Okay, let's start with a vibe check today. Oh
boy. Okay. You know that specific feeling you
get when you're on hold with customer service.
You've been listening to a distorted looping
saxophone solo for what feels like 45 minutes.
You know the exact one I mean. It is the absolute
soundtrack of modern patience. Yes. Exactly.
Every three minutes or so, a robotic voice cuts
in to tell you that call volume is higher than
expected. Which, let's be honest, is just the
new normal. Right. It's always higher than expected.
And it's annoying, right? It makes you want to
throw your phone across the room. Yeah. But then
there's a different feeling, a much, much darker
feeling. Right, because the feeling shifts entirely
when you stop looking at a frustrating phone
bill and start reading the actual headlines.
Exactly. I'm talking about the feeling you get
when you read about a company, say, Dumping toxic
chemicals into a town's water supply just to
save a few bucks on disposal fees. Yeah. Or a
massive agricultural company patenting a seed
so a farmer can't replant it next year. Right.
Or a massive global conglomerate actively betting
against the very economy they operate in. Yes.
That is a very different category of emotional
response. It shifts from simple annoyance to
something primal. Fear, maybe. Or at least a
very deep systemic distrust. And that is exactly
where we are living today. We have a massive
stack of research here and we are going to use
it to trace the history of a very specific, very
loaded idea. The evil corporation. The evil corporation.
And I don't mean evil like a cartoon villain
twirling a mustache and a top hat. Though historically
speaking, some of the early robber barons definitely
did wear top hats. Okay, fair point. But today
we mean evil as a cultural concept, a literary
trope, and now, weirdly enough, a legitimate
category of social activism. It's a phrase everyone
listening probably knows and uses. But I want
to know where it actually comes from. What's
the mission for this deep dive? Well, it's fascinating
because it's one of the very few concepts that
started almost entirely in fiction, specifically
science fiction. And then it sort of backported
itself into reality. The evil corporation is
essentially a lens we use to view modern capitalism.
So it's a way for us to make sense of these giant
faceless entities. Precisely. We are looking
at a study of capitalism plus hubris. We're exploring
how society uses fiction to process our deep
anxiety about unchecked corporate power. So here's
our roadmap for the deep dive. We're going to
look at the blueprint. Where did this idea originate?
We'll examine the fictional monsters that literally
taught us to fear the boardroom. Everything from
Alien to Mr. Robot. And then we're going to see
how that fiction bled into real life. From Google's
code of conduct to what they call black companies
in Japan. And finally, we absolutely have to
talk about the really heavy events from late
2024 and 2025. Right. Where this rhetoric actually
spilled over into real world violence and caused
a massive shift in public discourse. It is a
heavy stack of sources today. It really is. But
let's start with the basics, the definition,
because evil is a really strong word. It is.
I've had bad bosses. You've probably worked for
companies that were just disorganized. But according
to the sources. We aren't just talking about
a company that sells a bad product, are we? No.
The distinction there is crucial. If a bakery
sells you a stale croissant, they aren't an evil
corporation. They're just a bad bakery. Exactly.
The source material strictly defines the evil
corporation trope as an entity that actively
ignores social responsibility, morality, ethics,
and sometimes the law specifically to maximize
profit for its shareholders. It's the intentionality
that gets me. It's the maximization part. Yes.
It is the calculation of it all. It's the idea
that human suffering is literally just a line
item on a spreadsheet for them. Like a cost of
doing business. Exactly. If the fine for breaking
the law is cheaper than... the cost of following
the law. The evil corporation breaks the law.
Because it makes financial sense. Right. It's
purely algorithmic amorality. It is not that
they hate you. It's that they simply do not care
about you. And that algorithmic coldness just
feels like it comes straight from a Hollywood
writer's room. The research points out that science
fiction was really the initial breeding ground
for this trope. But. Why sci -fi? Why not westerns
or romance novels? It makes perfect sense if
you think about the history of the 20th century.
How so? Well, as governments started to step
back in certain regulatory areas, corporations
became global superpowers. They became entities
that transcended borders and flags. Right. Multinational.
So writers started looking at this and asking
a very specific warning system kind of question.
What happens if a company becomes more powerful
than a state? Ah. It's the capitalism plus hubris
equation. That is the exact phrase the analysts
use, hubris. It's not just about making money
anymore. It's about playing God. Wow. In these
stories, the corporation is the true antagonist.
You might have a scary alien or a rogue robot
running around, but those are just the symptoms.
The disease is the company policy. Precisely.
We have to do the roll call here because the
specific examples in the research are just iconic.
And I want to dig a bit deeper into why these
resonate so much with people. Let's do it. Let's
start with the heavy hitter. The one that I think
really set the template for all of this. Film
from the late 70s. Alien. The Weyland -Yutani
Corporation. Building better worlds. Right. That's
their slogan, which is just deeply, deeply ironic.
It's the most corporate slogan imaginable. But
the reality of the movie is they send a blue
collar crew. Basically just space truckers. Right.
Space truckers onto a planet to pick up a biological
weapon, the alien. And the real horror is the
secret order the company gives to the ship's
computer. Special Order 937. Priority 1. Ensure
return of organism for analysis. All other considerations
secondary. Crew expendable. Crew expendable.
That phrase gives me chills every single time
I hear it. Because Weyland -Yutani is the prototype,
it perfectly represents the disposable human
anxiety. What does that mean exactly? The true
horror in Alien isn't just the monster with the
acid blood, it's the fact that the company knows
about the monster and sends you into the room
with it anyway. Because the creature is worth
more to the shareholders than your life is? Exactly.
That is a very specific labor anxiety codified
into a monster movie. That makes so much sense.
Okay, moving on, we've got the Tyrell Corporation
from Blade Runner. Their motto is more human
than human. Which taps into the hubris of creation.
Tyrell creates life, the replicants, but he only
creates them to enslave them for off -world labor.
It represents the deep fear that corporations
will eventually own us, our biology, our minds.
And you see a similar theme in the Wallace Corporation
in the sequel. Yes. It's the total commodification
of sentient life. They aren't people. They are
products to be bought and sold. Okay, for the
gamers listening, I know you've been waiting
for this section. It's... Maybe the most cynical
entry on the list. Vault -Tec from Fallout. Oh,
absolutely terrifying and full of dark comedy,
too. Right on surface, they sell survival. Nuclear
war is coming by a spot in our underground vault.
It seems like a vital public service. But the
twist, which the games reveal very slowly as
you explore, is that the vaults weren't really
about saving people at all. No, they were elaborate
social experiments. The government had collapsed
and this massive private company was secretly
running the show. Just twisted experiments, like
let's put 100 people in a vault with only one
gun. Or let's pump psychoactive drugs into the
air vents for 50 years and see what happens to
the social dynamic. It's wild. What anxiety does
Voltech represent? The privatization of the public
good. In a massive disaster, you expect the government
or aid agencies to step in and help. Right. But
in Fallout... The government is gone. The private
sector steps in not to save you, but to use you
as a literal lab rat. It is the ultimate betrayal
of public trust. And since we're talking about
gaming, the sources also highlight Umbrella Corporation
from Resident Evil. A classic pharmaceutical
fubris. And Shinra Electric Power Company from
Final Fantasy VII. Literally draining the lifeblood
of the planet for energy. Pure resource extraction
without any care for the environmental consequence.
It's funny you mentioned privatization earlier,
though, because that brings us to OCP from RoboCop,
Omni Consumer Products. A great example. They
literally try to buy the entire police force
of Detroit. RoboCop is satire, but it is incredibly
biting satire. OCT wants to tear down Detroit
and build Delta City. They want to privatize
the police, the schools, the infrastructure.
And the evil here is what? That justice has a
price tag. Exactly. The idea that justice itself
can be a premium product. If you can't pay, you
don't get protected. And it gets worse because
they program the police, RoboCop himself, to
be physically unable to arrest any OCP executive.
Directive 4. Directive 4 is the ultimate corporate
immunity. You literally cannot arrest the boss.
No matter what crimes they commit. And we absolutely
cannot skip Terminator. Cyberdyne systems. Right.
This is the fear of unintended consequences.
Cyberdyne didn't want to destroy the world necessarily.
They just wanted the defense contract. Exactly.
They just wanted to advance technology to build
Skynet. But they did it without any ethical safeguards.
They pursued rapid innovation without pausing
to ask if they actually should. We do what we
must because we can. Right. Which actually happens
to be the motto of Aperture Science from the
Game Portal. Another fantastic example from our
research list. Science divorced entirely from
morality. We do it because we can. That is a
truly terrifying philosophy for an entity that
has unlimited funding and zero oversight. And
more recently, we've seen this trope evolve on
television, too. The research mentions Lumen
Industries from Severance. Severance is a brilliant
modern classic of this exact trope. It deals
with the total bifurcation of the self. Right.
You sever your memories so you can work a full
eight hours without knowing who you are on the
outside. It's the ultimate dark critique of work
-life balance. The company owns your time so
completely that you actually cease to exist as
a conscious person during business hours. You
are just a resource, a literal human resource.
Yes. And of course, Mr. Robot. I mean, they didn't
even try to hide it. Not at all. character literally
hears the company name E -Corp as Evil Corp every
single time it is spoken out loud. Subtlety was
definitely not the goal there, but it shows how
pervasive the term had become by the 2010s. The
Evil Corporation was no longer a hidden subtext.
It was just the text. Okay, so we have this incredibly
rich library of fictional villains. We've got
the disposable human from Alien. The privatized
state from Robocop and science without ethics
from Terminator. But here is where the deep dive
gets a little uncomfortable. We have to cross
the bridge. Yeah. Because this isn't just about
fun movies and games anymore. Yeah. Real world
companies are actively wrestling with this label.
And the most famous example. in the sources of
a company explicitly trying to avoid this label
is, of course, Google. The don't be evil era.
Yeah. It sounds almost quaint now, doesn't it?
Like a relic from a much simpler time on the
Internet. It really does. But we have to remember
that in the early 2000s, that was a revolutionary
stance. Don't be evil was their official motto.
It was right there in the S -1 filing when they
went public? Exactly. It was a clear signal to
the software engineers and to the public that,
hey, we are not Microsoft. We are not IBM. We
are the good guys. They framed themselves as
the scrappy underdog with the colorful primary
color logo. But the sources point out a shift.
A very literal shift in the paperwork that happened
years later. Yes. Over time, as Google reorganized
under their new parent company Alphabet, that
specific phrase, don't be evil, was moved. Where
did it go? It went from the very preface of the
code of conduct. The first thing you'd read.
The very first thing. And it was moved all the
way down to the very end. So they didn't delete
it completely. It wasn't removed entirely. No.
But it was certainly de -emphasized. It became
essentially a footnote. And people definitely
noticed. The research cites Rob Enderle. a major
tech analyst who basically argued that the motto
was gaslighting from the very start. Well, look
at the sheer volume of accusations that have
piled up over the years. Secret data collection,
tracking user location, even when users explicitly
turn the setting off. Cooperating with government
surveillance programs. Potential political bias
in search results. The argument Enderly and other
critics make is that Google's core business model
is surveillance. Can you have a business model
based entirely on... harvesting personal data
and truly not be evil. That is the crux of the
debate. It really highlights the massive gap
between a brand's identity and its operational
reality. OK, if Google is our tech example, we
have to talk about the retail side. The Walmart
paradox. Yes, the sources call it the Walmart
paradox. This is honestly one of the most interesting
parts of the research stack because it deals
directly with us, the consumers. It turns the
mirror around and points it at society. So walk
us through this paradox. How does it work? The
debate over corporate social responsibility,
which is one of our key sources, notes that for
a huge swath of the population, Walmart is the
absolute prototype of a real world evil corporation.
Yeah, you hear the complaints constantly. Right.
They destroy Main Street small businesses. They
pay wages so low that full time employees end
up on government food stamps. They aggressively
crush unionization efforts. Right. The reputation
is totally cemented. If you ask someone on the
street to name a bad company, Walmart is almost
always in the top three. But here is the paradox.
Record numbers of people still shop there every
single year. Because the prices are low. I mean,
look at the economy right now. People need cheap
groceries. They need to survive. Exactly. And
this creates a profound state of cognitive dissonance
for the public. We condemn the corporate behavior
morally, but we reward that exact same behavior
financially. Wow. We vote with our dollars for
the very thing we say we hate. We do. That's
a really tough mirror to look into. It raises
a huge question. Can a corporation really be
evil if society happily keeps feeding it? Or
are we accomplices? The research suggests that
evil in the real world isn't about a comic book
villain in a glass tower. It's about a complex
system of incentives that fundamentally includes
the customer. We demand cheap goods. We demand
them. And the evil corporation is just the machine
that delivers those goods most efficiently. Speaking
of complex systems, the research also heavily
touches on agriculture. The New Yorker pointed
out that for many food activists, Monsanto is
basically... Now, part of Bayer, yes. And this
goes directly back to the alien or Blade Runner
anxiety we talked about. Tampering with biology.
Exactly. Monsanto famously patented seeds. They
engineered crops that could survive being sprayed
with their own proprietary weed killer. And then
they actively sued small farmers who saved seeds
from one harvest to plant the next year. Which
is literally how farming has worked for 10 ,000
years. You save the seeds for next season. Right.
So when a massive corporation steps in and says,
no, we. the intellectual property rights to the
genetic code of this corn. It feels like a massive
violation of nature. It taps into a very deep,
very primal fear that someone is out there privatizing
the fundamental building blocks of life itself.
So we've got tech retail and agriculture. Yeah.
But I want to take a trip for a second because
the sources bring up something absolutely fascinating
happening in Japan right now. Yes. This isn't
just a Western trope, is it? Not at all. And
in Japan, they have formalized the concept in
a way that is honestly kind of mind blowing.
Yeah. We need to talk about the Black Company.
Rakukigyo. Yes. In Japan, the term Black Company
is a widely understood cultural label. It refers
to a very specific type of deeply exploitative
employment system, and they actually have an
award for it. The most evil corporation of the
year award. Also known simply as the Black Company
Award. It's organized by a dedicated committee
of journalists, lawyers, and labor activists.
Wow. It is a formal annual event where they gather
to announce a winner. I mean, just imagine the
Oscars. But for horrific labor violations. And
the award for worst human rights abuses goes
to... It's exactly that format. But it's absolutely
not a joke. It is a very serious public shaming
ritual. They judge companies on workplace discrimination,
harassment, unpaid overtime. And this is the
really big one, karoshi. Karoshi. That's the
Japanese word for death by overwork, right? Correct.
It is an official medical and legal term in Japan.
It covers heart attacks strokes or suicides that
are directly caused by severe workplace stress
and exhaustion. Unbelievable. The sources specifically
mentioned that in 2016 the massive advertising
giant Dentsu was officially named the most evil
corporation. It followed a highly publicized
tragic case involving a young employee who died
by suicide after being forced to work extreme
excessive overtime hours. That just stops you
in your tracks. It does. Because in the West,
we might call a company evil on social media
because they raised the price of a video game
or changed a streaming layout. Yeah. But in Japan,
they're using the exact same label to call out
literal death counts. It really shows the utility
of the label, though. It takes the abstract concept
of the evil corporation out of the realm of vague
Internet insults and turns it into a sharp tool
for real world accountability. It says you have
crossed a definitive line. You are destroying
your own people. It defines the strict parameters
of corporate evil, the total destruction of employee
well -being for the sake of profit. It's Dentsu.
But it sounds exactly like Weyland -Yutani again.
Crew expendable. It is the exact same dynamic
just playing out in reality. Now, speaking of
social pressure and breaking points, we have
to move to the final section of our research
stack. This brings us right up to the bleeding
edge. Late 2024 and early 2025. This is where
the line between the science fiction we were
just talking about and real world news completely
and totally blurred. We are talking about the
flashpoint involving the shooting of UnitedHealth
CEO Brian Thompson in December 2024. Now, before
we get into this, we need to be extremely clear
to you listening. We are analyzing the reaction
and the language used by the public as documented
in the sources. Correct. We are remaining strictly
neutral here. The event itself was a tragedy
and a severe crime. But sociologically speaking,
the public response to it was utterly unprecedented.
Right. The sources note a significant widespread
wave of, well, outrage is putting it mildly.
People were incredibly angry. But they weren't
just angry at a single person. They were angry
at the entire system. Yes. The sources note that
Americans specifically turned their massive collective
focus toward health insurance companies as a
whole. And this is exactly where our topic today
comes full circle. Because when people went to
social media to express the systemic anger, they
didn't just use standard political terms. They
used the vocabulary of the evil corporation.
They were using the language of Cyberdyne and
E -Corp to talk about real life. Yes, they were.
You saw direct comparisons to fictional villains.
You saw the word parasite being used constantly.
You saw the narrative frame of the people versus
the entity. The central argument being made by
the public was that these insurance companies
were practicing that. exact hubris we defined
at the start of the deep dive. Denying care to
maximize profit? Denying care, prioritizing cold
algorithms over actual patient health and maximizing
shareholder profit at the direct cost of human
life. It's almost like the fiction prepared us
for how to process the reality. When people felt
completely powerless against a massive bureaucracy
that they felt was actively hurting them, they
reach for the stories that already explain that
dynamic. That is a really profound insight. Science
fiction acts as a functional vocabulary for real
world protest. Yeah. If you don't have the academic
or economic words to describe a complex injustice,
you use the metaphor of the evil empire or the
megacore. It simplifies a massive systemic issue
into a clear moral struggle. It validates the
feeling of the individual. It says you aren't
crazy for feeling crushed by this system. This
is a story that has been told 100 times. Exactly.
The evil corporation trope isn't just popcorn
entertainment anymore. It has become a legitimate
framework for how we interpret modern justice.
The public reaction to the health care crisis
in late 2024 clearly showed that people view
these companies not just as businesses that are
too expensive, but as actual moral antagonists
in the story of their own lives. It is a really
sobering realization. We've gone from watching
Sigourney Weaver fight an alien in space to watching
real people fight for basic insurance. coverage.
And the villain looks suspiciously similar in
both versions. It really validates the idea that
these fictional stories are warning systems.
They aren't predicting the future. They are diagnosing
the present. So where does this leave us? We
have traced the DNA from early sci -fi and Blade
Runner to Google's fine print, to public shaming
awards in Tokyo, and finally to the streets of
New York and the massive health care protests
in the U .S. I think it leads to the conclusion
that the evil corporation is a modern myth. And
I use myth in the strict academic sense there,
a vital story that helps a culture navigate the
world. We use it to draw lines in the sand. We
use it to collectively decide what is acceptable
capitalism and what is dangerous hubris. It forces
us to constantly ask, where is the line? Is it
when you treat workers like literal robots? Is
it when you privatize a corn seed? Is it when
you deny a lifesaving surgery just to save a
few bucks on the quarterly report? And the ultimate
answer seems to be that the line is exactly where
the humanity ends and the calculation begins,
when the spreadsheet becomes more important than
the pulse. And that brings us right back to us,
you listening, the customer. The shareholder.
Right. Because let's be honest, most of us have
four. Oh, one makes or pension funds. We are
technically part owners of these massive entities.
I want to leave you with a final thought to chew
on today. It goes right back to that Walmart
paradox we talked about earlier. It is the uncomfortable
part of the research. It is very easy to point
a finger and say that company is evil. It feels
good. It puts the blame over there. It makes
us the righteous rebels in the Star Wars movie.
But if we collectively agree a corporation is
evil. If we tweet about it. Right, if we tweet
about it, if we nod along to the movies, if we
share the memes. But we continue to buy their
products because it saves us $5 or because it
arrives on our doorstep in two days. Then what?
Are we the helpless victims of the corporate
plot? Or are we the eager shareholders actively
keeping the villain in business? That is the
ultimate question. It really is something to
think about. Thanks for taking this deep dive
with us. We will see you next time.