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Bayer. They knowingly sold HIV infected blood to Latin America after the blood was rejected in Europe. This still blows my mind. Some corporate waste of oxygen actually decided to do this. It wasn't an accident. That guy needs to get stabbed with ~~thousands~~ ten fucking thousand ~~of~~ AIDS needles.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2003/may/23/aids.suzannegoldenberg
And the Essure permanent birth control device, causing persistent pain, bleeding and other health problems to thousands of women. Withdrawn from the US market before the Netflix documentary released
https://www.theguardian.com/film/2018/jul/25/the-bleeding-edge-netflix-documentary-medical-devices
Thanks, I fixed my post
'moral issues above profit' .. yeah, I can't believe that of all things is an issue
Did a little bit of digging on that one, before being bought by Bayer, the Cutter biological division was responsible for another pharmaceutical disaster. They accidentally (?) sold 120 000 doses of polio vaccines containing the live polio virus.
They also acquired and still run the business previously done by Monsanto known for things like agent orange and eliminating corn biodiversity. Their legal department is also infamous for bankrupting small farmers.
Jesus. Straight to the top
Ok so Nestle for child murder, Bayer for AIDs blood, Union Carbide for Bhopal disaster and its parent Dow Chemical for Agent Orange (Monsanto too).
IBM for helping the Nazis with concentration camps and Degesch for Zyclon B. United Fruit Company and Dutch & British East India Companies for colonization, also everyone that was shipping rubber out of the Belgian Congo.
Everyone who makes landmines, cluster bombs, etc.
I think when this question is asked in 100 years Palantir is going to feature.
So many to choose from...
My pick would be Bank of America for their illegal foreclosure practices which have ruined many families' lives, and especially for their role in the subprime mortgage crisis which destabilized the entire global economy and which we are still trying to recover from. Everyone on the entire planet was impacted by the Great Recession.
Nestlé!
Nestlé is responsible for misleading African mothers into thinking formula is better than their own breast milk. They lied to expectant mothers just to sell formula.
Chiquita bananas. They literally stole entire south/central American countries and used death squads and the CIA to enslave the workers and kill them when they asked for such unreasonable demands like being paid in actual currency
Don't forget Dole. They caused the annexation is Hawai'i.
Both have paid terrorist organizations in the last couple decades.
They made private data the „new gold“ which it is today long before social media started exploiting it. Changing their motto /code of conduct „Don’t be evil“ into „Do the right thing“ (for our shareholders) didn’t benefit their reputation either…
Changing their motto /code of conduct „Don’t be evil“ into „Do the right thing“ (for our shareholders) didn’t benefit their reputation either…
It's still in their code of conduct, though.
Meat producers.
Trillions of animals killed for profit every year.
And they are delicious
What a disgusting thing to say.
...And how exactly do you think people are going to be able to eat meat otherwise? Or have dairy, eggs, wool, etc.? Do you think that people should e.g., raise chickens in the city?
And that's ignoring the small obligate carnivores that make up most of the pets in the world.
Hey, I'd rather hunt my own food too, but we no longer live in tribal or feudal societies where you can reasonably expect to engage in animal husbandry yourself.
We shouldn't be eating meat or any other animal products.
Animals are living and feeling beings who experience the world much like humans do, we shouldn't be exploiting, abusing or killing them for profit/taste when we can easily avoid it.
And it's terrible for the planet.
First: How do you reconcile that view with the idea that animals also experience the world as people do with the idea that animals kill and eat other animals? Bears, for instance, are roughly as intelligent as a kindergartener, and yet happily kill and eat any other animals that they can. Pigs and crows are also omnivorous, and will eat any source of meat that they come across. They can all likewise avoid killing if they choose, yet they don't. Are they immoral? Or does morality only apply to humans? (Even animals that we traditionally think of as herbivorous are opportunistic meat eaters.)
Second: What would you propose replacing animal products with, when there are no alternatives that function as well? What about when the alternative products also cause greater environmental harms?
Third: So you would not have a problem with, for instance, hunting and eating invasive species, since those species cause more harm to existing ecosystems than not eradicating them would? What about when those invasive species are also highly intelligent, e.g. feral pigs? Or is it better to let them wreck existing ecosystems so that humans aren't causing harm? To drill down on that further, should humans allow harm to happen by failing to act, or should we cause harm to prevent greater harm?
Fourth: "Exploiting" is such an interesting claim. Vegans are typically opposed to honey, since they view it as an exploitative product. Are you aware that without commercial apiaries, agriculture would collapse? That is, without exploiting honey bees, we are not capable of pollinating crops?
Would you agree, given that all food production for humans causes environmental harm, that the only rational approach to eliminate that harm is the eradication of humanity?
I'm not a vegan, not even a vegetarian - but your message is so full of logical fallacies and whataboutisms, it's enough to drive someone to veganism. Is that really the best you can do?
The first sentence is like when a child has done something wrong, and their mother tells them off, so the child says "Well, did it too", to which the mother responds, "Well, if jumped off a cliff, would you also jump off a cliff?"
I copy paste the first two from the bingo board.
First:
Yes, animals kill in the wild - to survive. We humans are, as opposed to predators, omnivores. We know how to grow crops, vegetables, etc. and cultivate fields. We have a choice, a conscience and have morals.
Are you identifying with the intelligence and life situation of that of a lion? Do you also commonly ask yourself "What would a lion do in my place right now"? Are lions that kill newborns of other lions, for example, really good role models?
I can add to this regarding your question about more intelligent animals. So because some animals choose to kill, does that justify you doing so when you know it causes suffering? That does not make sense.
Second:
There are no nutrients that stem exclusively from animals. Originally derived from bacteria and microorganisms, they are accumulated in the food chain via plants and animals. You can leave out the middleman, which is the animal. Accordingly, a balanced vegan diet can meet needs at any stage of life. For certain chronic diseases (type 2 diabetes, some cancers and heart disease), positive effects are even to be expected. Admittedly, it requires an initial conversion effort, since you have to get your nutrients via other foods and sometimes supplements. But don't worry - it's not rocket science and it's for a good cause.
Third:
I actually didn't find this one on the bingo board, so kudos. And this is sort of a grey area argument that isn't really the core of the vegan proposition. But anyway my personal opinion is that it is ethical to kill for self defense (depending on the situation), even for an animal of "higher intelligence". The same way as killing a person in self defense can be ethical in certain situations. But at the same time I don't think we have an obligation to "step in" and save animals that are subject to predation etc in the wild, see the argument under "first". This argument is quite close to the common one about killing for conservation, which is quite hillarious when you think about it. We have killed off all the natural predators, so the prey animals become overpopulated so we have to step in to kill them off for their own good.
Fourth:
Not directly on the board, but anyway. We don't need a honey bee industry for crop production. There are alternatives. And it makes more sense to use native pollinators anyways (see also here https://doi.org/10.1890/02-0626 ).
And bee farming is exploitative. We cut off the wings of the queen to force her to stay. Forcibly impregnate her, and steal the honey. See more here https://youtu.be/clMNw_VO1xo
And as for your last point, ofc we cause environmental harm, that is unavoidable. Don't let perfect be the enemy of good. Should we just give up and torture and kill sentient beings because we can't avoid causing some harm to the environment? How does that make any sense?
Genuinely curious: How do you feel about the lab-grown meat technology? Would you consider being an omnivore if no animals suffered or died to provide the meat?
If no animals were harmed in the process I wouldn't mind but it's not something I really want all that much, I'm good with plant based stuff.
Wait just a hot second there. Plants are living, breathing, creatures as well. The largest organism on the planet is the aspen tree.
Why do people always pretend to suddenly be stupid when talking about veganism?
You know damn well that plants don't experience anything, pretending to be dumb isn't a gotcha.
I do enjoy how you went straight to insults to deflect your lack of knowledge. Then followed by implying I'm missing the same knowledge.
Just because we have yet to understand how plants experience life, does not mean that they do not. We know that plants respond to pain. We know plants respond to music.
Wife and I have been following the vegan eating habits for about 2 years now. We just don't feel the need to proselytize about it. Yes, proselytize is the correct word. You're trying to "save the animals because they feel pain", we're just trying to get in better shape in our 40s. We are not the same.
Currently to produce lab grown meat they still need a fair amount of biological material for input into the process. So while it does appear to be the lesser of the two evils, especially from an environmental perspective, it's not a purely ethical process. So I'm not sure how many vegetarians/vegans would be convinced to incorporate lab grown meat into their diet at this time.
Man, this is like going against slavery in the past, you are going to be downvoted to hell, but, in the future you will be on the right side of history, cheers.
I'm sure there are worse, and it's not one company, but the companies that provide malware to dictatorships are pretty bad, and western countries are sheltering them/not doing much about them.
Examples:
Nice! I didn't even consider digital terrorism
Saudi Aramco or ExxonMobil
Fun fact. Saudi Aramco got hit with malware that took down basically their entire computer system. The hackers then demanded $50m in ransom.
The virus was used for cyberwarfare[4] against national oil companies including Saudi Arabia's Saudi Aramco and Qatar's RasGas.[5][2][6] A group named "Cutting Sword of Justice" claimed responsibility for an attack on 30,000 Saudi Aramco workstations, causing the company to spend more than a week restoring their services.[7]
All fossil fuel companies, for fucking up the climate without a hint of remorse.
Legalized drug companies: alcohol, tobacco, coffee. Tobacco and alcohol companies have been more or less reigned in by all kinds of regulations, but big coffee is still roaming free out there.
Even though Nestle and others are bad as well, I think they're not quite in the same level of evil as the previous ones.
What's so bad about coffee? If you don't drink too much its not that bad right?
I guess that applies to alcohol as well.
USA
Lemmy moment
That's the problem, really. Numerous companies do unspeakable evil, which makes it very difficult to name and shame any one of them.
A lot of good choices here already so ill throw blackrock into the ring
ayy my family lives on Black Rock owned property, we got in on the class action against em lol
Everyone's already mentioned some of the more popular ones so I'll throw coke in their for the whole Columbian death squad and workers right violations in south America as well as Amazon. I don't think I need to explain that last one.
I can't believe you even put Spectrum in the same tier as Nestle lol.