Businesses have always intrigued me, even the old lemonade stands children used to have. However, I realized early on there many rules and regulations, often not followed, for a business to be legitimate.
This takes me back to when I was a child watching The Flintstones. Fred and Barney were on the side of the road trying to sell Gravelberry Pies. The police shut them down when they saw them and said they had to have to be licensed to sell pies. Too bad police don't bust more businesses for things like this now.
Businesses and corporations have been under fire for a number of years now. It's been over 10 years since the Enron debacle. Other corporations that are considered evil and vile include Wal-Mart, McDonald's, Microsoft, and even Facebook. Social media has gotten bigger, thereby making Facebook and Mark Zuckerberg more exposed and observed.
On July 11 of this year, (ironically my birthday), Viacom, producer of many television networks such as BET, MTV, VH-1, Spike, TV Land and Nickolodeon, made a brash move. They got greedy and were in discussions with DirecTV to try and charge customers a ridiculous amount to have and view their family of 17 channels. When they couldn't reach an agreement, they pulled their 17 networks on 7/11/12. This spawned an outcry from DirecTV customers and the general public. Viacom has thought to be evil for years for how they have turned channels such as BET and VH-1 into ignorant and buffoon filled programming stations. They tried to exert the power they have on the public onto DirecTV. It didn't work. Less than a week later, Viacom and DirecTV reached a long term agreement. The financial details are still uncertain, but DirecTV has assured its customers that there would be no significant increase to access any station from Viacom.
One would be remissed to leave Chik-Fil-A out of this discussion. They may have been founded on a Christian foundation by Dan Casey and have some of the best customer service you will find anywhere, and tasty chicken sandwiches. However, Casey mixed business with personal by expressing his views on gay marriage. Not only that, it has been reported that Chik-Fil-A has been giving tons of their proceeds to anti-gay organizations for years. This is not as evil and vile as some of the previously mentioned companies. However, if you're a public company , you can get into a ton of trouble if you openly try to exclude a group of people. Discrimination and equal opportunity laws are nothing to play with.
Corporations will do what they can to stay in business. Some will be good, and some will be bad. None will be perfect, however. Just remember that they do hold a lot of power in the food we eat, the clothes we wear, the websites we visit, and the decisions we all make. Therefore, we must choose wisely and have our own minds. Corporations definitely have their own minds, goals, visions, and missions.
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