Servitude of the Century

From the 70's until now, our world and businesses in particular have become interconnected and fully globalized. This enables goods and services to be available at low prices and widely available to large amounts of people. A majority of corporations have chosen to outsource their labor in order to cut costs in places such as China, Bangladesh, Pakistan, and other developing nations around the world. Unfortunately, this has resulted in extremely low wages for laborers in these nations. Just as an example, JCPenny, Walmart, The Children's Place, and H&M all source a large amount of their labor in Bangladesh; additionally, Free People, Urban Outfitters, Forever 21, Aeropostale, and Anthropologie were all found to be using child labor in Uzbekistan to harvest cotton. Not only do these companies create crucial human rights concerns, but they also produce devastating amounts of waste in other countries. The waste ends up contaminating water sources, the surrounding environments and damaging communities. 

 Corporations have grown into billion-dollar giants that have exploited populations of foreign countries who are trying to escape poverty and on the environments they choose to source their labor in. Money is the key motivation for corporations even if it means making a dollar on the backs and blood of other human beings. However, not only do these corporations harm foreign populations, but some harm the domestic population as well, in multiple different ways. 

For example, one of the most powerful families in the world is the Koch family, or the Koch brothers. Koch Industries entered the oil industry in 1968 and from there, it became the 2nd largest privately owned company in the U.S. with a revenue of $115 billion per year. The Koch brothers are known to be conservative and have also been known to donate outrageous amounts of money to Republicans. This is an example of the elite using their wealth to buy elections and harming the American people through a rigged democracy. 

Another example is the Walton family, who, combined, is the richest family in the U.S. The Waltons, founders of Wal-Mart, are extremely wealthy and continue to pay their employees extremely low wages. Many Wal-Mart employees require financial assistance in the forms of welfare and food stamps in order to survive. Wal-Mart is a successful corporations that makes billions of dollars but it does not provide for those who serve the company and it exploits people in other nations. 

Present-day corporations are some of the most successful companies of all time and have completely revamped the term "monopoly". Corporations today are parent companies to many smaller businesses and have ungodly amounts of wealth and power. Corporations evolved drastically and changed the essence of business today, making it difficult for small businesses to compete and survive in today's society. Corporations in the early 1900's had issues with workers' rights and safety and working conditions, but measures were taken to reform these issues. More recently, these corporations have taken a dark turn in the last 40 years, turning into money-hungry, exploitative conglomerates that colonize any business that could possibly bring in more profits. Unfortunately, the worst part is that the priority of money comes before human lives and people have been cheated out of jobs, their environments, fair wages, and a fair, democratic society.  These circumstances are easily seen in today's society; overseas, factory fires are happening left and right and building collapses are happening far too frequently, such as the Rana Plaza incident in Bangladesh. A new perspective must be utilized to look into these corporations, not from a financial standpoint, but an ethical one.