Corporate Psychopaths : No Shame

Down with Tyranny had an excellent piece a while back about why virtually all corporate CEOs are sociopaths.

I think it's gone beyond individual executives to the entire entity, and beyond sociopathy to psychopathy.

Zoe Schlanger at TPM:

Remember the BP "top hat"? It was one in a series of desperate attempts by the company to capture the oil gushing into the Gulf of Mexico after the Deepwater Horizon drilling rig explosion last year. The top hat, mocked though it was, managed to capture and remove 679,000 barrels of oil from the crippled well, pumping it to an undamaged well called Macondo.

As it turns out, this salvaged oil translated to $47.3 million in proceeds for the three oil companies who leased drilling rights on the rig. Now, the Deepwater Horizon court case underway in Texas is dredging up the unprecedented circumstances of those profits, and a fight is underway to define the regulations governing them.

Yesterday, the United States filed a claim against one of the three drilling companies who profited—to the tune of $11.8 million—from the oil retrieved from the emergency mechanism. Anadarko E&P Company (AE&P), a subsidiary of Anadarko Petroleum Corporation (APC), holds that it was no longer a lease-holder in the drilling operation at the time of the explosion, and therefore is not a responsible party in the tragedy.

If Anadarko had a grandmother, it would be too ashamed to try to profit from the worst ecological disaster in the nation's history - one that will be ruining the lives of millions of Gulf Coast residents for generations.

Giving corporations the same rights as individuals without the same civic responsibilities of individuals is like giving a child adult privileges without adult responsibilities: it's still a narcissistic little fucker but now you have no control over it.