Injustice and multinational corporations*

In the reading Stiglitz gives many examples of exploitation conducted by multi-national companies; many of them have to do with their disregard of environment (just a few examples here: Union Carbide screw up in India; Ok Tedi in Papua New Guinea). He argues that these companies can get away with these deeds (or exploite people in developing nations) due to the fact there isn't a global judicial system and they also have political powers to pressure governments of developing countries by threatening to leave if the regulations tighten up. Often times the people responsible for making bad decisions can hide in the veils of corporations and don't pay for their bad decision making. He thinks this is a huge problem that needs to be fixed.

On the other hand, Wolf thinks we don't need to worry about these corporations too much. He argues that these companies are not as powerful as nations and they are in fact improving the conditions of the people in developing countries because they are in a terrible condition to start with. Before I go on to write about how much I hate his writing, I do partially agree that these companies are probably making the living conditions slightly better than what they had assuming most of the companies aren't polluting the area around their facilities. But this doesn't mean they aren't exploiting the people in developing nations. I think these companies must provide adequate wages, working environment as well as safety regulations that is as tight as what they are in the US. People are pretty much the same everywhere, a pollutant that is harmful at a little amount is as harmful to anyone. Any sort of pollutant /material that are regulated in the developed countries must be used under the same standard. Wolf simply doesn't see that. He also doesn't seem to believe that large corporation can pressure developing countries' politics. I don't have any sort of authority to make a judgement here but I think it's pretty fair to assume that developing countries that need money flow desperately would be more vulnerable to this pressure and also many of these countries have dictators that have little interest in the living conditions of the people and these dictators would probably be vulnerable to this pressure.

I just feel pretty disturbed after reading these articles. What am I going to do about it then? Well...that's a question for another day.