way. They market the hamburger. They sell the hamburger. They wrap the hamburger. They usually provide places to eat the hamburger. All this communicates messages - not just to customers, but to employees and the community at large. Most of it operates at a subconcious level. Take, for instance, color associations. Red is often tied to excitement. Gold is tied to status and royalty. Now what are the colors of McDonalds? We might not immediately associate McDonalds with royalty and excitement, but the colors were not picked randomly. They were deliberately targetted to encourage people to eat hamburgers. KFC is another example - blue/white/red are the colors of the United States. Those colors were also deliberately chosen to portray KFC as patriotic. Ultimately, corporations are at your back telling you to consume more and more of their services, and less of their competitors. They provide access to foods that encourage overconsumption - it's in their interests to make food as unfulfilling as possible. They create lifestyle images of how people should be - for instance, Burger King is usually associated with a more rebellious lifestyle. Were it not for corporations, these values and foods would not exist. There is no rational human incentive for obesity. It's just a problem created by corporations.7. WarPro says corporations are just doing their job in allowing war to happen. That may be so, but if just doing their job has bad consequences, that does not mean they bear any less responsibility. Hitler was just doing his job as well, after all, but that makes him no less responsible for the holocaust.8. MurderCorporations control the way we express, they tell us what to express (and it's not just the fashion or film industry - even cereal is a form of self-expression nowadays), and they tell us how to express ourselves. Corporations are thus responsible for all human expression, and therefore jointly responsible for all murder. Suppose somebody reads this argument and decides to murder somebody as a result. Is it really me that is culpable, or is it DDO for allowing them to read what I'm saying? But for DDO they wouldn't have heard it. Furthermore, but for DDO, I wouldn't have made this argument in the first place. All human expression is governed, in some way, by a corporation. Because it wasn't me that told you to murder the next person you see. It was your computer screen, manufactured by some company. And it was only relaying orders from a processor, made by another company. And the electricity company shares some of the responsibility as well. These things DEFINE and LIMIT human interaction processes. If the combination of messages demands a murder, then a murder takes place. And that's the brief history of every single murder that's happened in the last century or so. My challenge to my opponent to find a murder disconnected from corporations remains open - unless he can fulfil it, there is no good reason to believe the contrary. I look forward to our final round.