Amazon, Tesla, Meta Considered Harmful To Democracy (theregister.com) 69
Amazon, Meta, and Tesla were named by the International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC) as some of the worst corporate underminers of democracy . These companies were accused of union busting, monopolizing media and technology, violating human rights, contributing to climate change, and fostering political movements that threaten democratic institutions. The full list of "corporate underminers of democracy for 2024" is Amazon, Blackstone Group, ExxonMobil, Glencore, Meta, Tesla and the Vanguard Group. The Register reports: The International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC) today published a list of seven companies it said were "emblematic" of the ways large international corporations have begun tossing their weight around to influence global affairs. Those businesses, ITUC noted, violate trade union and alleged human rights, monopolize media and technology, exacerbate the climate catastrophe and try to privatize public services in a way that "protects and expands [their] own profits by undermining democracy." "These companies deploy complex lobbying operations to undermine popular will and disrupt existing or nascent global policy that could hold them accountable," ITUC wrote. The desire for greater corporate power, the Confederation added, invariably puts corporate interests in bed with anti-democratic political movements like the modern far-right. Right-wing politicians, ITUC noted, tend to lower taxes, undercut higher wages for workers, crack down on trade unions, and the like - all things sure to please the likes of corporations like Amazon, Tesla, and Meta as evidenced by plenty of prior reporting and research. For Amazon, the ITUC criticized the company for becoming "notorious for its union busting and low wages, monopoly in e-commerce, egregious carbon emissions through its AWS [datacenters], corporate tax evasion and lobbying."
Meta was accused of exploiting user data, undermining privacy laws, manipulating global information, and failing to regulate harmful content on its platforms. "Meta's algorithms can quite literally alter humanity's perceptions of reality," ITUC said. "Its revenue model exploits trillions of personalized data points to deliver highly effective advertising." Some have referred to the company as "a foreign state, populated by people without sovereignty, ruled by a leader with absolute power."
As for Tesla, it was condemned for poor labor practices, anti-union politics, unsafe working conditions, human rights violations, and environmental damage in its supply chain. "The world's most highly-valued automaker has quickly become known as one of its most belligerent employers. Tesla's rapid market success has been outpaced only by the descent of its corporate leaders into anti-democratic, anti-union politics."
Meta was accused of exploiting user data, undermining privacy laws, manipulating global information, and failing to regulate harmful content on its platforms. "Meta's algorithms can quite literally alter humanity's perceptions of reality," ITUC said. "Its revenue model exploits trillions of personalized data points to deliver highly effective advertising." Some have referred to the company as "a foreign state, populated by people without sovereignty, ruled by a leader with absolute power."
As for Tesla, it was condemned for poor labor practices, anti-union politics, unsafe working conditions, human rights violations, and environmental damage in its supply chain. "The world's most highly-valued automaker has quickly become known as one of its most belligerent employers. Tesla's rapid market success has been outpaced only by the descent of its corporate leaders into anti-democratic, anti-union politics."
Oy (Score:2, Insightful)
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"Things that I don't like" does not equal "enemies of democracy".
Can we get that in writing, specifically about Trump?
Oh. I see. When it comes to him, all logic goes out the window, and the Thing They Hate The Most is literally Hitler, and a Threat to Democracy that Must Be Stopped.
Please, do carry on.
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"Not that I endorse him that much but sometimes the less harm is the best."
You'll endorse who you're paid to endorse.
Hit piece by unions against non-union companies (Score:2)
Hard to take these seriously given that the International Trade Union Confederation represent union workers and they are criticizing companies which are anti-union.
Getting it published in a third-party news web site does not change the political motivations of the piece.
Not pro / against unions, just want a truth in editorialization at these news sites instead of burying the 'written by unions' nature of the article for the reader to guess at, to put it front and center in the headline and lead in paragraph
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sometimes the less harm is the best.
If you were really interested in "least harm" you wouldn't want that guy within 10 miles of the White House, specifically due to:
1. his 4 years of conduct we've already seen in his first term. The constant lying and gaslighting. The never ending facepalms as he sucks up to dictators and acts like a gibbering idiot in front of our allies. The grievance and narcissism. The complete insensitivity. The absolute unpreparedness. The inability to ever admit being wrong.
2. the grand total of 1 major piece of
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"Things that I don't like" does not equal "enemies of democracy".
Can we get that in writing, specifically about Trump?
What we have in writing about Trump, among other things like criminal indictments, is that his name appears more than 300 times as the critical implementer in the Project 2025 manifesto. And yes that does qualify him has an enemy of democracy.
Re:Oy (Score:4, Insightful)
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Obviously, it's even better to eliminate every shared thing. Then if you want justice, you get your own police and your own judges, not any commie tax-payer funded ones. We could call this feudalism, a true utopia of all the freedom you can afford.
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Free capitalism is economic democracy.
Re: Oy (Score:2)
If that's true there should be many examples of democracies without free market economies. Can you name any?
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Capitalism is very much tied to democracy. A robust democracy often does things the capitalist class doesn't like, and the capitalist class is willing to pay to mitigate this. Not sure how you can separate the two so easily
What you describe isn't Capitalism... It's Cronyism. Subtle difference.
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Corporate tax evasion: THIS is a threat to democracy.
There's a difference between tax evasion (illegal) and tax avoidance (legal) using laws passed by our democratically elected representatives.
BRIBING is illegal, bad, and a threat to democracy.
Bribing is illegal in many countries. In America, it is not.
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"There's a difference between tax evasion (illegal) and tax avoidance (legal) "
Yup. The difference is the subjective view of the state on your actions. If the state opposes your actions they are free to interpret them as tax evasion rather than tax avoidance. There is also no obligation to apply a uniform standard and even if there were, real life is complicated and it isn't hard to nitpick a distinction or two if you wish.
"Bribing is illegal in many countries. In America, it is not."
It is illegal, the laws
Re:Oy (Score:4, Insightful)
"Things that I don't like" does not equal "enemies of democracy".
Well, according to the International Trade Union Confederation, only things that are good for the International Trade Union Confederation are good for democracy. I wonder how far down the list one has to go to get to Putin, Hamas or the like.
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Re: Oy (Score:2)
Unions are democratic because they represent the people who work there.
So why is it that you're never allowed to opt out of collective bargaining agreements and bargain on your own? I've always done very well at that. The median CWA union worker with double my experience makes less than half what I get paid, and their benefits suck compared to what I get. If they're supposed to be there for you, then why deny you the choice?
China calls themselves a democracy too.
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Sees you are propaganda-pushing, anti-democratic scum yourself. Well done.
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At this point they just consider democracy to be equivalent to democrats. They've even included opposing unions and not being green enough.
Re: Oy (Score:2)
Re: Oy (Score:2)
I've never seen a union actually do that.
Since when are unions key to democracy? (Score:3)
I agree that supposed information brokers like Meta (and, oddly missing here, Alphabet/Google) are threats to democracy, as they can influence peoples knowledge and opinions, but unions don't fit the bill. Companies are not democratic institutions by default. They can, and often do have some form of democracy, namely in having a board of directors, shareholders, etc., but it's certainly not an inherent part.
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The idea that unions are key to democracy does exist, and does goes back. I read it in the future-fiction book "Rise of the Meritocracy" (1958), the book which invented the term 'meritocracy'. The book started from the fact that meaningful UK parliament came about to represent the opposing forces between working class and ruling class, and each side needed representatives at the table. (In the book's fiction part, unions disintegrated due to better education and streaming, and parliament became kind of poin
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Kinda.
The bit I read (not related to future-fiction) was that meritocracy was imported to the UK by observing Confucianism (the testing of bureaucrats to obtain government positions).
The problem being testing tends to stifle innovation by keeping new ideas/people (both good and bad) out and is easily abused to form oligopolies as testing can be gamed to keep certain classes of people out (all witnessed in China until the practice was abolished). Strangely the notion of meritocracy is en vogue with a certain
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A better way to describe larger corporations is that they borrow their organization from the miliary, with a general at the head and a descending tree of officers of various specializations and functional divisions. This structure is natural to allow a singular vision and goal to be followed from the top down. And as to 'profit', well that's complicated and usually a matter of ownership, but almost always employees are paid wages and benefits and never ownership or profit sharing unless the company owners
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It's also worth noting that in the modern age most companies no longer distribute their profits to their shareholders. It is commonly understood that the best thing for everyone [owners AND employees] is for the company to invest all profits into expansion. The wealth is just 'on paper' until stock is sold/traded/or borrowed against and the money the owners get doesn't actually come from the company.
This is why it is generally a bad idea to tax corporations. That is taking away the money the company uses to
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Employee rights should be set by employment law, ie the government, and not individual per company. Most of the western world outside the US realised this decades ago.
But even employee rights don't equate to democracy - a company is controlled by its owners, within the scope of law. If the union wants employees to have a democratic say in the running of a company, then it should buy shares in that company and vote at the AGM.
The unions here are butt hurt because they have no control over the companies inv
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Companies aren't supposed to be democracies or fair, etc. People, detached from regulation by the state, engaging in free trade is economic democracy whether they individually form democratic structures/partnerships or not.
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You haven't been paying attention.
Unions = organized crime = democrats = democracy. Why do you think environmental policies are on the list? Democracy means democrats and the uniparty.
Harmful to democracy? (Score:1)
Is this the new âoeracistâ slur?
Re: Communists hate what they don't control (Score:2)
And this country won't learn that lesson until they actually go through the process
Nah, most of us saw it happen countries times and long ago realized it won't work. The ones who tell you with a straight face that it has never been tried before and/or it will really work this time call themselves "progressive". Basically they have it in their heads what the world is supposed to look like to the exclusion of all others, and only their ideas are the right path for humanity. Only theirs can possibly be "forward" or "progress". Basically the same thing fascists, prohibitionists, and eugenicis
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And where are there any "Marxist true believers" in the story? Oh, right, there are not. Looks like you are part of the problem.
Send in the Helldrivers (Score:2, Offtopic)
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helldivers....stupid autocucumber....
*sigh*
Make defamation lawsuits easier & wider (Score:5, Insightful)
Real solutions to these kinds of things are hard to come by in America, largely due to 1st Amendment. However, there is one angle that tends to go over easier with Americans: lawsuits.
Pass laws that make it easier for citizens to sue for defamation, trauma, and hardship if social media platforms allow BS through that targets them. While it's not expected Big Social can monitor everything, something with say 10,000 views that's bad-mouthing an ordinary citizen would qualify. They can certainly monitor "popular" messages.
And also allow politicians to sue for defamation, similar to the UK. Maybe there should be an upper limit, but make it big enough to feel a sting. If they allow lies about politicians to spread, then hold them accountable.
America: Freedom To Sue Liars.
Tesla? (Score:2)
Why is Tesla on the list? Is a car company. How is the entire company that is trying to combat global warming and move to a sustainable future a threat to democracy?
Or are they just talking about its CEO and tarring the entire company for him?
If they hate Musk, X is a more appropriate thing to list. But Tesla?!
Re:Tesla? (Score:4, Informative)
https://www.ituc-csi.org/tesla... [ituc-csi.org]
Their claims against Tesla summarize to anti-union politics, preferring bad-actor mining partners, and Musk's politics expressed through the corporations he controls.
Re: Tesla? (Score:2, Troll)
Hard to see what negative politics Tesla, Space X, Neurolink displays. As for X, Elon supports free speech. I guess that is the real threat to democracy?
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https://www.ituc-csi.org/tesla... [ituc-csi.org]
Their claims against Tesla summarize to anti-union politics,
Politics? Try quasi-legal union busting, at least according to accusations. But that has little to do with being harmful to democracy.
After all, unions are *also* harmful to democracy. They're a bad workaround for a broken system of government that is failing to adequately protect worker safety (by OSHA aggressively prosecuting companies that don't meet safety standards), failing to drive growth in wages over time (by raising the minimum wage regularly and in a manner that keeps up with inflation), faili
Well (Score:2)
Well I don't see democracies doing much to curb this. A lot of talk and pointing fingers but the fuckery continues.
There's a reason I call Meta as (Score:2)
... Meta[stasize].
non-profits? (Score:1)
Are non-profits not companies? Not corporations for purposes of this list? How is the Heritage Foundation not at the top if this list. They are literally ground zero for anti-democratic activities?
And where is the Federalist Society? They are fundamentally responsible for the overturning of Roe, the most anti-democratic thing to happen in decades.
The list is sensationalist bullshit.
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How was overturning Roe anti democratic? The ruling was that it was up to the states to decide.
I suppose you could argue that was antidemocratic because an unelected group of judges passed the ruling, but that was also the case with the initial ruling too.
As first post said:
"Things that I don't like" does not equal "enemies of democracy".
In democracy its not we all get to do what we want, its that we elect representatives that pass laws that control what people can do, even with their own bodies.
I'm just here to watch (Score:3)
Left out Vanguard group and other enablers.. (Score:2)
After a judge denied Musk a $56 billion pay package calling it unfair...
In June, Vanguard cast a pivotal shareholder vote at Tesla in favour of approving an egregious US$56 billion pay package for Elon Musk, one of the worlds most prominent anti-democratic CEOs. Making matters worse, it uses shadowy Donor Advised Funds to allow investors to funnel funding to far-right, anti-democratic organisations that promote Islamophobia, intolerance of LGBTQ+ workers, white supremacy, and more.
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I didn't vote for the Tesla compensation along with hundreds of thousands of other union and independent stock holders of Vanguard representing hundreds of billions of $. However, Vanguard lumped the votes into non-democratic representation of stock holder approval, usurping the stock holders intentions.
Nobody but sociopaths wants to leon M. Read the article.
https://www.ituc-csi.org/the-v... [ituc-csi.org]
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