Monday, January 31, 2011

Corporations

I believe some corporations could become too powerful if allowed. If large corporations were given too much power they could change to United States as we know it. They could change the wages people are paid, the amount of hours people work, and the age of which they can start working, for instance child labor. I think large corporations need basic laws. I also believe large corporations are very important in our society. They provide many of the jobs over the whole world and they can make a mass amount of product a lot faster and cheaper than a smaller corporation. Some corporations take advantage of their size and try to buy out people and things unlike some of the smaller corporations or businesses that can not afford to do something that a large corporation can do. For instance, predatory pricing, which is illegal but do not always get caught. Predatory pricing is where a large corporation will lower a price on a certain product so low that they will be breaking even or losing money just to make a smaller competing business go broke because they can not buy in bulk or lose money on a certain product like a large corporation can. For an example, there was a case a few years back were Wal-Mart had bought a certain type of medicine in bulk and lowered the price so much that they were losing money to try and put a smaller local pharmacy out of business because they didn't want to have any competition. They ended up getting into trouble for predatory pricing.
     Walmart Lawsuit

Thursday, January 27, 2011

Erin Brockovich

Erin Brockovich is a determined woman. So during the movie I have watched is her trying to prove that a large corporation has leaked toxins into the ground water of a house that is too close. Leading to the parents of the house to get cancer, they also have two daughters that are not showing signs yet. While Erin was going through the case she noticed that the paperwork for the case included medical exams and blood work that had been done on the family. She noticed that a certain toxin was in all four blood levels of the people in the house. She decided to investigate further because it just seemed extremely unordinary for medical exams and blood work to show up in the paperwork for a real estate investigation. After, she noticed the toxins in their bloodstream she went to UCLA to ask one of the medical professors how it would effect a person with a certain amount of the toxin in their blood level. Come to find out that the amount that was in their blood level was so high that it more than likely caused the cancer the parents had. She went to look at some of the water records from the corporation. Giving her reason to believe that the corporation knows about the ground water having toxins in it and they were trying to buy the real estate so they wouldn't have to deal with a mess if someone investigated and found out the truth. Therefore, meaning that large corporations in general can be known to have too much power and they tend to try and buy their way out of problems instead of just taking the precautions to keep the problems from happening. I do not know much of anything else about this movie so far, she is just getting her job back when my professor stopped the movie, but when I find out more I will blog about it. :)