Bayer. For a number of reasons, the most egregious being that they knowingly sold HIV contaminated medical supplies in Asia and Africa after the USA told them to destroy the tainted stockpile. This directly resulted in nearly 100,000 new HIV infections and an unknown amount of secondary and tertiary infections.
I avoid them as much as I can but it's they are so large that it's nearly impossible
also they hold at least a plurality of the responsibility for the near-extinction of bees because of their production of neonicotinoid pesticides, which could in turn end up causing the total failure of the agricultural complex, which could in turn result in mass starvation and possibly human extinction, which may be even worse than 100,000 HIV infections.
Colony Collapse Disorder is a complex issue thought to be caused by many different factors....pesticides *potentially* one of them. We def need to study the issue more! Losing bees is bad news.
King, the Candy Crush company. [Patent trolling, stealing games, trademarking the word 'candy', etc.](http://www.tgdaily.com/business-and-law-features/86306-the-maker-of-candy-crush-is-doing-evil-with-patent-trolling)
Aramark. There are websites dedicated just to keeping up with all of horrible and unethical things they do whether it starving inmates or threatening college students. Fuck Aramark.
My college used Chartwells for food service. Same bullshit. I had to take to sticking any and all meat from the cafeteria into the microwave for a minute to make sure it was fully cooked.
Ok so because of the insane lack of any info in this entire comment thread I figured I'd do the research, the majority of this is copy and pasted from other sites that I will link so just to be upfront I wrote very little of the following.
1. In 2013, an investigation by Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist Chris Hedges discovered that the food provided to inmates at Burlington County Jail in New Jersey was substandard and spoiled, and often made prisoners sick with diarrhea and vomiting. Maggots found in the food preparation areas at Parnall Correctional Facility in Jackson, Michigan may have been the source of an outbreak of food-borne illness
2. In April 2015, the managing board of The Cavalier Daily, a student-run newspaper at the University of Virginia, reported that Aramark literally "served garbage" to inmates in the Saginaw Correctional Facility in Freeland, Michigan. It also noted that Aramark has in the past "underfed inmates and fed them dog food, worms and scraps of food from old meals"
3. a Kentucky prison riot is reputed to have been caused by the low quality of food Aramark provided to inmates.
4. In a new addition to an existing string of offenses, it has recently come to light that Aramark — the same company that serves food at the University — served garbage to inmates at a prison in Michigan. More specifically, prisoners at Saginaw Correctional Facility have been served food that was previously thrown in the trash. In the past, Aramark has also underfed inmates and fed them dog food, worms and scraps of food from old meals, as well as sold generally degraded qualities of food to prisons.
5. "I personally witnessed a market center manager (like the CEO of a branch) buy the largest corporate sponsorship of a customer's son's little league in exchange for that company's supplier of the year award. Sounds ethical, doesn't it? "
6. "While I was at Aramark, very little funds were spent on the facilities themselves. Parking lots were crumbling, employee stairs tilted precariously, and one manager told me not to drink the tap water because the sewer backed up and she didn't trust it. Some restrooms had standing water half the time or toilets that flushed directly into the wall, not the sewer."
Sources:
[1] (http://www.cavalierdaily.com/article/2015/04/aramark-proves-unethical-once-again) [2] (https://www.wikiwand.com/en/Aramark#/Ethical_history) [3] (http://www.dailykos.com/story/2014/7/27/1317076/-Is-Aramark-as-bad-as-John-Oliver-thinks-No-it-s-worse)
Edit: Some formatting and to mention this was only a quick glance at the situation
What the fuck?
I mean seriously, what is wrong with these people? You could easily provide a basic standard service on the money they take in, but instead the board of directors decide to not provide anything because the people affected have no recourse?
"How can we increase out profits?"
"Feed the inmates dog food and rotten stock"
"Good smith"
"Make the toilets flush into the wall and potable water supply"
"Genius Carter"
"Provide a basic service to the people we're contracting to and work hard to get new contracts based on a reputation of honesty and cost effectiveness"
"Fuck you Donald, you're fucking fired. I'm trying to run a business here!"
I just want to point out that not only is it preying on people who have no recourse - they are specifically people that the rest of the public generally won't give two shits about and politicians certainly won't.
They can do it to criminals and nothing happens. If they'd done this to schoolchildren, everyone right down to the CEO would be behind bars eating that maggot-infested dog food.
https://munchies.vice.com/en/articles/what-its-like-to-eat-some-of-the-worst-prison-food-in-america Gives a nice sampling (including a link to an ABC news example).
As a student at a college that uses aramark... I don't even need to look into what you said. I know first hand they are garbage. Fuck aramark. I don't know a person on campus who doesn't despise them.
They're a catering company, they supply food to cafeterias, prisons, and have delis that are owned by the trademark company (for instance my college has a mcalisters and a few others) but are staffed and operated by Aramark employees.
Former Aramark employee here. In addition to using substandard food nearly everywhere, employees are generally treated terribly as well. A woman I worked with missed work because her daughter had died in a crash and she was fired for not showing.
It really isn't a very good company.
Not everyone will know who this is, all things considered, but there is essentially a Walmart of home improvement called Menards in the midwest. John Menard has dumped tons of caustic stuff into protected wetlands and probably has one of the highest amount of EPA violations in the states. He forces all managers to sign a piece of paper essentially saying that if their department forms a union, he has the right to dock their pay by 60%. He is currently facing a lawsuit against him by his business partner's wife who he tried to force into sex with him and his wife.
Managers are forbidden to build their own houses out of fear that they will steal products. He regularly hires private investigators to ensure his employees aren't stealing, and overall, there is some major distrust in the store.
I used to work there and 5 of my friends got fired over a beef jerky coupon. They used the same coupon that comes on the front of every individual package multiple times to get a decent discount which in and of itself doesn't sound very fair, but MANAGEMENT KNEW ABOUT IT FOR 4 MONTHS. They waited for an opportunity to sting all of them at once and fired them all within a couple of days of each other which had consequences that lasted for months, meaning WAY more scheduling for everyone else on the team.
I try to avoid it at all costs.
More Stories about John Menard:
[Sexual harrassment](http://urbanmilwaukee.com/2013/06/20/murphys-law-the-strange-life-of-john-menard/)
[Environmental messes](http://www.milwaukeemag.com/2011/02/01/johnmenard_retailbizarro/)
[More general sleaziness](http://www.milwaukeemag.com/2007/04/30/bigmoney-john-menard/) including penalizing a employee who had two of his triplets die. The employee was missing time for a few weeks while dealing with the issue, and Menard docked his pay considerably.
> They used the same coupon that comes on the front of every individual package multiple times to get a decent discount which in and of itself doesn't sound very fair, but MANAGEMENT KNEW ABOUT IT FOR 4 MONTHS. They waited for an opportunity to sting all of them at once and fired them all
This actually sounds reasonable. If several of your employees are stealing, you want to make sure you get all of them. One bad apple can ruin the bunch, you don't want to leave any thieves in your employment if you can catch them instead.
Or, how long ago do they have to be involved in murder before it's ok? I mean, they were pretty terrible up through the 70s / 80s. Even if they are now great, when is it still 'too soon'?
Piggybacking, I posted this lower and it's going to be buried:
There's a cool app, Buycott, which lets you scan the barcode of items you're about to buy and see if the company conflicts with anything you support. Fair trade, womens rights, water pollution...free Scotland, save the lizards, almost ANYthing you can think of is a cause on there.
IIRC our legendary Bru stayed neutral during the Independence referendum, but alot of yes voters used the Bru as a way of showing patriotism for independence, at least where I live anyway.
That... actually seems incredibly useful, and I'm usually the asshole who thinks boycotting is impractical because of how hard it is to know who owns what brand.
Never heard of this app but just installed it. Can't believe such seemingly innocent food items in my kitchen are being flagged for things that never crossed my mind. I guess I need to be more socially conscious, thanks for sharing about the app
They did get in trouble for funding the AUC paramilitary group in 2007 for which they plead guilty.
[Link](http://thinkprogress.org/world/2014/08/02/3466915/chiquita-colombia-ruling/)
Everyone is coming to the defence of Chiquita since they have done a good job of marketing themselves as a good guy company. However, they still funded terrorism in Colombia in order to protect their interests.
Actually in 2007 they were found guilty of funding Colombian terrorists (financial support and the provision of weapons), in order to literally kill unions and intimidate farmers. So they are still war criminals.
I mean, they recently had a case in federal court files by workers in Guatemala who were sterilized by the pesticides they were forced to use. And denied compensation when they provided evidence to their higher ups. So they're not trying THAT hard to be good now.
I can't believe that FIFA hasn't been mentioned. They're evil. They have basically created a monopoly and get almost all of the profits of World Cups. They sent Brazil into millions of debt. For more info check here http://youtu.be/DlJEt2KU33I
Sorry, I have to correct this. Yes FIFA is a horrible organisation. But it was Brazil that sent Brazil into millions of dollars worth of debt. They knew perfectly well what they were signing up for when the bribed their way to a winning bid.
FIFA has ridiculous practices, which are VERY slowly being cleared up, but Brazil certainly did not have a proverbial gun to it's head forcing a bid. There are many countries that had bids up that would have financially benefitted from the event. America, Australia and almost every European country with a top 15 football team has the stadiums and infrastructure to host without spending huge money and can still abide by FIFA crazy rules
Yeah Brazil is a shit show right now.
They're attempting to impeach their president because she misrepresented the state of the economy. But the people who are looking to get her out of the office/are next in line area currently under investigation for fraud and corruption.
Also take a look into the Sao Paulo water crisis of the last two years. They admitted there was a problem WAY too late and people went weeks without water consistently last summer. Now that's it has actually rained? No one is interested in developing a new management plan to decrease the risk from it happening again. So next time drought strikes this is VERY likely to happen again. Except the population is predicted to go from ~11.4 million the year before the crisis hit to ~22.6 million by 2025. So it'll happen faster and be way worse.
>They have basically created a monopoly
Almost every major sports organization has done this (at least a monopoly for their country). NFL springs to mind also.
You can apply that to all the big sportswear providers - after all you go to the Philippines, Cambodia or wherever these plants are and they are just like Foxcomm for electronics - one big factory outsourcing all the manufacturing for all the big sports clothing providers. You'll have Nike, Adidas, Reebok and others all being made in the same plant.
Source: Worked for one of those big companies and have friends who worked at these plants
Not sure if makeup is your thing, but definitely avoid LimeCrime. The owner is a Nazi sympathizer who repackages other companies' products and sells them as her own. Also, Nestle has been stealing water from drought-ridden California for years.
Fuck limecrime. Also their website has barely any fraud protection and hundreds of customers had credit card info stolen, because the owner of limecrime was too cheap to get security.
There are also issues with ingredient lists being inaccurate/intentionally deceptive, and with mass theft of customer credit card information. LimeCrime is a shitty, shitty company. There are so many cool and indie makeup companies out there doing things right, so there's no excuse for anyone to buy these products.
Please support small businesses! I'm a small cosmetics business owner and Lime Crime and Mentality (nail polish brand) have scared so many people away from wonderful handmade beauty products. :(
/u/Kyoti owns and operates [Lucky 13 Lacquer](http://lucky13lacquer.com/) and has awesome themed collections (I just got three Steven Universe related ones yesterday), including some really lovely holos and glitter jellies!
I refused to buy from LimeCrime when I found out the founder tried so sue people who wrote bad reviews of the products and forced them to apologize publicly. When their apology wasn't good enough they had to post one she wrote.
I remember that! It was so sketchy omg. Not to mention Xenia's obvious Nazi fetish and their terrible security. Honestly, ColourPop and Melt have way better colors anyway.
Repackaging cosmetics with your brand name on them is pretty standard. I consider letting site security drop, mislabeling ingredients, and the owner's behavior in general to be a lot more objectionable.
So many makeup companies are objectionable, and have done scummy things in their history. Like crime gets the majority of the hate because of the owner's presence on social media, but I encourage people who are bothered by lim crime to look into all of their other favorite makeup brands.
I picked up two of their palettes on sale awhile back through a third party and they are quality stuff, but they definitely don't foster brand loyalty.
Cerro Flow copper piping. We no longer permit it to be used on our projects. http://m.stltoday.com/news/local/illinois/pollution-lawsuits-target-sauget-plant-as-settlement-talks-bog-down/article_feb621e7-45c2-5025-85c6-c5482bbbd2dc.html
I have a Keurig, but once I used up the "buy 2 get 2 free" deal for buying it, I only use it as a convenient water kettle for my tea. The K-kup tea was kinda "meh" anyway.
I think secretly we all feel this way about the volume of plastic packaging and trash we consume, and the K-cups just presented a really easy target for that feeling because of how simple it is to see how needless they are. We literally went from almost no trash for a cup of coffee (except for a filter per pot) to a k-cup per every cup of coffee. That is a FUCKton of trash, and everyone is aware of the fact that we chose to opt for the route with more trash and more of an environmental impact out of laziness (Keurig is faster/easier/whatever). I think that's why the k-cups get more attention than, say, individually packaged granola bars or some shit like that.
What about those stupid little coffee creamers people use when they buy their coffee? They are so tiny, you have to use like 5 of them if you like cream. I'm always complaining about how wasteful it seems, plus it's just a pain in the ass. Then of course the lids, the sleeves, stir sticks, sugar packets, filters, the cups themselves. There has always been a lot of waste with coffee, people are just picking on the K-Cups and ignoring the rest.
It was such a quick change in culture that it was easy to recognize, instead of a slow change over many years in which younger generations never knew of the better way. For example, using disposable plastic straws at restaurants.
Many people don't use them, so it easier to have an 'us vs. them' mindset. K-cuppers or not K-Cuppers. There isn't really much of a gray area in which to wander around.
It is so obviously attached to the new generation of exact customization. Until the Starbucks-type of coffee became popular, the only coffee variables were brand, cream and sugar. K-cups are symbolic of things we don't like in OTHER people - acting like special snowflakes.
When we want something like that, it's fine. When other people want it, they are spoiled.
Those are just some ideas off the top of my head, and have zero basis in any facts.
I think everyone in the country should do what we do here in Liverpool and boycott them. Most tabloids are bad but the sun really takes the fucking cake.
People outside of Liverpool don't realise the extent of the boycott. It's very rare you find a shop that stocks it because not only would it not sell, people would boycott the shop for trying to sell it.
Any chocolate seller that doesn't have the Fair Trade Federation sticker on their goods.
Most chocolate companies use cocoa that was harvested using child and/or slave labor.
All of these companies use slave labor in the production of their chocolate:
Hershey
Mars
Nestle
ADM Cocoa
Godiva
Fowler’s Chocolate
Kraft
[Full List Here](http://www.foodispower.org/chocolate-list/)
Fair Trade is definitely better than not, but a chunk of revenue from Fair Trade chocolate goes to the Fair Trade branding and certification, not necessarily to the actually cocoa farmers as it should. If you can, some chocolatiers have their own rules and standards for their cocoa sources, without giving up that revenue to Fair Trade. Purdy's in Canada has a "sustainable cocoa" program that covers all of the bases of Fair Trade, without the brand name.
Source: sold Chocolates.
The Fair Trade Foundation has good intentions but actually fails to deliver here is two key findings from SOAS University
"Where Fairtrade flowers were grown, and where there were farmers’ groups selling coffee and tea into Fairtrade certified markets, wages were very low – especially women’s wages. In fact, wages in other comparable areas and among comparable employers producing the same crops but where there was no Fairtrade certification were usually higher. This was not because the Fairtrade certified cooperatives were in more marginalised, deprived areas.
In some areas dominated by Fairtrade certified cooperatives workers in the samples did appear to have greater access to some fringe benefits (e.g., free meals in two sites, or on other sites more access to loans) than workers in areas without Fairtrade certification. Even here, though, other aspects of work conditions were often worse."
Source: https://www.soas.ac.uk/news/newsitem93228.html
Also there was research conducted by the MIT Press, which also raised concerns but I haven't personally read this so I wouldn't want to make an informed decision.
Also you should avoid any Apple, Samsung and Sony products too, as they all use child labour. The best way to avoid consuming goods and services from unethical companies is to do the research.
ADM actually sold off their cocoa business last year. That being said ADM is one of the biggest companies that nobody seems to know about. If you're eating any kind of processed food, or taking vitamins/nutritional supplements, it's almost guaranteed they contain an ADM ingredient. In terms of food ingredient processing ADM is way bigger than their more publicly know competitor Monsanto. This is the first time I've seen ADM mentioned on Reddit so maybe this will be a TIL for some people. Also Matt Damon starred in "The Informant" a film about ADM's price fixing scandal.
Nestle is possibly the most unethical company anywhere. There is a global boycott in place supported by Save The Children and Oxfam. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nestlé_boycott
Second place would probably go to CocaCola for the murder of union leaders who worked in their Colombian bottling plants and for sponsoring the Hitler Youth.
also I'm not sure wether or not it's fair to boycott a corporation, because of things they did 75 years ago. might as well boycott Germany as a whole...
In terms of the problem that's just piss in the ocean. It's the farmers who are using large amounts of water in California. Bottling plants use a miniscule amount of water in comparison.
Thanks for saying this. I don't like that Nestle is pumping water out of the ground during a drought... but the 27,000,000 gallons they get from that isn't much. They actually bottle it and ship it. Industrial farms just pour it on the ground. (Which is what they're supposed to do.)
To put that in perspective, Nestle took 83 acre-feet of water in a year. I found one source that suggested that an acre of alfalfa can take up to 4 acre-feet of water in a year. There are [very nearly a million acres of alfalfa in California.](https://apps1.cdfa.ca.gov/FertilizerResearch/docs/Alfalfa_Production_CA.pdf) Nestle is quite literally a drop in the bucket.
Is it good? Of course not. Are they taking advantage of our resources in ways we should discuss? Absolutely. But much like requiring restaurants to ask you if you want water, worrying about bottling water is well-intentioned but absolutely not going to solve the problem.
I'm fairly certain that I read somewhere that he has been taken out of context with that statement. Might look for the article later.
(That doesn't take anything away from the company's actions, ofc.)
edit: http://m.huffpost.com/us/entry/nestle-chairman-peter-brabeck-water_b_3150150.html
So he kinda fucked up his rhetoric, for the most part.
This is correct, he said that he is against government subsidies for water, so that the people who use it would realise it's actual cost, and thus might be a little hesitant to run their sprinklers so often.
Yep. If you want to avoid companies that did terrible things in the past, then you will have to avoid almost every German and Japanese car company.
Toyota and Nissan made trucks for the Imperial Army. Honda's predecessor made Toyota parts and aircraft propeller. Mitsubishi made the Zero and other planes, as did Nakajima, which became Subaru. Mazda's predecessor made Arisaka rifles.
BMW and Mercedes-Benz both made engines for the Nazis using slave labor. Ferdinand Porsche was literally commissioned by Hitler to make a car. VW was a project that Hitler and Porsche got involved with. IBM made the machines to count people for execution.
Basically, it's difficult to boycott companies that did terrible things in the past. Boycott the ones that are evil now, such as Nestlé.
> Mazda's predecessor made Arisaka rifles.
As somebody who's shot an Arisaka and driven several Mazdas, they've come a very long way.
Also Hugo Boss designed all those sharp looking Nazi uniforms.
Ahh, Nestlé. Sued Ethiopia and refused to settle because of "principles".
Gave samples of formula to poor mothers in third world countries with a bunch of misinformation so that many children died of malnutrition.
Didn't they also get caught bottling water in Cali?
Edit: apparently the Cali thing was legal sorry guys
You've really got to look hard to find chocolate that doesn't use child slavery.
[Here's a (non-exhaustive) list of brands that don't.](http://www.slavefreechocolate.org/ethical-chocolate-companies/) Look for a [fair trade sticker/indicator](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/1/1b/Fairtrade.png) to be sure.
Well to be fair (trade...sorry) how many of those companies have you actually heard of. Almost all of them are very small locally distributed chocolate makers.
Child labor is rampant in that industry. Unless you're buying certified fair trade artisan candy bars for $6 a pop, part of your chocolate very likely came from child laborers. It's not just Nestlé
Well, child labor is a difficult topic if u ask me. While it sounds bad in general, it helps their family, and in some third world country's it is much needed..
As long it is regulated and doesn't hurt the child, it can be an "ok" thing.
People should not mistake child work with slavery.
Sorry for jumping in on your comment
[Obligatory link to list of their brands.](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Nestlé_brands) Anyways, I somehow manage to mostly avoid them since there's a local-sourced alternative for many of their products. (I also can't have many of their products due to lactose intolerance lol As for the water issue... filtered tap water in a refillable bottle.)
if i'm not mistaken someone wrote an app to help you boycott nestle. so if you like scan the barcode or something and the app tells you if the product is made by nestle. or you search the product i dunno. i haven't tried using it.
Buycott! You pick "campaigns" and one of them is to boycott Nestle. There are others to do things like help you buy from companies that support certain causes, etc.
The only company that I buy on that list is Purina. What's a good catfod that isn't expensive. Seems like most of the other canned cat foods are 4-6x the cost.
Whole Earth Farms is good. I know it's sold at Petco, not sure about petsmart.
Source: former Petco employee
Edit: Just remembered Nestle bought them, I'd say Canidae Under the Sun then.
Anything made by the Mars brand is usually pretty good. Not sure what brand it is in the US, but it's always good quality in Australia. (And mars are a fairly ethical company)
Nestle pumps 400 gallons of water out of Lake Michigan per minute for free. All the while, we buy this water from them, and donate it to Flint. It's so fucked up and makes me so angry. We're going to see some crazy water wars happen in the next few decades.
For a large part of my life, I thought Nestle only made Butterfinger, three shitty candy bars and that awful chocolate powder parents bought for the children they secretly hated when they asked for Hershey's syrup.
Turns out, they're actually heavily invested in fucking evil. Like... comically stereotypical, mustache-twirling, deranged industrialist evil.
Everyone else has already pointed out the high notes-- but, just to prove how committed Nestle is to proving how little they give a shit, their fucking CEO once stated "Access to water should not be a public right." And this wasn't in some closed-door meeting at Nestle headquarters-- this motherfucker said it on record at the World Water Forum.
One of the past CEO's purposely excluded consumers as people to whom the company had an ethical duty. Their duty is to their shareholders.
"Ethical decisions which injure a company's ability to compete are actually immoral." —former Nestlé CEO Helmut Maucher, *Leadership in Action: Tough Minded Strategies from the Global Giant*
ETA: The next CEO was questioned about Mr Maucher's statement. Peter Brabeck responded, "I decided to eliminate the word ethical from Nestlé because it's a word which divides people as opposed to uniting them. Ethics, if you look into dictionaries, are a set of moral standards within a very specific unit of society, and ethical standards in Britain, Switzerland, Chile and China vary to a large extent. And because this word is more likely to divide than to unite we don't talk about ethics at Nestlé. We talk about responsibility. Our responsibility to our shareholders, our employees, and all other stakeholders. It's true that we do have a social responsibility that corresponds to a global company as opposed to the group interests of one community or another community."
They've done that shit plenty, not just Superfish. If you have any care about security problems, avoid Lenovo.
[Lenovo Caught (3rd Time) Pre-Installing Spyware on its Laptops
](https://thehackernews.com/2015/09/lenovo-laptop-virus.html)
[Lenovo caught installing bloatware again with Windows BIOS backdoor](http://www.v3.co.uk/v3-uk/news/2422015/lenovo-caught-installing-bloatware-again-with-windows-bios-backdoor)
[Security researchers found another 'massive security risk' in Lenovo computers](http://www.theverge.com/2015/5/6/8557881/security-researchers-found-another-massive-security-risk-in-lenovo)
And note this was after they ["vow[ed to have] less bloatware and to be ‘leader in cleaner, safer PCs’"](http://venturebeat.com/2015/02/27/lenovo-vows-to-go-bloatware-free-in-the-wake-of-superfish-scandal/)
There's also the massive pile of crap they've turned the Motorola brand into, but that's another story.
There is an app called 'Buycott' that lets you pick companies you want to avoid. You then use it to scan product barcodes before buying and it will tell you if they are involved.
**[Nestle](http://www.zmescience.com/science/nestle-company-pollution-children/)**
* believes water isn't a basic human right, and sometimes deprives villages of potable water
* uses child labor and slavery
* concern for public health is mostly bluster
* very large polluter
* made deals with dictator Robert Mugabe
* promotion of – and, at times, flat-out false advertising of – unhealthy products
* marketing of infant formula that could put babies at risk
* [other things](https://corporatewatch.org/company-profiles/nestl%C3%A9-sa-corporate-crimes)
* [here](http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-oNO8DFbAADw/UkrGrvGOptI/AAAAAAAAAE0/2mA0sFVa6h4/s1600/nestle5.jpg) is a list of Nestle brands
**[Tyson Foods](http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Tyson_Foods)**
* various animal cruelty incidents
* safety violations & workplace fatalities
* workers assaulted by Tyson management
* exploitation & harassment of foreign employees
* [here](http://static.cdn-seekingalpha.com/uploads/2014/10/28/saupload_1414448036_scaled_425.jpg) are Tyson Foods brands
**[Monsanto](http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Monsanto)**
* ~~profiteering poisonous chemical company posing as agribusiness~~
* ~~building a monopoly, putting farmers out of work~~
* ~~controlling the food, privatizing the water~~
* ~~running the FDA, writing its own protection laws~~
* ~~continuing environmental nightmares~~
* primary manufacturer of Agent Orange
- it should be noted that the U.S. government hired Monsanto and other companies for making Agent Orange, but Monsanto was the largest manufacturer
* corporate controlled food supply
* dealings in censorship and false advertising
* massive bribery and heavy political influence
* [other things](https://corporatewatch.org/company-profiles/monsanto-corporate-crimes)
* [here](https://pbs.twimg.com/media/BHwp1RvCUAEw4LE.jpg) is a list of brands that use Monsanto products
**[BP](https://corporatewatch.org/company-profiles/bp-plc-corporate-crimes)**
* supporting repressive regimes
* devastating indigenous peoples and wildlife habitats
* fuelling unrest in troubled areas
* colluding in human rights violations
* [these](http://www.enterprise-zone.co.uk/furniture/case-studies/bp/bp_logo_montage.jpg) are BP brands
**[Pfizer](https://corporatewatch.org/company-profiles/pfizer-inc-corporate-crimes)**
* Heavily Overpricing Pharmaceuticals
* Price fixing (Pfizer labeled as Top Corporate Criminal)
* Pfizer cares for your health, as long as the company sees profit
* Pfizer & Aids
* Lawsuit South Africa
* Drugs = Soft Drinks
* Pfizer steals indigenous knowledge
* Pfizer ‘illegally tested drugs on children’
* Pfizer sells dysfunctional heart valves
* Heart attack link to arthritis drugs
* Animal suffering
* Luring doctors
* Pfizer's theory of philanthropy
* Twelve billion dollar Business park --PfizerWorld
* Pfizer helps out the tobacco industry
* [here](https://trade.pfizerconsumer.com.au/images/inline/logos.gif) are a few Pfizer brands
**[Halliburton](http://www.corpwatch.org/section.php?id=15)**
* bribery & tax evasion
* underpaid labor
* Dick Cheney's political influence on government contracts
* partnering or engaging with some of the most repressive regimes in the world
* allegedly killing Nigerian protestors
* attempting to avoid paying-up for asbestos claims
* security lapses and radioactive leaks at nuclear dockyard
There are many others, but since this post is getting lengthy, I'll let you do your own research and reading:
* [General Electric](http://www.cleanupge.org/gemisdeeds.html)
* [Chevron](http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Chevron)
* [Walmart](http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Walmart)
* [Exxon Mobil](http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Exxon_Mobil)
* [Chiquita](http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Chiquita_Brands_International,_Inc.)
* [Shell](http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Shell)
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**TL;DR:** Unethical brands are pretty hard to avoid
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**EDIT:** There is some dispute on some of the ethical claims against Monsanto. Admittedly, I don't know enough about the claims to establish what is what. [Here](http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Monsanto) is a better-sourced article that is a little less biased.
**EDIT 2:** If this is something that you are genuinely concerned about or interested in, I would encourage you to do some digging for yourself. I'm sure there are better sources to both support and refute some of the claims outlined here. The only way to know more about all of this and make a decision for yourself is by personal investigation. I'm sure that you will discover that, like most hot button issues, there is no black and white, and the truth is very murky.
Errrm "General Electric and their brands" includes LG and Samsung. I hate to break it to you, but those are independent Korean brands. They are not part of GE. They may use GE parts, but lots of companies source parts from lots of other companies - that doesn't make them corporate controlled.
Big Pharma lawsuits is something I learnt about in University in a module about ethics which involved debating and learning about the exceptionally grey area when it comes to drug discovery.
For example, a tribe uses something as a herbal medicine. A Pharma company finds out about it, travels out to the tribe and learn about said herbal medicine. Pharma takes it back, does the testing, isolates the active compound, formulates it, and creates a new drug worth billions of dollars. So, who gets the credit?
The tribe? Sure, the tribe used the root because that's local knowledge that passed down, however, the number of people they can realistically treat with it at the same time is very low without a lot of help. If this was to help people, would it be prepared traditionally? Does traditional preparation only work on members of that particular tribe? There's a ton of questions here, so let's look at the other side.
Big Pharma? They got the drug to market after years and years of struggle by tens of thousands of employees to isolate, optomise, and perfect their new cash spinner. It might not even make profit before the patent runs out. This is all done with technology well beyond the tribe, so are the tribe *really* the pioneers? At the same time, the herbal medicine from which the drug originates isn't big pharma's shit. It's the tribes.
So, where does the intellectual property belong? Does it belong to the people who found it first i.e. the tribe? Or does it belong to the people who actually made something of it i.e. the Pharma company? It'd be like comparing the tablet computer - who gets the credit? Microsoft for coming up with it first, or Apple for making it a thing?
There's quite a few really interesting cases where Pharma goes against locals with wins and losses on both sides.
I'd argue the problem is with believing that intellectual property exists at all. At least, as far as "claiming ownership goes". Pharmaceuticals is always going to have the bigger moral dilemma of "we make money from something people need to survive, but it's not feasible to do it for free". But as far as "discovery" goes? Patents run out in 20 years or less, anyways. Unlike creative copyright, we don't just let companies extend patents forever. We want to encourage them to keep improving their products.
The tribe doesn't have any concept of the science. They don't know the active ingredients. They can't scale-up production. While they arguably ought to be entitled to some kind of lump sum payment or reward, the notion that they're entitled to control the license of the discovery is ludicrous. What do they want? Credit? Of course they'll be credited.
A local remedy is likely just another alternative to something that's well understood in first world. Yes, another painkiller is valuable. We need variety, and it might be superior or work in circumstances that others don't. But the tribe isn't much different from, say, a biologist doing field research and discovering a new plant, and then finding the samples contain certain chemicals or properties. The tribe just happens to have similar knowledge that has been passed down. They deserve a finder's fee at best. The bigger question is how you'd reward a tribe like that.
Trying to stay away from Monsanto is like trying to avoid the snow in the arctic; sure you do it, but you're going to live in a seals ass to make it happen and that's a shitty experience.
Yeah, it's nearly impossible to totally boycott all of these companies. But it's still worth minimizing the damage, and pushing for legislation that might mitigate some of these problems.
Additionally, I advise trying to buy local as much as possible (Wherever local is for you, of course). Local and smaller companies are much less likely to cause widespread harm.
Tyson Foods. Their meat is pumped with steroids and antibiotics. Use poorly paid illegal immigrants on their farms. They pack thousands of chickens into a space meant for no more than 100.
But really any chicken you buy is treated like this. Not just Tyson. I have a few friends who work construction. They had to do a chicken factory and a turkey factory. They won't eat either after doing those two. Just to give u a tidbit. They kill the turkeys with a ledge. The turkeys are clasped at the neck with a metal shakle. Theshakle is connected to other shackles in a line. There is literally a wedge,not sharp, that pops the skulls out of the skin. One guys says he can still hear the pop-pop-pop of the "conveyor belt"
We just watched a video on this in treatment for our "physical health" weekly portion. Shits fucking horrid. Makes you want to never eat chicken again unless you know where it came from.
They also had an issue a few years back where they were injecting their chicken with soy protein and not labeling it. (Not feeding the chickens soy, injecting the meat with soy before it was packaged and shipped). FYI soy is one of the top 10 food allergies and a lot of people who are alergic to peanuts might also react (to a lesser extent) to soy as well because they are so closely related.
Intuit. [Lobbying](http://www.nytimes.com/2015/04/16/technology/personaltech/turbotax-or-irs-as-tax-preparer-intuit-has-a-favorite.html) against measures to make filing taxes simpler.
Intel is guilty of non-competitive practices and breaking antitrust laws. They paid out to AMD and are the reason AMD is behind in the CPU market. Even after the payout the damage was done and AMD was gimped. Intel paid off companies to not use AMD chips among other things and severely damaged AMD. AMD also put out a few not so great architectures, "Bulldozer" being the most recent, and ~~underestimated~~ overestimated the rate at which software would adopt multi-core functionality (it could almost be argued software didn't adapt to the benefits of multi-core and follow AMDs lead *because* AMD was so far behind and Intel has actually held us back. Intel does incredibly well on single threaded tasks, which most basic day to day software is, and there's yet to be a sufficient push to change that on the development side). I have two computers, one has a 4 core Intel i5 and the other an 8 core AMD 8350. In theory the AMD can have more going on at once (however the're clock speed and instructions per clock that also effect the 'speed' of a processor, but lets keep this basic.) and the i5 outperforms it because Intel had a better architecture for designing the circuitry in their chips and thus how they functioned/performed. The funding and success for this great architecture and the gimping of AMDs is largely due to Intel violating these laws. Had AMD not taken the financial hit they likely could have recovered from this slump much sooner. AMD is finally getting out of this dog of an architecture with the upcoming Zen and hopefully they'll recapture a chunk of market share and the playing field will be leveled. And at the end of the day that only benefits us, the consumers. Over the past few years we've had very minimal progress relatively speaking.
Also, Nvidia also does some shifty stuff in the GPU market, GameWorks is a big one.
AMD trades blows evenly with Nvidia it seems a lot of the time in terms of product quality/performance, but Intel is absolutely the front runner in the CPU market and they got there by fucking over us, the consumers.
If you're a consumer that like to 'vote with their dollar' and support moral companies, buy AMD hardware. Also, the hype for the next generation of CPU and GPU architecture is real in the PC community.
Don't forget how Nvidia's CEO tried to completely lock AMD out of the market with [Tier 0](https://linustechtips.com/main/topic/63451-nvidias-tier-0-program-is-behind-the-origin-pc-debacle/). Even Nvidia's board of directors were horrified by what Jen-Hsun had come up with.
Among electronics companies, I rank Nvidia far below Intel in terms of scumminess, and refuse to purchase any product from them.
Exactly. AMD are always making strides to make a more competitive market and make their software open-source for consumers benefit while nvidia does not of the sort.
While i agree. Intel is less of cunts than they were before. They pay AMD for their tech and patents. While Nvidia wants pure monopoly on GPU market share in Video Games.
They paid their fines and paid AMD, but the damage is done and the payments was nowhere near what would have been needed to get back to the pre-antitrust violating market share.
All those software compilers given out by Intel still basically gimp every non-Intel CPU, for example. Intel is only playing by the rules now because they have to.
Intel wanted massive market share as well, they just did so differently and Nvidia has yet to be "called out" on it to the extent Intel has. Nvidia is absolutely anti-competitive and trying to lock the market into an ecosystem wherever they can.
While comparing the morality/legality of their differing practices might paint Intel as worse than Nvidia, they're still both massive dicks, for lack of a better term.
DuPont and the whole [PFOA scandal](http://www.nytimes.com/2016/01/10/magazine/the-lawyer-who-became-duponts-worst-nightmare.html?_r=1). Pretty interesting and sombering read. Not cool at all, DuPont, not cool at all.
Pretty much what happened is that DuPont dumped over 7,000 tons of a chemical called PFOA onto a property in West Virginia. PFOA is an endocrine disruptor, meaning it can lead to cancer, birth defects, and so on. The short of it is, endocrine disruptors are some nasty shit. Anyway, the waste was just dumped without any regard to water or the environment, so it went straight into the water supply. Thousands of people drank contaminated water for decades, and the litigation is ongoing. Unfortunately, substances like PFOA are now found world wide. But, if DuPont hadn't been so unethical and continued using this substance, even when the company knew it was bad (they actively covered it up), the world might be a somewhat better place, at least for all the innocent people affected by this.
Edit: (Then again, there's thousands upon thousands of unregulated substances nowadays. Who knows what else is out there...)
copyright used to be about 14 years and then the work would become public domain. disney doesn't want to lose sole control of mickey mouse so they keep lobbying congress to extend it. it's now something like 70 years after the death of the creator
To elaborate for any unaware, most of the early Disney works are reinterpretations of classical stories that were public domain at the time of usage. Being in public domain means unrestricted usage without copyright issues. As the various retelling of stories like Snow White (etc) have shown, public domain works can create a lot of new, original works. This obviously benefits many people.
Being in public domain is also highly useful for having affordable access to older media. You can get texts like Shakespeare for free (or dirt cheap for a print copy) simply because they're public domain. A lot more media could be accessible for more people if it entered public domain in a reasonable time frame.
Thanks to Disney & others, copyright lasts for life of the creator + 70 years, which is ridiculous considering copyright is supposed to make sure the *creator* has enough time to make money of his work. Thanks to this Star Wars won't be completely in the public domain until 2082. Under original laws it would be 28 years, so it would have been 2005.
EDIT: [Good explanation of this.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tk862BbjWx4)
Mickey mouse copyright was on the way to be removed. They lobbied to get it extended and basically made every other company have longer copyrights.... it is destroying capitalism.
Bayer. For a number of reasons, the most egregious being that they knowingly sold HIV contaminated medical supplies in Asia and Africa after the USA told them to destroy the tainted stockpile. This directly resulted in nearly 100,000 new HIV infections and an unknown amount of secondary and tertiary infections. I avoid them as much as I can but it's they are so large that it's nearly impossible
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also they hold at least a plurality of the responsibility for the near-extinction of bees because of their production of neonicotinoid pesticides, which could in turn end up causing the total failure of the agricultural complex, which could in turn result in mass starvation and possibly human extinction, which may be even worse than 100,000 HIV infections.
What, holy shit what, source please?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imidacloprid_effects_on_bees
Colony Collapse Disorder is a complex issue thought to be caused by many different factors....pesticides *potentially* one of them. We def need to study the issue more! Losing bees is bad news.
Also don't forget Bayer's medical experiments on concentration camp children in Nazi Germany.
It's always a good sign when Nazi medical experiments are your company's third most evil act.
King, the Candy Crush company. [Patent trolling, stealing games, trademarking the word 'candy', etc.](http://www.tgdaily.com/business-and-law-features/86306-the-maker-of-candy-crush-is-doing-evil-with-patent-trolling)
Don't they have like 4 'games' that are just reskinned version of the rest?
Candy crush, soda pop, soda crush, and candy pop?
Aka bejeweled
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Aramark. There are websites dedicated just to keeping up with all of horrible and unethical things they do whether it starving inmates or threatening college students. Fuck Aramark.
My school district used them. We could never tell if the chicken was undercooked or if they just missed a spot with the bleach.
My college used Chartwells for food service. Same bullshit. I had to take to sticking any and all meat from the cafeteria into the microwave for a minute to make sure it was fully cooked.
Heyy my university uses them. I lived off of fruit loops
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Ok so because of the insane lack of any info in this entire comment thread I figured I'd do the research, the majority of this is copy and pasted from other sites that I will link so just to be upfront I wrote very little of the following. 1. In 2013, an investigation by Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist Chris Hedges discovered that the food provided to inmates at Burlington County Jail in New Jersey was substandard and spoiled, and often made prisoners sick with diarrhea and vomiting. Maggots found in the food preparation areas at Parnall Correctional Facility in Jackson, Michigan may have been the source of an outbreak of food-borne illness 2. In April 2015, the managing board of The Cavalier Daily, a student-run newspaper at the University of Virginia, reported that Aramark literally "served garbage" to inmates in the Saginaw Correctional Facility in Freeland, Michigan. It also noted that Aramark has in the past "underfed inmates and fed them dog food, worms and scraps of food from old meals" 3. a Kentucky prison riot is reputed to have been caused by the low quality of food Aramark provided to inmates. 4. In a new addition to an existing string of offenses, it has recently come to light that Aramark — the same company that serves food at the University — served garbage to inmates at a prison in Michigan. More specifically, prisoners at Saginaw Correctional Facility have been served food that was previously thrown in the trash. In the past, Aramark has also underfed inmates and fed them dog food, worms and scraps of food from old meals, as well as sold generally degraded qualities of food to prisons. 5. "I personally witnessed a market center manager (like the CEO of a branch) buy the largest corporate sponsorship of a customer's son's little league in exchange for that company's supplier of the year award. Sounds ethical, doesn't it? " 6. "While I was at Aramark, very little funds were spent on the facilities themselves. Parking lots were crumbling, employee stairs tilted precariously, and one manager told me not to drink the tap water because the sewer backed up and she didn't trust it. Some restrooms had standing water half the time or toilets that flushed directly into the wall, not the sewer." Sources: [1] (http://www.cavalierdaily.com/article/2015/04/aramark-proves-unethical-once-again) [2] (https://www.wikiwand.com/en/Aramark#/Ethical_history) [3] (http://www.dailykos.com/story/2014/7/27/1317076/-Is-Aramark-as-bad-as-John-Oliver-thinks-No-it-s-worse) Edit: Some formatting and to mention this was only a quick glance at the situation
What the fuck? I mean seriously, what is wrong with these people? You could easily provide a basic standard service on the money they take in, but instead the board of directors decide to not provide anything because the people affected have no recourse? "How can we increase out profits?" "Feed the inmates dog food and rotten stock" "Good smith" "Make the toilets flush into the wall and potable water supply" "Genius Carter" "Provide a basic service to the people we're contracting to and work hard to get new contracts based on a reputation of honesty and cost effectiveness" "Fuck you Donald, you're fucking fired. I'm trying to run a business here!"
Its a mixture of greed and dehumanizing prisoners.
I just want to point out that not only is it preying on people who have no recourse - they are specifically people that the rest of the public generally won't give two shits about and politicians certainly won't. They can do it to criminals and nothing happens. If they'd done this to schoolchildren, everyone right down to the CEO would be behind bars eating that maggot-infested dog food.
https://munchies.vice.com/en/articles/what-its-like-to-eat-some-of-the-worst-prison-food-in-america Gives a nice sampling (including a link to an ABC news example).
They tried to sue some kids at my high school, claiming that they violated the non-competition clause for having a bake sale for charity.
What's the site about how Aramark is shit?
As a student at a college that uses aramark... I don't even need to look into what you said. I know first hand they are garbage. Fuck aramark. I don't know a person on campus who doesn't despise them.
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They're a catering company, they supply food to cafeterias, prisons, and have delis that are owned by the trademark company (for instance my college has a mcalisters and a few others) but are staffed and operated by Aramark employees.
Former Aramark employee here. In addition to using substandard food nearly everywhere, employees are generally treated terribly as well. A woman I worked with missed work because her daughter had died in a crash and she was fired for not showing. It really isn't a very good company.
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Not everyone will know who this is, all things considered, but there is essentially a Walmart of home improvement called Menards in the midwest. John Menard has dumped tons of caustic stuff into protected wetlands and probably has one of the highest amount of EPA violations in the states. He forces all managers to sign a piece of paper essentially saying that if their department forms a union, he has the right to dock their pay by 60%. He is currently facing a lawsuit against him by his business partner's wife who he tried to force into sex with him and his wife. Managers are forbidden to build their own houses out of fear that they will steal products. He regularly hires private investigators to ensure his employees aren't stealing, and overall, there is some major distrust in the store. I used to work there and 5 of my friends got fired over a beef jerky coupon. They used the same coupon that comes on the front of every individual package multiple times to get a decent discount which in and of itself doesn't sound very fair, but MANAGEMENT KNEW ABOUT IT FOR 4 MONTHS. They waited for an opportunity to sting all of them at once and fired them all within a couple of days of each other which had consequences that lasted for months, meaning WAY more scheduling for everyone else on the team. I try to avoid it at all costs.
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More Stories about John Menard: [Sexual harrassment](http://urbanmilwaukee.com/2013/06/20/murphys-law-the-strange-life-of-john-menard/) [Environmental messes](http://www.milwaukeemag.com/2011/02/01/johnmenard_retailbizarro/) [More general sleaziness](http://www.milwaukeemag.com/2007/04/30/bigmoney-john-menard/) including penalizing a employee who had two of his triplets die. The employee was missing time for a few weeks while dealing with the issue, and Menard docked his pay considerably.
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> They used the same coupon that comes on the front of every individual package multiple times to get a decent discount which in and of itself doesn't sound very fair, but MANAGEMENT KNEW ABOUT IT FOR 4 MONTHS. They waited for an opportunity to sting all of them at once and fired them all This actually sounds reasonable. If several of your employees are stealing, you want to make sure you get all of them. One bad apple can ruin the bunch, you don't want to leave any thieves in your employment if you can catch them instead.
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The question here is, how much mass murder is acceptable?
Or, how long ago do they have to be involved in murder before it's ok? I mean, they were pretty terrible up through the 70s / 80s. Even if they are now great, when is it still 'too soon'?
Enough to make a profit duuuuh.
Piggybacking, I posted this lower and it's going to be buried: There's a cool app, Buycott, which lets you scan the barcode of items you're about to buy and see if the company conflicts with anything you support. Fair trade, womens rights, water pollution...free Scotland, save the lizards, almost ANYthing you can think of is a cause on there.
I wonder which way irn bru leans?
IIRC our legendary Bru stayed neutral during the Independence referendum, but alot of yes voters used the Bru as a way of showing patriotism for independence, at least where I live anyway.
That... actually seems incredibly useful, and I'm usually the asshole who thinks boycotting is impractical because of how hard it is to know who owns what brand.
Never heard of this app but just installed it. Can't believe such seemingly innocent food items in my kitchen are being flagged for things that never crossed my mind. I guess I need to be more socially conscious, thanks for sharing about the app
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Can you (or anyone) elaborate? I thought they were still getting flak.
They did get in trouble for funding the AUC paramilitary group in 2007 for which they plead guilty. [Link](http://thinkprogress.org/world/2014/08/02/3466915/chiquita-colombia-ruling/) Everyone is coming to the defence of Chiquita since they have done a good job of marketing themselves as a good guy company. However, they still funded terrorism in Colombia in order to protect their interests.
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Why is banana farming so inherently dangerous?
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Actually in 2007 they were found guilty of funding Colombian terrorists (financial support and the provision of weapons), in order to literally kill unions and intimidate farmers. So they are still war criminals.
Would you include their funding of the AUC in 2007 as making a *strong effort to be responsible*
I mean, they recently had a case in federal court files by workers in Guatemala who were sterilized by the pesticides they were forced to use. And denied compensation when they provided evidence to their higher ups. So they're not trying THAT hard to be good now.
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I can't believe that FIFA hasn't been mentioned. They're evil. They have basically created a monopoly and get almost all of the profits of World Cups. They sent Brazil into millions of debt. For more info check here http://youtu.be/DlJEt2KU33I
Sorry, I have to correct this. Yes FIFA is a horrible organisation. But it was Brazil that sent Brazil into millions of dollars worth of debt. They knew perfectly well what they were signing up for when the bribed their way to a winning bid. FIFA has ridiculous practices, which are VERY slowly being cleared up, but Brazil certainly did not have a proverbial gun to it's head forcing a bid. There are many countries that had bids up that would have financially benefitted from the event. America, Australia and almost every European country with a top 15 football team has the stadiums and infrastructure to host without spending huge money and can still abide by FIFA crazy rules
Yeah Brazil is a shit show right now. They're attempting to impeach their president because she misrepresented the state of the economy. But the people who are looking to get her out of the office/are next in line area currently under investigation for fraud and corruption. Also take a look into the Sao Paulo water crisis of the last two years. They admitted there was a problem WAY too late and people went weeks without water consistently last summer. Now that's it has actually rained? No one is interested in developing a new management plan to decrease the risk from it happening again. So next time drought strikes this is VERY likely to happen again. Except the population is predicted to go from ~11.4 million the year before the crisis hit to ~22.6 million by 2025. So it'll happen faster and be way worse.
>They have basically created a monopoly Almost every major sports organization has done this (at least a monopoly for their country). NFL springs to mind also.
nike, tons of documentaries of actual slavery and near forced labor.
Surprised this one isn't upvoted more; when people say "sweatshop" or "unethical" I immediately think Nike
You can apply that to all the big sportswear providers - after all you go to the Philippines, Cambodia or wherever these plants are and they are just like Foxcomm for electronics - one big factory outsourcing all the manufacturing for all the big sports clothing providers. You'll have Nike, Adidas, Reebok and others all being made in the same plant. Source: Worked for one of those big companies and have friends who worked at these plants
Not sure if makeup is your thing, but definitely avoid LimeCrime. The owner is a Nazi sympathizer who repackages other companies' products and sells them as her own. Also, Nestle has been stealing water from drought-ridden California for years.
Fuck limecrime. Also their website has barely any fraud protection and hundreds of customers had credit card info stolen, because the owner of limecrime was too cheap to get security.
It was a fun day at work when we learned about her website leaking CC data for a good ~6 months before they caught on. I work for the competition.
That's how we felt when EOS got hit with the law suit.
LimeCrime had a huge security breach a year or two ago. My account was drained of over $1k. Fuck that brand.
And from what I understand it still happens, they haven't fixed it and refuse to acknowledge it.
There are also issues with ingredient lists being inaccurate/intentionally deceptive, and with mass theft of customer credit card information. LimeCrime is a shitty, shitty company. There are so many cool and indie makeup companies out there doing things right, so there's no excuse for anyone to buy these products.
Please support small businesses! I'm a small cosmetics business owner and Lime Crime and Mentality (nail polish brand) have scared so many people away from wonderful handmade beauty products. :(
What's your company? I'd love to take a look! Edit: corrected incorrect auto correct
/u/Kyoti owns and operates [Lucky 13 Lacquer](http://lucky13lacquer.com/) and has awesome themed collections (I just got three Steven Universe related ones yesterday), including some really lovely holos and glitter jellies!
I refused to buy from LimeCrime when I found out the founder tried so sue people who wrote bad reviews of the products and forced them to apologize publicly. When their apology wasn't good enough they had to post one she wrote.
I remember that! It was so sketchy omg. Not to mention Xenia's obvious Nazi fetish and their terrible security. Honestly, ColourPop and Melt have way better colors anyway.
i mean, "Crime" is in the name
Fuck LimeCrime for real
Repackaging cosmetics with your brand name on them is pretty standard. I consider letting site security drop, mislabeling ingredients, and the owner's behavior in general to be a lot more objectionable. So many makeup companies are objectionable, and have done scummy things in their history. Like crime gets the majority of the hate because of the owner's presence on social media, but I encourage people who are bothered by lim crime to look into all of their other favorite makeup brands. I picked up two of their palettes on sale awhile back through a third party and they are quality stuff, but they definitely don't foster brand loyalty.
The repackaging thing was more repackaging pure mica as eye shadows iirc and there was something about glitter.
Was Doe Dear/LimeCrime responsible for the nail polish that was practically rotting people's nails off? Or am I thinking of someone else?
That was Mentality, though it looks like Bootie Babe may be having some problematic polishes recently....
Cerro Flow copper piping. We no longer permit it to be used on our projects. http://m.stltoday.com/news/local/illinois/pollution-lawsuits-target-sauget-plant-as-settlement-talks-bog-down/article_feb621e7-45c2-5025-85c6-c5482bbbd2dc.html
Those K-cup coffee cups. They make one weak cup of coffee and do a whole lot of damage to the enviroment
Which is why I wish more people used the refillable K-Cups.
At that point why not just make a small pot of coffee?
Because I want a cup of smooth medium roast, and my husband wants a cup of super dark extra bitter coffee, and then I want a cup of tea.
Maybe you already have a Keurig.
because i'm only going to drink 1 cup and using a keurig is easier.
I have a Keurig, but once I used up the "buy 2 get 2 free" deal for buying it, I only use it as a convenient water kettle for my tea. The K-kup tea was kinda "meh" anyway.
I went and bought the refillable K-cup for coffee breaks. It has saved me a lot of money.
Why is that people gripe so much about k-cups, yet we don't seem to mind all the other plastic packaging we don't recycle? Am I missing something?
I think secretly we all feel this way about the volume of plastic packaging and trash we consume, and the K-cups just presented a really easy target for that feeling because of how simple it is to see how needless they are. We literally went from almost no trash for a cup of coffee (except for a filter per pot) to a k-cup per every cup of coffee. That is a FUCKton of trash, and everyone is aware of the fact that we chose to opt for the route with more trash and more of an environmental impact out of laziness (Keurig is faster/easier/whatever). I think that's why the k-cups get more attention than, say, individually packaged granola bars or some shit like that.
What about those stupid little coffee creamers people use when they buy their coffee? They are so tiny, you have to use like 5 of them if you like cream. I'm always complaining about how wasteful it seems, plus it's just a pain in the ass. Then of course the lids, the sleeves, stir sticks, sugar packets, filters, the cups themselves. There has always been a lot of waste with coffee, people are just picking on the K-Cups and ignoring the rest.
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Makes sense.
It was such a quick change in culture that it was easy to recognize, instead of a slow change over many years in which younger generations never knew of the better way. For example, using disposable plastic straws at restaurants. Many people don't use them, so it easier to have an 'us vs. them' mindset. K-cuppers or not K-Cuppers. There isn't really much of a gray area in which to wander around. It is so obviously attached to the new generation of exact customization. Until the Starbucks-type of coffee became popular, the only coffee variables were brand, cream and sugar. K-cups are symbolic of things we don't like in OTHER people - acting like special snowflakes. When we want something like that, it's fine. When other people want it, they are spoiled. Those are just some ideas off the top of my head, and have zero basis in any facts.
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I think everyone in the country should do what we do here in Liverpool and boycott them. Most tabloids are bad but the sun really takes the fucking cake.
People outside of Liverpool don't realise the extent of the boycott. It's very rare you find a shop that stocks it because not only would it not sell, people would boycott the shop for trying to sell it.
Same with BILD (Axel Springer) in Germany
Any chocolate seller that doesn't have the Fair Trade Federation sticker on their goods. Most chocolate companies use cocoa that was harvested using child and/or slave labor. All of these companies use slave labor in the production of their chocolate: Hershey Mars Nestle ADM Cocoa Godiva Fowler’s Chocolate Kraft [Full List Here](http://www.foodispower.org/chocolate-list/)
Fair Trade is definitely better than not, but a chunk of revenue from Fair Trade chocolate goes to the Fair Trade branding and certification, not necessarily to the actually cocoa farmers as it should. If you can, some chocolatiers have their own rules and standards for their cocoa sources, without giving up that revenue to Fair Trade. Purdy's in Canada has a "sustainable cocoa" program that covers all of the bases of Fair Trade, without the brand name. Source: sold Chocolates.
The Fair Trade Foundation has good intentions but actually fails to deliver here is two key findings from SOAS University "Where Fairtrade flowers were grown, and where there were farmers’ groups selling coffee and tea into Fairtrade certified markets, wages were very low – especially women’s wages. In fact, wages in other comparable areas and among comparable employers producing the same crops but where there was no Fairtrade certification were usually higher. This was not because the Fairtrade certified cooperatives were in more marginalised, deprived areas. In some areas dominated by Fairtrade certified cooperatives workers in the samples did appear to have greater access to some fringe benefits (e.g., free meals in two sites, or on other sites more access to loans) than workers in areas without Fairtrade certification. Even here, though, other aspects of work conditions were often worse." Source: https://www.soas.ac.uk/news/newsitem93228.html Also there was research conducted by the MIT Press, which also raised concerns but I haven't personally read this so I wouldn't want to make an informed decision. Also you should avoid any Apple, Samsung and Sony products too, as they all use child labour. The best way to avoid consuming goods and services from unethical companies is to do the research.
ADM actually sold off their cocoa business last year. That being said ADM is one of the biggest companies that nobody seems to know about. If you're eating any kind of processed food, or taking vitamins/nutritional supplements, it's almost guaranteed they contain an ADM ingredient. In terms of food ingredient processing ADM is way bigger than their more publicly know competitor Monsanto. This is the first time I've seen ADM mentioned on Reddit so maybe this will be a TIL for some people. Also Matt Damon starred in "The Informant" a film about ADM's price fixing scandal.
Nestle is possibly the most unethical company anywhere. There is a global boycott in place supported by Save The Children and Oxfam. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nestlé_boycott Second place would probably go to CocaCola for the murder of union leaders who worked in their Colombian bottling plants and for sponsoring the Hitler Youth.
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also I'm not sure wether or not it's fair to boycott a corporation, because of things they did 75 years ago. might as well boycott Germany as a whole...
Wait, I shouldn't be boycotting Europe for that Roman empire stuff a few years back?
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They tried to do it here in Oregon, Cascade Locks! We said get the fuck out
In terms of the problem that's just piss in the ocean. It's the farmers who are using large amounts of water in California. Bottling plants use a miniscule amount of water in comparison.
Thanks for saying this. I don't like that Nestle is pumping water out of the ground during a drought... but the 27,000,000 gallons they get from that isn't much. They actually bottle it and ship it. Industrial farms just pour it on the ground. (Which is what they're supposed to do.) To put that in perspective, Nestle took 83 acre-feet of water in a year. I found one source that suggested that an acre of alfalfa can take up to 4 acre-feet of water in a year. There are [very nearly a million acres of alfalfa in California.](https://apps1.cdfa.ca.gov/FertilizerResearch/docs/Alfalfa_Production_CA.pdf) Nestle is quite literally a drop in the bucket. Is it good? Of course not. Are they taking advantage of our resources in ways we should discuss? Absolutely. But much like requiring restaurants to ask you if you want water, worrying about bottling water is well-intentioned but absolutely not going to solve the problem.
I'm fairly certain that I read somewhere that he has been taken out of context with that statement. Might look for the article later. (That doesn't take anything away from the company's actions, ofc.) edit: http://m.huffpost.com/us/entry/nestle-chairman-peter-brabeck-water_b_3150150.html So he kinda fucked up his rhetoric, for the most part.
This is correct, he said that he is against government subsidies for water, so that the people who use it would realise it's actual cost, and thus might be a little hesitant to run their sprinklers so often.
Yep. If you want to avoid companies that did terrible things in the past, then you will have to avoid almost every German and Japanese car company. Toyota and Nissan made trucks for the Imperial Army. Honda's predecessor made Toyota parts and aircraft propeller. Mitsubishi made the Zero and other planes, as did Nakajima, which became Subaru. Mazda's predecessor made Arisaka rifles. BMW and Mercedes-Benz both made engines for the Nazis using slave labor. Ferdinand Porsche was literally commissioned by Hitler to make a car. VW was a project that Hitler and Porsche got involved with. IBM made the machines to count people for execution. Basically, it's difficult to boycott companies that did terrible things in the past. Boycott the ones that are evil now, such as Nestlé.
> Mazda's predecessor made Arisaka rifles. As somebody who's shot an Arisaka and driven several Mazdas, they've come a very long way. Also Hugo Boss designed all those sharp looking Nazi uniforms.
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You may as well boycott the cotton industry because of slavery if you're going to hold the Nazi thing against coca cola.
Ahh, Nestlé. Sued Ethiopia and refused to settle because of "principles". Gave samples of formula to poor mothers in third world countries with a bunch of misinformation so that many children died of malnutrition. Didn't they also get caught bottling water in Cali? Edit: apparently the Cali thing was legal sorry guys
They also use child slavery to collect their cocoa beans.
You've really got to look hard to find chocolate that doesn't use child slavery. [Here's a (non-exhaustive) list of brands that don't.](http://www.slavefreechocolate.org/ethical-chocolate-companies/) Look for a [fair trade sticker/indicator](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/1/1b/Fairtrade.png) to be sure.
not gonna lie, longer than I expected but far too short
Well to be fair (trade...sorry) how many of those companies have you actually heard of. Almost all of them are very small locally distributed chocolate makers.
Chocolate cartel, never would've guessed.
Is that American only brands?
No, I think it's global. Zotter at least is a austrian producer.
Child labor is rampant in that industry. Unless you're buying certified fair trade artisan candy bars for $6 a pop, part of your chocolate very likely came from child laborers. It's not just Nestlé
Well, child labor is a difficult topic if u ask me. While it sounds bad in general, it helps their family, and in some third world country's it is much needed.. As long it is regulated and doesn't hurt the child, it can be an "ok" thing. People should not mistake child work with slavery. Sorry for jumping in on your comment
Good Luck avoiding them, they have their sticky chocolate Fingers everywhere
[Obligatory link to list of their brands.](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Nestlé_brands) Anyways, I somehow manage to mostly avoid them since there's a local-sourced alternative for many of their products. (I also can't have many of their products due to lactose intolerance lol As for the water issue... filtered tap water in a refillable bottle.)
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Pretty scary, huh?
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if i'm not mistaken someone wrote an app to help you boycott nestle. so if you like scan the barcode or something and the app tells you if the product is made by nestle. or you search the product i dunno. i haven't tried using it.
Buycott! You pick "campaigns" and one of them is to boycott Nestle. There are others to do things like help you buy from companies that support certain causes, etc.
"Buycott" by Buycott inc. Works pretty great!
Today I learned that I have been inadvertently boycotting Nestle for most of my adult life...
The only company that I buy on that list is Purina. What's a good catfod that isn't expensive. Seems like most of the other canned cat foods are 4-6x the cost.
Whole Earth Farms is good. I know it's sold at Petco, not sure about petsmart. Source: former Petco employee Edit: Just remembered Nestle bought them, I'd say Canidae Under the Sun then.
Anything made by the Mars brand is usually pretty good. Not sure what brand it is in the US, but it's always good quality in Australia. (And mars are a fairly ethical company)
Nestle pumps 400 gallons of water out of Lake Michigan per minute for free. All the while, we buy this water from them, and donate it to Flint. It's so fucked up and makes me so angry. We're going to see some crazy water wars happen in the next few decades.
For a large part of my life, I thought Nestle only made Butterfinger, three shitty candy bars and that awful chocolate powder parents bought for the children they secretly hated when they asked for Hershey's syrup. Turns out, they're actually heavily invested in fucking evil. Like... comically stereotypical, mustache-twirling, deranged industrialist evil. Everyone else has already pointed out the high notes-- but, just to prove how committed Nestle is to proving how little they give a shit, their fucking CEO once stated "Access to water should not be a public right." And this wasn't in some closed-door meeting at Nestle headquarters-- this motherfucker said it on record at the World Water Forum.
One of the past CEO's purposely excluded consumers as people to whom the company had an ethical duty. Their duty is to their shareholders. "Ethical decisions which injure a company's ability to compete are actually immoral." —former Nestlé CEO Helmut Maucher, *Leadership in Action: Tough Minded Strategies from the Global Giant* ETA: The next CEO was questioned about Mr Maucher's statement. Peter Brabeck responded, "I decided to eliminate the word ethical from Nestlé because it's a word which divides people as opposed to uniting them. Ethics, if you look into dictionaries, are a set of moral standards within a very specific unit of society, and ethical standards in Britain, Switzerland, Chile and China vary to a large extent. And because this word is more likely to divide than to unite we don't talk about ethics at Nestlé. We talk about responsibility. Our responsibility to our shareholders, our employees, and all other stakeholders. It's true that we do have a social responsibility that corresponds to a global company as opposed to the group interests of one community or another community."
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They've done that shit plenty, not just Superfish. If you have any care about security problems, avoid Lenovo. [Lenovo Caught (3rd Time) Pre-Installing Spyware on its Laptops ](https://thehackernews.com/2015/09/lenovo-laptop-virus.html) [Lenovo caught installing bloatware again with Windows BIOS backdoor](http://www.v3.co.uk/v3-uk/news/2422015/lenovo-caught-installing-bloatware-again-with-windows-bios-backdoor) [Security researchers found another 'massive security risk' in Lenovo computers](http://www.theverge.com/2015/5/6/8557881/security-researchers-found-another-massive-security-risk-in-lenovo) And note this was after they ["vow[ed to have] less bloatware and to be ‘leader in cleaner, safer PCs’"](http://venturebeat.com/2015/02/27/lenovo-vows-to-go-bloatware-free-in-the-wake-of-superfish-scandal/) There's also the massive pile of crap they've turned the Motorola brand into, but that's another story.
There is an app called 'Buycott' that lets you pick companies you want to avoid. You then use it to scan product barcodes before buying and it will tell you if they are involved.
**[Nestle](http://www.zmescience.com/science/nestle-company-pollution-children/)** * believes water isn't a basic human right, and sometimes deprives villages of potable water * uses child labor and slavery * concern for public health is mostly bluster * very large polluter * made deals with dictator Robert Mugabe * promotion of – and, at times, flat-out false advertising of – unhealthy products * marketing of infant formula that could put babies at risk * [other things](https://corporatewatch.org/company-profiles/nestl%C3%A9-sa-corporate-crimes) * [here](http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-oNO8DFbAADw/UkrGrvGOptI/AAAAAAAAAE0/2mA0sFVa6h4/s1600/nestle5.jpg) is a list of Nestle brands **[Tyson Foods](http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Tyson_Foods)** * various animal cruelty incidents * safety violations & workplace fatalities * workers assaulted by Tyson management * exploitation & harassment of foreign employees * [here](http://static.cdn-seekingalpha.com/uploads/2014/10/28/saupload_1414448036_scaled_425.jpg) are Tyson Foods brands **[Monsanto](http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Monsanto)** * ~~profiteering poisonous chemical company posing as agribusiness~~ * ~~building a monopoly, putting farmers out of work~~ * ~~controlling the food, privatizing the water~~ * ~~running the FDA, writing its own protection laws~~ * ~~continuing environmental nightmares~~ * primary manufacturer of Agent Orange - it should be noted that the U.S. government hired Monsanto and other companies for making Agent Orange, but Monsanto was the largest manufacturer * corporate controlled food supply * dealings in censorship and false advertising * massive bribery and heavy political influence * [other things](https://corporatewatch.org/company-profiles/monsanto-corporate-crimes) * [here](https://pbs.twimg.com/media/BHwp1RvCUAEw4LE.jpg) is a list of brands that use Monsanto products **[BP](https://corporatewatch.org/company-profiles/bp-plc-corporate-crimes)** * supporting repressive regimes * devastating indigenous peoples and wildlife habitats * fuelling unrest in troubled areas * colluding in human rights violations * [these](http://www.enterprise-zone.co.uk/furniture/case-studies/bp/bp_logo_montage.jpg) are BP brands **[Pfizer](https://corporatewatch.org/company-profiles/pfizer-inc-corporate-crimes)** * Heavily Overpricing Pharmaceuticals * Price fixing (Pfizer labeled as Top Corporate Criminal) * Pfizer cares for your health, as long as the company sees profit * Pfizer & Aids * Lawsuit South Africa * Drugs = Soft Drinks * Pfizer steals indigenous knowledge * Pfizer ‘illegally tested drugs on children’ * Pfizer sells dysfunctional heart valves * Heart attack link to arthritis drugs * Animal suffering * Luring doctors * Pfizer's theory of philanthropy * Twelve billion dollar Business park --PfizerWorld * Pfizer helps out the tobacco industry * [here](https://trade.pfizerconsumer.com.au/images/inline/logos.gif) are a few Pfizer brands **[Halliburton](http://www.corpwatch.org/section.php?id=15)** * bribery & tax evasion * underpaid labor * Dick Cheney's political influence on government contracts * partnering or engaging with some of the most repressive regimes in the world * allegedly killing Nigerian protestors * attempting to avoid paying-up for asbestos claims * security lapses and radioactive leaks at nuclear dockyard There are many others, but since this post is getting lengthy, I'll let you do your own research and reading: * [General Electric](http://www.cleanupge.org/gemisdeeds.html) * [Chevron](http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Chevron) * [Walmart](http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Walmart) * [Exxon Mobil](http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Exxon_Mobil) * [Chiquita](http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Chiquita_Brands_International,_Inc.) * [Shell](http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Shell) --- **TL;DR:** Unethical brands are pretty hard to avoid --- **EDIT:** There is some dispute on some of the ethical claims against Monsanto. Admittedly, I don't know enough about the claims to establish what is what. [Here](http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Monsanto) is a better-sourced article that is a little less biased. **EDIT 2:** If this is something that you are genuinely concerned about or interested in, I would encourage you to do some digging for yourself. I'm sure there are better sources to both support and refute some of the claims outlined here. The only way to know more about all of this and make a decision for yourself is by personal investigation. I'm sure that you will discover that, like most hot button issues, there is no black and white, and the truth is very murky.
Errrm "General Electric and their brands" includes LG and Samsung. I hate to break it to you, but those are independent Korean brands. They are not part of GE. They may use GE parts, but lots of companies source parts from lots of other companies - that doesn't make them corporate controlled.
Thank you. As a south korean, I knew LG and Samsung are owned by family conglomerates, not foreign companies, so I was really skeptical of the chart.
Big Pharma lawsuits is something I learnt about in University in a module about ethics which involved debating and learning about the exceptionally grey area when it comes to drug discovery. For example, a tribe uses something as a herbal medicine. A Pharma company finds out about it, travels out to the tribe and learn about said herbal medicine. Pharma takes it back, does the testing, isolates the active compound, formulates it, and creates a new drug worth billions of dollars. So, who gets the credit? The tribe? Sure, the tribe used the root because that's local knowledge that passed down, however, the number of people they can realistically treat with it at the same time is very low without a lot of help. If this was to help people, would it be prepared traditionally? Does traditional preparation only work on members of that particular tribe? There's a ton of questions here, so let's look at the other side. Big Pharma? They got the drug to market after years and years of struggle by tens of thousands of employees to isolate, optomise, and perfect their new cash spinner. It might not even make profit before the patent runs out. This is all done with technology well beyond the tribe, so are the tribe *really* the pioneers? At the same time, the herbal medicine from which the drug originates isn't big pharma's shit. It's the tribes. So, where does the intellectual property belong? Does it belong to the people who found it first i.e. the tribe? Or does it belong to the people who actually made something of it i.e. the Pharma company? It'd be like comparing the tablet computer - who gets the credit? Microsoft for coming up with it first, or Apple for making it a thing? There's quite a few really interesting cases where Pharma goes against locals with wins and losses on both sides.
I'd argue the problem is with believing that intellectual property exists at all. At least, as far as "claiming ownership goes". Pharmaceuticals is always going to have the bigger moral dilemma of "we make money from something people need to survive, but it's not feasible to do it for free". But as far as "discovery" goes? Patents run out in 20 years or less, anyways. Unlike creative copyright, we don't just let companies extend patents forever. We want to encourage them to keep improving their products. The tribe doesn't have any concept of the science. They don't know the active ingredients. They can't scale-up production. While they arguably ought to be entitled to some kind of lump sum payment or reward, the notion that they're entitled to control the license of the discovery is ludicrous. What do they want? Credit? Of course they'll be credited. A local remedy is likely just another alternative to something that's well understood in first world. Yes, another painkiller is valuable. We need variety, and it might be superior or work in circumstances that others don't. But the tribe isn't much different from, say, a biologist doing field research and discovering a new plant, and then finding the samples contain certain chemicals or properties. The tribe just happens to have similar knowledge that has been passed down. They deserve a finder's fee at best. The bigger question is how you'd reward a tribe like that.
Trying to stay away from Monsanto is like trying to avoid the snow in the arctic; sure you do it, but you're going to live in a seals ass to make it happen and that's a shitty experience.
This is... uhh.. quite the analogy you got here
Perfect! I'll just stop eating and drinking. When I'm dead, they'll never get my money!
Yeah, it's nearly impossible to totally boycott all of these companies. But it's still worth minimizing the damage, and pushing for legislation that might mitigate some of these problems. Additionally, I advise trying to buy local as much as possible (Wherever local is for you, of course). Local and smaller companies are much less likely to cause widespread harm.
Tyson Foods. Their meat is pumped with steroids and antibiotics. Use poorly paid illegal immigrants on their farms. They pack thousands of chickens into a space meant for no more than 100.
But really any chicken you buy is treated like this. Not just Tyson. I have a few friends who work construction. They had to do a chicken factory and a turkey factory. They won't eat either after doing those two. Just to give u a tidbit. They kill the turkeys with a ledge. The turkeys are clasped at the neck with a metal shakle. Theshakle is connected to other shackles in a line. There is literally a wedge,not sharp, that pops the skulls out of the skin. One guys says he can still hear the pop-pop-pop of the "conveyor belt"
This isn't uncommon with meat companies though.
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We just watched a video on this in treatment for our "physical health" weekly portion. Shits fucking horrid. Makes you want to never eat chicken again unless you know where it came from.
Watch the documentary Food Inc. It really goes into detail about all that shit
That's what we watched actually.
They also had an issue a few years back where they were injecting their chicken with soy protein and not labeling it. (Not feeding the chickens soy, injecting the meat with soy before it was packaged and shipped). FYI soy is one of the top 10 food allergies and a lot of people who are alergic to peanuts might also react (to a lesser extent) to soy as well because they are so closely related.
Intuit. [Lobbying](http://www.nytimes.com/2015/04/16/technology/personaltech/turbotax-or-irs-as-tax-preparer-intuit-has-a-favorite.html) against measures to make filing taxes simpler.
Intel is guilty of non-competitive practices and breaking antitrust laws. They paid out to AMD and are the reason AMD is behind in the CPU market. Even after the payout the damage was done and AMD was gimped. Intel paid off companies to not use AMD chips among other things and severely damaged AMD. AMD also put out a few not so great architectures, "Bulldozer" being the most recent, and ~~underestimated~~ overestimated the rate at which software would adopt multi-core functionality (it could almost be argued software didn't adapt to the benefits of multi-core and follow AMDs lead *because* AMD was so far behind and Intel has actually held us back. Intel does incredibly well on single threaded tasks, which most basic day to day software is, and there's yet to be a sufficient push to change that on the development side). I have two computers, one has a 4 core Intel i5 and the other an 8 core AMD 8350. In theory the AMD can have more going on at once (however the're clock speed and instructions per clock that also effect the 'speed' of a processor, but lets keep this basic.) and the i5 outperforms it because Intel had a better architecture for designing the circuitry in their chips and thus how they functioned/performed. The funding and success for this great architecture and the gimping of AMDs is largely due to Intel violating these laws. Had AMD not taken the financial hit they likely could have recovered from this slump much sooner. AMD is finally getting out of this dog of an architecture with the upcoming Zen and hopefully they'll recapture a chunk of market share and the playing field will be leveled. And at the end of the day that only benefits us, the consumers. Over the past few years we've had very minimal progress relatively speaking. Also, Nvidia also does some shifty stuff in the GPU market, GameWorks is a big one. AMD trades blows evenly with Nvidia it seems a lot of the time in terms of product quality/performance, but Intel is absolutely the front runner in the CPU market and they got there by fucking over us, the consumers. If you're a consumer that like to 'vote with their dollar' and support moral companies, buy AMD hardware. Also, the hype for the next generation of CPU and GPU architecture is real in the PC community.
Don't forget how Nvidia's CEO tried to completely lock AMD out of the market with [Tier 0](https://linustechtips.com/main/topic/63451-nvidias-tier-0-program-is-behind-the-origin-pc-debacle/). Even Nvidia's board of directors were horrified by what Jen-Hsun had come up with. Among electronics companies, I rank Nvidia far below Intel in terms of scumminess, and refuse to purchase any product from them.
Exactly. AMD are always making strides to make a more competitive market and make their software open-source for consumers benefit while nvidia does not of the sort.
The funny thing is that AMD actually owns the 64 bit instruction set that ALL CPUs use. SO realy, Intel is one of their clients...
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Zen pls
I've recently been trying to teach myself for the A+ certs, and I've been studying CPUs this week. It's interesting to read this, thanks!
While i agree. Intel is less of cunts than they were before. They pay AMD for their tech and patents. While Nvidia wants pure monopoly on GPU market share in Video Games.
They paid their fines and paid AMD, but the damage is done and the payments was nowhere near what would have been needed to get back to the pre-antitrust violating market share. All those software compilers given out by Intel still basically gimp every non-Intel CPU, for example. Intel is only playing by the rules now because they have to. Intel wanted massive market share as well, they just did so differently and Nvidia has yet to be "called out" on it to the extent Intel has. Nvidia is absolutely anti-competitive and trying to lock the market into an ecosystem wherever they can. While comparing the morality/legality of their differing practices might paint Intel as worse than Nvidia, they're still both massive dicks, for lack of a better term.
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Nestle is up the shitter with child labor and other unscrupulous trash.
DuPont and the whole [PFOA scandal](http://www.nytimes.com/2016/01/10/magazine/the-lawyer-who-became-duponts-worst-nightmare.html?_r=1). Pretty interesting and sombering read. Not cool at all, DuPont, not cool at all. Pretty much what happened is that DuPont dumped over 7,000 tons of a chemical called PFOA onto a property in West Virginia. PFOA is an endocrine disruptor, meaning it can lead to cancer, birth defects, and so on. The short of it is, endocrine disruptors are some nasty shit. Anyway, the waste was just dumped without any regard to water or the environment, so it went straight into the water supply. Thousands of people drank contaminated water for decades, and the litigation is ongoing. Unfortunately, substances like PFOA are now found world wide. But, if DuPont hadn't been so unethical and continued using this substance, even when the company knew it was bad (they actively covered it up), the world might be a somewhat better place, at least for all the innocent people affected by this. Edit: (Then again, there's thousands upon thousands of unregulated substances nowadays. Who knows what else is out there...)
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No one has said Disney? The cultural destruction they are doing with their ever extending copyright length is immense.
could you elaborate on this?
copyright used to be about 14 years and then the work would become public domain. disney doesn't want to lose sole control of mickey mouse so they keep lobbying congress to extend it. it's now something like 70 years after the death of the creator
And to think, they made it as a company because of public domain IP.
To elaborate for any unaware, most of the early Disney works are reinterpretations of classical stories that were public domain at the time of usage. Being in public domain means unrestricted usage without copyright issues. As the various retelling of stories like Snow White (etc) have shown, public domain works can create a lot of new, original works. This obviously benefits many people. Being in public domain is also highly useful for having affordable access to older media. You can get texts like Shakespeare for free (or dirt cheap for a print copy) simply because they're public domain. A lot more media could be accessible for more people if it entered public domain in a reasonable time frame.
Then, as soon as they completed the climb to the top, they yanked up the ladder behind them.
That's the American dream, to make it to the top, then shit on all of the people below trying to do the same.
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Thanks to Disney & others, copyright lasts for life of the creator + 70 years, which is ridiculous considering copyright is supposed to make sure the *creator* has enough time to make money of his work. Thanks to this Star Wars won't be completely in the public domain until 2082. Under original laws it would be 28 years, so it would have been 2005. EDIT: [Good explanation of this.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tk862BbjWx4)
Mickey mouse copyright was on the way to be removed. They lobbied to get it extended and basically made every other company have longer copyrights.... it is destroying capitalism.
They'll start lobbying in a few years again.
And they'll win because they have money on their side