Worst Company in America

[Sophia]

Don't worry everyone! Here are some "straight answers!" Everything's all sorted out now!
http://www.ea.com/news/simcity-update-s ... -from-lucy

[Seriously Unserious]

yup, read that post, it's all clear as mud now.

The one good thing I got out of that posting was a comment that lead me to this site Sim City 4 Devotion that has a ton of cool mods for SC4. So maybe I can add something new to an old game and get some renewed enjoyment out of the last real Sim City game Maxis has made, and quite possibly the last one ever, the rate SC2013 is going.

I can only hope that Will Write will continue his city building franchise with a new developer, under a new name and pick up where he left off with SC4. IMO he's the main reason why Maxis was still coming up with good games even under the influence of EA.

[Sophia]

Tee hee.

http://kotaku.com/5991181/ea-ceo-john-r ... steps-down

I don't know if this is actually going to change anything, or what, or if this guy is just the scapegoat. (But he's probably getting enough of a golden parachute I'm not about to feel sorry for him) Still, at least something is happening.

[Seriously Unserious]

I can't say I'll be shedding any tears over the guy's loss of a job, since he obviously hasn't done his job well at all. With the amount of major release failures you had to know something like this was bound to happen sooner or later.

IMO he's not the real reason for the recent failures, it definitely runs much deeper then just that one guy, but as Sophia said he's the handy scapegoat. Personally, I think his stepping down is more window dressing then anything though.

[Sophia]

Here comes a new challenger!

So, this is not about EA, but it is about a company being crappy and pursuing obnoxious anti-consumer practices.
Take a look at this: http://www.abload.de/img/drm4yjrw.png

Lest this seem like typical overblown internet rantings, you can read about it directly right here.

My favorite weasel word in that whole bit is right here:

We designed Xbox One so game publishers can enable you to trade in your games at participating retailers.

Emphasis mine.
They can, that doesn't mean that they will.

[Ameena]

I also couldn't help reading this bit...

"As we move into this new generation of games and entertainment, from time to time, Microsoft may change its policies, terms, products and services to reflect modifications and improvements to our services, feedback from customers and our business partners or changes in our business priorities and business models or for other reasons. We may also cease to offer certain services or products for similar reasons."

...as "Anything we said we're gonna do we can change at any time, so anything that's actually useful will probably get taken away after we've got your money, lol".
It'll be quite funny, I think, to see how badly the Internet explode with "omg wtf" stories of getting totally buggered by whatever new rules will suddenly spring up once this console goes live.

[Seriously Unserious]

Chalk this up as just one more reason why I don't like Micor$oft (M$) at all. That and their habit of releasing crappy OS's and forcing their customers to use it by getting rid of their last OS which was at least decent.

The history of M$ Operating systems:

DOS: a real headache to use for the casual computer user, behind the time in GUI sytems (Apple, Amiga, and Atari all had GUIs build right into their system, but not DOS)
Windows 95/98: a decent operating system that was reasonably stable and user friendly.
Windows ME: a total bust in every way. It was unstable, highly vulnerable to hackers and malicious software and not very user friendly.
Windows XP: Fixed many of the problems with ME. Was a stable, user friendly system, but still highly vulnerable to attacks.
Windows Vista: another total failure. Took everything M$ had learned in developing XP and threw it in the garbage. Unfriendly, unintuitive, unstable, and just as vulnerable as ever to attacks. Probably the best defence Vista had to cyber attacks was it's ability to suddenly crash for no apparent reason.
Windows 7: Another decent system. Wend back to XP roots for many components and this made it more user friendly overall. Fixed many of the bugs in Vista that caused instability, but still haven't fixed the plethora of vulnerabilities to attacks.
WIndows 8: I've been using it for a couple of months now and I'm not impressed. I've found it unstable and it has crashed a few times on me. It's still vulnerable to attacks and harmful software and there's no sign that M$ will be fixing this problem any time soon, if ever. It's also not user friendly at all. It was designed mainly for touch screen devices and accommodating for non-touch screen devices feels like it was thrown together as an afterthought in an ill-conceived attempt to make it all things to all users on all devices and the end result is it ends up not being very good at anything. The worst part is that M$ has already jumped the gun and dumped their most recent stable system, Windows 7. IMO M$ would have been better off releasing Window 8 as a specialized handheld/touchscreen device system and leave Windows 7 alone as their go-to system for all other devices (like laptops, desktops, etc). In attempting to make Win8 the jack-of-all-trades system it's become the maser of none system.

And now their at it again with this new XBox console. Does M$ not even realize they have 2 major competitors (Sony PlayStation, Nintendo) out there?

[Bit]

Don't ask what this all meant to a developer...
Think my very first contact with the internet was the University of Melbourne to get the Scitech-graphic-cards-driver-pack.
Still had to program my Tseng 4000 by hardware-command.
Then this real mode/protected mode - crap. It became even more ugly with bankswitching, the never really completed VESA-interface, and that also not very long usable DPMI-interface.
With the WATCOM-compiler and DOS4GW you had the first chances to access the whole memory - while on the Atari 520/1040 you had absolutely no problems right from the beginning - and you could move the screen memory whereever you wanted.
So, that PC did throw us 10 years back.
The 68000-processor had a brilliant architecture, all x86-stuff was "which code can we use to expand it further to the needs".
It's more awful than anyone could describe.
It needed a time until I understood that multitasking is necessary - and that it has to be multithreading, because a pure multitasking cannot work (at hardwarelevel you have to perform a complete sequence). At that point, the protected mode design of the i-processors became stronger. But - wouldn't have been Motorola able to create such a chip when the time was comine? At that point it was already over.
An Atari, or an Amiga (and Motorola with the chips) probably had have a good chance to survive, if (at least here in germany) they wouldn't have been called 'gaming computers'. You weren't allowed to declare a computer with a speaker set as office computer here - this simple tax rule killed them! And don't tell me, that this wasn't a political move...
It still goes this way. Computer evolution is not logical, it's a wallstreet game.

And one thing about the 'GPL'-world:
I hate it, when I have to collect a set of libraries here, and there, and this link is dead, and try to find the older version xxx, and ... whatever. My respect to people who still do and create really great projects for free. But after all - the time they spend into that - they will lack this money badly some decades later And the important ideas they come up with - they will be (ab)used by the industry anyways - more or less 'camouflaged'.

[Seriously Unserious]

The Amiga (owned by Commodore) was basically sabotaged by it's own board, who basically did an Enron to Commodore, bleeding the company dry of all the money they could get out of it, otherwise the Amiga may still have been going strong even now.

[Sophia]

Bing it on!
http://i.imgur.com/O5dSpJ5.png

[Seriously Unserious]

I was cruising around Reddit and found someone had posted this video about EA, and I remembered some of our discussions about that company from last year and thought, "what a great video, I'm sure the community here would love to see it too!" So here it is:

Why EA Treats You LIke A LIttle Bitch

[oh_brother]

Whoa, that is a long one.

I did not watch it all yet. From the little bit I did see, it was an argument that EA is definitely not the worst company in America. An interesting and bold counter-argument SU.

(I do realise that what I saw may not be representative of the video as a whole )

[Sophia]

I do realise that what I saw may not be representative of the video as a whole

It isn't. The video is not in any way a defense of EA, just pointing out that banks and oil companies and mass media and whatnot are often worse in terms of the sheer amount of human misery they cause in the name of profit.

That said, like I said on the first page of the thread, I don't think EA is actually worse than these companies either-- however, I'd also contend the fact that EA could momentarily beat them out in a poll just shows the amount of (justified) frustration and anger so many people have towards EA.

The video also takes people to task for complaining so much and then nonetheless buying the next hot new thing from EA when it comes out.
(I got to feel some smug satisfaction here. I haven't bought anything from EA since 2008 and have no plans to do anytime soon.)

[Seriously Unserious]

I did not watch it all yet.

I know 30 minutes seems like a long time, but once you get into it, the time will fly by quickly, and I'd definitely recommend you watch the whole video.

the sheer amount of human misery they cause in the name of profit.

Under those criteria, I'd have to put Monsanto as the worst company in the world. As bad as EA's business practices are, they aren't doing anything that could endanger all life on Earth like Monsanto is with all their GMO's with poisons genetically engineered right into formerly edible plants.

I'd also contend the fact that EA could momentarily beat them out in a poll just shows the amount of (justified) frustration and anger so many people have towards EA.

I completely agree with you here. I would say, however, that EA is the worst Computer/Software company in the world, with M$ being a close 2nd. The only reason I put M$ in 2nd is that they at least listen to their customers some of the time, and at least produce some good products. Win XP and Win 7 come to mind as good products. The thing that puts them near the bottom is their insistence of shoveling crap like Win ME, Vista and Win 8 down people's throats with no recourse to use the last stable and functional version of windows if you don't like the crappy "update" version.

EA, on the other hand, shovels crap down people's throats and doesn't even make any attempt to produce at least some decent products any more. IMO the last decent game that came out of any studio owned or operated by EA or one of it's subsidiaries was Sim City 4.

I'm sure you've all heard about the Greek myth of King Midas, but if you haven't, he's a mythological Greek King who could turn anything into gold just by touching it. Well, I'd say EA's management team has the Manure Touch, the ability to turn anything they touch into cow crap. Still, the only thing EA is doing is producing overpriced, underdeveloped, crappy products that only hurt those foolish enough to keep buying them again and again, knowing full well by now that that's what EA produces.

A company like Monsanto, many major banks, all cigarette companies and all oil and gas companies, on the other hand, produce products or conduct business in ways that hurts everyone, regardless of whether you choose to do business with them or not. With EA Games, you can choose not to buy an EA game and you will then not be hurt by them when that game turns out to be crap. If your neighbor chooses to buy cigarettes and smoke them outside your window and you choose to not smoke, your neighbor will have taken your choice to not smoke away from you as you now have no choice but to breath the smoke whenever your neighbor decides to light up near your window and the smoke drifts inside your home. Same goes for burning oil and gas for energy, that produces fumes that are poison to everybody, regardless of whether or not you choose to use fossil fuel energy or not, in both cases we must all breathe the same air. So when people are bullied or tricked into using these sort of products it hurts everyone, not just the ones using them. As for banking, well if a bank chooses to adapt selfish, greedy policies, it can topple entire economies, and determine whether or not there is a job for you to have, and whether or not your company/investments will succeed or fail. Big Pharma and the food services industries also can have similar effects on people's health, independent of personal choices, especially when a business lobbies to have laws made that prevent or limit you from choosing an alternative that's better for you. Any company in those sort of industries has the potential to be the worst company in a region/the world as they have a great deal of power and with that power comes a greater degree of responsibility.

Of course, if EA should somehow gain a monopoly on the software industry, stomping out even other giants like M$ and all indie development, then that would create a different scenario all together, as games are a form of art and the arts are a vital part of any society that wishes to claim to be civilized and the kind of degradation EA does to the art forms involved in video games does kill off creativity in that art form which does diminish a society in much subtler ways then a gas company or a food company does.

[oh_brother]

It isn't.

Yes, I realised. Just gently winding up SU by deliberately misinterpreting his post as a defense of EA.

With EA Games, you can choose not to buy an EA game and you will then not be hurt by them when that game turns out to be crap.

Yes and no. You can still get hurt if they buy and ruin some of your favorite franchises/developers.

[Seriously Unserious]

That is true. I still say that companies that fill our air, land and water with poisonous fumes, or genetically taint our food supplies hurt us far worse.

Yes, I realised. Just gently winding up SU by deliberately misinterpreting his post as a defense of EA.

you're one sick bastard, ob.

I'll wind up again...

[wallOfText]
Damn EA, Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Integer dui felis, tempor vitae dolor quis, ultricies sagittis dui. Suspendisse potenti. Quisque nunc dolor, aliquam ut luctus in, accumsan eget arcu. Suspendisse at urna blandit, fringilla nunc vitae, lobortis turpis. Suspendisse pellentesque convallis dui. Praesent malesuada varius purus, a adipiscing ante aliquam mattis. In porttitor vestibulum EA magna quis aliquet.

Sed bibendum condimentum felis vitae sollicitudin. Morbi quis velit at velit congue EA tincidunt aliquam ac lorem. Aliquam viverra sit amet metus eu rhoncus. Curabitur id tristique urna. Donec bibendum diam eu mi eleifend, vitae imperdiet risus pretium. Sim City Proin adipiscing nunc in diam volutpat varius. Praesent lobortis, justo sit amet tempor adipiscing, metus libero pharetra nisl, a ullamcorper felis turpis ut ligula. Vestibulum mattis consequat egestas. Vestibulum ut libero venenatis, sollicitudin sem semper, fringilla elit. In molestie est vel vehicula consequat. Vivamus varius sed nibh et iaculis. Nullam non nisi vitae diam vestibulum fringilla. Vivamus dignissim sodales accumsan. Duis ante lectus, rhoncus eu porta sed, ultricies nec velit.

Morbi suscipit sapien id mauris ornare, vel egestas diam sagittis. Vestibulum sem dolor, Bioware dying iaculis ac quam ultricies, adipiscing pulvinar est. Proin dapibus dapibus ipsum eget venenatis. Praesent consequat rhoncus augue sed scelerisque. Vestibulum nec justo ullamcorper, pellentesque ante quis, dictum massa. Sed placerat eros non tortor tristique, non ultricies lectus sollicitudin. Nunc velit diam, lobortis a porttitor eu, iaculis eu ligula. Ut vel blandit tortor. Sed nec magna id tellus aliquet tincidunt. Praesent aliquam, tortor vel gravida convallis, arcu enim ultricies nisl, id fringilla nisi libero vel sem.

Pellentesque eleifend enim ac congue aliquam. Nam vel mauris sed velit porta porta id eu urna. Sed porttitor turpis vel auctor tincidunt. Mauris dignissim tellus at neque blandit, a sodales diam rhoncus. Nullam at sagittis orci. Integer iaculis dignissim augue, tempus Maxis interdum lectus Sim City 2013 vestibulum sit amet Sim City 4. Etiam vitae dictum justo, Will Wright ac faucibus eros. Vivamus EA at libero vehicula, EA semper erat a, tempor tellus M$. Donec sit amet aliquam dolor. Nunc blandit arcu ac bibendum condimentum. Duis ante nulla, venenatis nec fermentum eget, varius sed purus. Vivamus ac orci hendrerit, consequat neque vel, facilisis magna. Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Cum sociis natoque penatibus et magnis dis parturient montes, nascetur ridiculus mus. Mauris sed tellus eget enim iaculis condimentum a consequat leo. Aenean elit erat, sagittis et nibh sed, The Sims interdum feugiat nisl.

Fusce EA tempus lectus id leo Spore vestibulum mattis EA at vitae enim EA. Fusce vestibulum neque tellus, vitae aliquam risus malesuada nec. Praesent a lorem et felis commodo cursus nec nec erat. Class aptent taciti sociosqu ad litora torquent per conubia nostra, per inceptos himenaeos. Suspendisse ultrices rutrum sem, eget condimentum lacus fringilla fringilla. Pellentesque pellentesque augue EA ut dolor lacinia, et porttitor orci sollicitudin. Curabitur at ligula ligula. Proin a est sit amet odio molestie commodo.

EA sit amet The Sims 3, consectetur adipiscing elit. Etiam blandit sodales purus in egestas Will Wright. Curabitur a commodo ligula. Etiam ultrices nibh neque. Cras faucibus, felis vitae suscipit condimentum, ligula enim commodo ante, sit amet iaculis turpis sem sed metus. Integer iaculis sed est eget interdum. In hac habitasse platea dictumst. Donec euismod dictum diam quis ultricies. Proin ipsum magna, viverra id tincidunt vel, iaculis at purus. Pellentesque aliquam accumsan libero, vitae laoreet dui volutpat nec. Donec vestibulum enim ipsum, at aliquet massa posuere ut. Nulla EA sollicitudin pharetra lectus at congue.

Proin EA laoreet sem mauris, non tincidunt leo porta id. Morbi varius eros ac ultricies scelerisque. Mauris eu quam nec libero auctor rutrum in sit amet augue. Cum sociis natoque penatibus et magnis dis parturient montes, Monsanto nascetur ridiculus mus EA. Sed malesuada facilisis magna ac ullamcorper. Aliquam tincidunt mauris risus, fermentum vulputate ante pretium ac. Sed tincidunt, sapien eu ullamcorper aliquam, tortor magna scelerisque mi, non semper neque metus vel massa. Nunc ligula justo, pellentesque at euismod non, volutpat eget lorem. Aliquam at urna imperdiet, gravida dolor vitae, dictum nibh. Nulla interdum nibh a magna interdum pretium. Cras placerat mi vel nulla cursus fringilla. Quisque at tellus quis mi pellentesque sollicitudin. Suspendisse luctus, eros mollis semper feugiat, arcu magna accumsan nulla, rhoncus elementum ante velit a neque. Curabitur bibendum cursus justo eget interdum.

In hac habitasse platea dictumst. Quisque eu nisi eu nunc interdum volutpat id et quam. Suspendisse sit amet libero velit. Nulla posuere, nibh sed sollicitudin dictum, dui sapien hendrerit erat, a volutpat velit erat ut nisl. Mauris fermentum posuere sem. Vestibulum ante ipsum primis in faucibus orci luctus et ultrices posuere cubilia Curae; Duis sem urna, accumsan et consequat at, varius et felis. Integer et nunc et metus luctus porta eu ac neque. Duis elit magna, cursus elementum fermentum ornare, dignissim in quam.
[/wallOfText]

[oh_brother]

Haha! An even bigger response than I expected!

[Roquen]

I always find it interesting that more people get worked up over companies that have annoying practices but not so much about companies that do things that are truly not nice (arguably to downright evil). EA, Microsoft, Apple...probably wouldn't make it anywhere a "worst" list...sometime annoying sure but they can only even annoy us at our own choice.

[Seriously Unserious]

My own worst companies (or more accurately organizations) in the world list would be topped by Monsanto, with companies like Pfizer (big pharma), the IMF (International Monetary Fund) the US Federal Reserve and Imperial Oil being other candidates for worst company/organization in the world. There are also a number of arms manufacturers/distributes that I'd put on that list too, if I knew their names.

That's not to belittle the damage companies like Microsoft and EA do to societies, but corrupting technology and gaming, which I consider a part of the arts, which are essential to a progressive and cultured society, do great harm to our culture, that that does hurt people more then we often realize, as the harm is more subtle then burning oils that produce poisonous fumes or blowing people up in a bomb made by an arms dealer or ruining our food supplies so we all wither away in poor health and malnutrition.

These other companies and practices are often exposed to the society at large by the arts, so if you corrupt the arts, and the artists, then who's going to let us know when there are problems and dare to dream up solutions?

[Sophia]

I don't want to derail this thread into a debate about GMO food, but I'd still generally agree with you about Monsanto, as there's plenty else they do-- another obnoxious practice of theirs is they demand that farmers do not save seeds from year to year (as they normally would) and instead buy new seeds from Monsanto each year, including making any farmer who wishes to buy from them (and they're so big sometimes there isn't much choice) sign an egregious contract and filing lawsuits against farmers who don't comply. Of course, they have enough political clout that the law is on their side. It kind of reminds me of the egregious EULAs of software companies, actually. I figure, eventually, they'll just genetically engineer seeds that self-destruct and are unable to be planted, like building "DRM" right into the seeds.

[Seriously Unserious]

Monsanto's already working on stuff like that. Of course, when discussing the worst companies in America, or the world or any other region, Monsanto inevitably comes into the discussion due to the pure and unmitigated evil of the people running that company. That's actually a very important thing to keep in mind, it's not the companies themselves that are bad, but rather what the people running the companies choose to do that makes a company bad or good.

Perhaps a more fitting name for this thread would be "the worst management team in America".

[Sophia]

I partially agree with you, but the company can really take on something of a life of its own due to bureaucratic inertia and a culture of conformity, leading to the phenomenon that has been called the "banality of evil." Individuals may not be evil-- some of them might even individually be trying to do the "right thing," at least as they see it-- but the net result is evil acts come out of the anonymous apparatus that is greater than any individual human's ability to influence it, or moralize about it.

It would be a lot simpler if all we had to do was find this guy and kick him out of the company's management.

Of course, I'm not denying that there aren't some guys who shouldn't be held up as particularly bad apples, but I also see the spread of "evil behavior" in corporate culture to be something that is greater than the sum of its parts.

[Seriously Unserious]

You may be surprised to know that in most cases, the start of such rotten behavior stems from only 1 or a few rotten people. If you're in an organization that's struggling, look for the individual who doesn't really produce any truly productive work, makes excuses constantly, can most often be found gossiping about someone who's absent and is in general, doing things that end up undermining the company and the people in it, and you'll find a major source of the problems in a company.

Such a person would likely always seem busy at first glance, but under closer inspection, doesn't actually get things done. Such a person will be anti social in the extreme but can seem very social, however the person's friendliness will be filled with hurtful gossip about someone who's absent, "friendly advice" about why you shouldn't bother trying so you "don't get disappointed" and hidden barbs about the abilities of you and others around that person, especially the top performers, the ones who do get things done. There's more, of course, but we don't need to go that deep into it here.

Suffice it to say, in most cases, it's a few rotten members of an organization undermining it and getting everyone else engaged in amoral activities and/or at each others' throats. Interestingly enough, it doesn't even need to be someone in senior management either, it could be a simple customer service rep who's spreading this poison throughout the company, but the higher up the person is, the faster and wider the person's influence can spread, naturally. So a CSR would most likely affect just a single location of a large company, whereas in a case like Enron, where it's the top management and ownership that's rotten to the core, it will spread throughout the whole organization and permeate its every system.

[oh_brother]

Also, companies that focus on profits will tend to do well, whereas those with a social conscience would tend to give lower returns . And possibly management in a 'good' company would be removed by shareholders for someone who would put profits first, meaning that a socially responsible company would not be sustainable. The only ways I can think of to avoid this are with reasonable regulation or some form of feedback where a companies actions affect their profits, such as tax-shaming

I would disagree abut Pfizer being one of the worst companies in America. A lot of bad came be done by the pharma industry, but also a huge amount of good. They don't do this good out of altruism, but regardless there are huge benefits for society and, especially, individuals. These companies have many terrible practices, such as non-reporting of clinical trials, overselling benefits of a new drug and so on, but the answer is better and stricter oversight and actually the FDA is doing a reasonably good job of regulating them.

[Sophia]

You may be surprised to know that in most cases, the start of such rotten behavior stems from only 1 or a few rotten people.

Maybe at the very start, but leaders need followers and these kinds of things rapidly gain inertia, especially when things start to line up so that things become so dispersed that nobody really feels any accountability any more-- the leaders don't know the exact schemes of their followers ("I never would have allowed them to do that had I known!") and the followers are just doing their jobs ("Just following orders!") so nobody feels like they're actually responsible, when in reality everybody is. As I mentioned before, the banality of evil.

There are plenty of examples of corporations that have an endemic rotten corporate culture that has risen to transcend individuals; to get this thread halfway back on topic, EA's previous CEO got fired and there doesn't seem to have been any significant change in what they're doing at all. Bank of America, BP, Monsanto, Microsoft-- upper management comes and goes, but bad practices seem to be pretty eternal. Occasionally someone ends up the scapegoat, but does anything really change?

This is why large corporations and other corrupt entities are so difficult to fight, because you can't just find the guy in the top hat rubbing his hands together laughing evilly and oust him-- it is a lot more pervasive, a lot deeper, and often involves many low and middle level workers who are doing things that wouldn't even be considered "evil" out of context.

hidden barbs about the abilities of you and others around that person, especially the top performers, the ones who do get things done.

While this kind of person can be toxic to a work environment, I think it's different from the atmosphere of corporate corruption that we were discussing, and juxtaposing them ignores the rather essential point that those "top performers" might be the ones contributing to the actual problem-- after all, being one of "the ones that do get things done" might well involve being a really good corporate raider, overly litigious lawyer, unethical scientist, or some other thing that involves the spreading of human misery. The label of a complainer who just wants to undermine achievers is used to shame whistleblowers, too.

[Seriously Unserious]

There is a big difference between the type of person I was talking about in my last post and an honest whistleblower, that that's in the language the person uses. A whistleblower who has something legitimate to expose can deal in specifics, specific people, specific actions and specific results of actions, whereas a toxic, anti-social person will use vague generalities like "they say blah, blah" "everyone does *insert action here*". They keywords here are words like everyone, they, nobody, etc.

These sorts of people can cause major problems like bad service to customers, very costly mistakes, fighting between management and employees, fighting between departments and other very disruptive sorts of havoc.

When this sort of person wrangles into management, look out! Such people will tend to fill in their subordinates with similar sorts of people, and drive out, or into corruption, the honest, hard workers. This will then create that culture of corruption and rot that can spread through an entire company.

Also, companies that focus on profits will tend to do well, whereas those with a social conscience would tend to give lower returns .

It is true that a company focused on profits at any cost can gain some huge short term profits, but the people benefiting from such profits will have to deal with some major personal issues that tend to eventually be their downfall, such as a guilty conscience or the fear of getting caught. Many do get caught too. Look where the hugely profitable executives of Enron and Worldcom are now... that's right, both companies no longer exist and their top management and owners are all in jail. Nice profits there, huh?

Also, that statement assumes you have to choose one or the other. It is possible to be focused on profits, while also getting them by being socially responsible. Many hugely successful companies do this. In fact, I'd say the majority of companies operate this way, going unnoticed because there's nothing glamorous or sexy in reporting about how honest and successful these people are. It seems more glamorous to report on what a durtbag some successful, but unscrupulous person or group is.

Some companies I know of that are hugely successful and also quite ethical include (and correct me if I'm wrong about any of them) RIM, Koodo, Vancity (a savings and credit union in my area), Earthbound Farms, Lundburg Farms, Natural Factors, Herbalife and Burt's Bees to name a few.

I would disagree abut Pfizer being one of the worst companies in America.

There are things pharmaceuticals can do better then anything else, and that is in the area of emergency trauma, something allopathic medicine excels at, but many other areas of health care, like nutrition, long term care of a chronic condition or long term recovery, allopathic medicine fails miserably. Yet other branches of health care excel in these areas, such as naturopathic medicine, homeopathic medicine, traditional Chinese medicine, chiropractic care, physiotherapy and many more. Yet big pharma companies like Phizer, Astra Zenica and BMS (Brystol-Myers Squibb), to name a few, have spent billions, upon billions lobbying governments to change laws to make it harder and harder for these "alternative" medicine forms to compete with the big pharma giants. These companies seem to see all other forms of heath care as merely competition to their profits that must be stamped out of existence. I've been seeing many safe, effective natural remedies that are safer and more effective then their pharmaceutical counterparts be banned by government, effectively forcing me towards fewer and fewer options to using these drugs, which often, whenever I research their benefits, risks and side-effects, and personal observations from my own use of them, invariably tend to be less effective and more dangerous then the drugs that replace them. Years ago, I used to use ephidra drops as an asthma remedy, and also used the Barotech inhaler, and found that the ephidra was more effective in controlling my asthma then the drug, Barotech, and the Barotech, I later found out, had as a side effect, making my asthma worse, so I stopped using it. Now it's been over a decade since I last had any sort of asthma attack where I would have needed an asthma medication, but if I ever do need one, I can't use ephidra drops any more, that's now illegal, because a couple of people may have died using the synthetic equivalent, ephedrine, yet, I have never heard of any record of anyone dying from an ephidra overdose. If fact, I've noticed many times when comparing the drug to the natural remedy that the drug ends up having side effects that are the same as the symptoms it's supposed to treat, but the natural remedy ends up having no harmful side effects. I've had some beneficial side effects from them, such as when I was using a mixture of oil of oregano with olive oil as a disinfectant on a badly scraped knee, that knee had also had a rash on it that also went away. Pretty nice side effect I'd say.

When I needed something to treat severely itchy feet, I looked at Tinactin and found out one of the side effects is that it may cause skin irritation and itching. Say what?! it's supposed to treat skin irritation and itching but can cause the very thing it's supposed to treat? What am I using if for then? I went to my naturopath and got a natural remedy (Unda Zalf 270) which had very minor, if any side effects listed and treated the problem in half the time the Tinactin would have taken.

Then there's my sister, who was severely messed up by a bad morning sickness drug, which left here very similar to Dustin Hoffman's character in the movie "Rainman." Another big pharma drug, Pimozide, a psychiatric medication produced by one of the major pharma companies, then made her even worse, to the point where she is now afraid to ride a bus, cross a busy street or do much of anything. So she now mostly just stays in the house under the supervision of our parents playing The Sims 3 and monologuing to herself all day, every day. I'd say that though her body is still alive and moving, her spirit is dead, killed by these drugs, so I have more then a few reasons to say that most of the big pharma companies are among the worst in the world, and Phizer is among the worst of this sordid lot.

Here's an article by ABC, which states: "Drugs now kill more people than motor vehicle accidents in the U.S." http://abcnews.go.com/Health/Drugs/drug ... d=14554903
Another article states drugs as the 4th leading cause of death: http://healthyalterego.com/index.php/20 ... -of-death/

So, when a company would lobby to deny me the choice of medical treatments, produce shoddy products that do more harm then good, cause so many deaths and attempt cover up the damage their products are doing, I tend to call them one of the worst companies in the world.

Any pharmaceutical companies that would stick with doing what pharma does best, which is providing drugs and supplies for use on emergency trauma treatment, and worst case scenario treatments, such as deadly, communicable diseases, would refuse to sell a dangerous drug and respect people's right to choose healthcare treatments and be quick to warn of hazards, and voluntarily recall anything that does turn out to be dangerous and, in general, respect life and people, would most definitely not be one of the worst companies in the world.

In other words, I have nothing against pharmaceutical drugs when used sparingly for treating what they treat best and being used in cooperation with many other forms of healthcare treatments. The problem is simply their overuse as a cure-all for everything, abusive practices of the companies that make and sell them, releasing harmful products that produce no discernible benefits, lying about it and suppressing a person's right to choose medical treatments that causes the problems.

[oh_brother]

Yes, drugs are over used and abused. Prescribing antibiotics for colds or other viral infections is one example,as is using drugs when simpler treatments would work. So I think tight regulation (including on advertisements to the public and to doctors) in addition to people been honestly educated about when drugs should be used and when they shouldn't would help to get the benefits from necessary drugs and ameliorate the downside of abuse.

On the other hand there are times when they are vital, such as in cancer care (many previously deadly types are now easily curable - my brother survived cancer that would have certainly killed him 20 years ago), HIV treatment (now a livable, though still terrible, condition) and vaccination (eradication of small pox, polio reduced to extremely low levels, etc.). Where alternative health care practitioners fall down is by recommending some non-proven intervention to replace vital drugs, like trying to convince people in South Africa that potatos treat HIV, and that the drugs prescribed spread it. Admittedly some of the unscrupulous practices of pharma companies help the cause of these people, they constantly use the basic argument "pharma is bad, so what I am telling you is correct" in one form or another.

Overall, looking at your post I think we perhaps agree on the broad outlines: drugs only when really necessary, and then properly regulated (to modify Bill Clinton's quote, drugs should be safe, legal and rare). When I say that pharma companies are not the worst in the world, it is from the point of view that the outcomes can be beneficial if controlled, rather than saying that they are ethically sound (they certainly are not). I am very sorry to hear about your sister, that must be awful.

Anyway, this is now tangentially related to the topic, if it goes on it probably should be in a new thread.

Edit: to put it another way, I think our disagreement is down to us using different definitions. You are using 'worst' in an ethical sense (where Pfizer would certainly be a candidate, for the reasons you have mentioned and more), and I am using it in a utilitarian sense (where I don't believe they would be, or at least I don't believe that they would have to be). I don't doubt that our different experiences have also played a part, but I think that the main issue is differently defined terms.

[Seriously Unserious]

Perhaps.

Like I said, I've also seen the stats a while back on how much money the big pharma companies spend on lobbying to have access to any other form of treatment then big pharma drugs and surgery and take away our right to choose what is done to our bodies. That's one of the evil parts of why I say many big pharma companies are among the worst. Again the problem with this industry is not that there are drugs do help in many cases, it's that that is just one part of a good healthcare system, and to base the whole system on drugs, all drugs and nothing but drugs, which seems to be the direction big pharma companies seem to be lobbying government to move us in is the problem. As you mentioned, antibiotics are pretty much useless against viruses like the flu virus, to prescribing them only does harm as antibiotics kill the beneficial bacteria that the human body needs in order to be healthy, and once this damage is done, big pharma companies don't seem to care about fixing it or even acknowledging that this even occurs regardless of the evidence. Yet, a natural product, oil of oregano, I've used to treat many types of infections on myself with great results, and oil of oregano is effective against viruses, parasites, bacteria, and fungus. It does kill off the beneficial bacteria too, so you do still need to follow up internal use of oil of oregano wih some good probiotics to replenish these bacteria.

Of course, the food services industry has many companies doing similar things there too. Monsanto comes to mind, as being easily the worst company in the world, I've seen reports done by independent geneticists who are finding now that GMO foods can actually modify the DNA of any organism that ingests is, including round up ready crops that end up causing the organism that eats this food to produce roundup in its own body, basically slowly poisoning itself, and this change is genetic, meaning future generations inherit it. I can see this, if it's true and not stopped in time leading to a potential human caused mass extinction event. In my book, that makes Monsanto not only the worst company in the world, bar none, but also pure evil. To even mess around with something that has even the chance to do that definitely falls into the category of evil by my definition.

Then there's organizations like the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund and other financial organizations that have caused human misery and human rights violations in the name of money and power, if a nation is to receive their "help", but that's another topic needing it's own thread for a full discussion and I don't want to get into that here as I'd be writing this post for over an hour if I went into all these things.

[Sophia]

I've seen reports done by independent geneticists who are finding now that GMO foods can actually modify the DNA of any organism that ingests is, including round up ready crops that end up causing the organism that eats this food to produce roundup in its own body

I have previously asked that this thread not derail into a debate about GMO food, and I'll reiterate that request more strongly. The current scientific consensus is that GMO food is safe, so if you want to debate that, please do it somewhere other than this thread, as it's taking things into a whole different controversy that is too far off topic.

[Seriously Unserious]

I've reposted my reply in a new topic, those who would like to take up the GMO debate can do so in GMO Discussion Raised In the Worst Company in America Thread

I have no intention to start a debate on the merits and dangers of GMO foods here, only to mention them as a reason why I find companies like Monstanto to be among the worst. Any GMO debating should be done in the new thread I created for that purpose and not here. I will keep any mention of GMOs here only to be that a company makes and/or sells them, and that I consider that bad here. Any arguments one way or the other can be done in the new GMO thread.

So now I hope we can get back to discussing companies that are bad and why.