What’s Wrong with a Corporation?
BIAS
The folks in the Occupy Wall Street movement raise critical issues in the world today. Issues like, would the world be a better place if we all had a common agenda? Also, is it socially healthy when many artificial entities are worth as much money as countries in the world?
What kinds of power and deference should we reserve for artificial entities? The artificial entities I’m talking about are corporations. Corporation: (noun) a legal person present on paper.
Make no mistake.
A corporation is not the names of people listed on a paper, but a new person present only on paper. Walmart is a person with the right to defend itself in court. ExxonMobil can own and run a company. General Electric can donate money to political candidates and influence political decision making. So another issue presented by corporations is, what does a corporate agenda promote? The corporate model is relatively the same everywhere and the corporate form seems to promote a certain sameness everywhere it occupies.
Decisions being made in Washington appear, in the right light, to be decisions made by and for the benefit of these persons on paper (and their stockholders- the holders of paper.) This is not a new problem, but it is a problem difficult to critique in America because critiques against corporations are often associated with economic policy. Criticize a corporation today and receive the label communist or socialist.
However, the reality in our country is with time, money and the necessary paperwork; anyone can form a corporation for any reason. It wasn’t always so. At one time, the power of incorporation was granted by kings. If the corporation didn’t serve the interest of the king, then it didn’t exist. In this lineage of thought, corporations serve the ruler of the state. So the largest issue raised by Occupy Wall Street protests is to ask the question, who rules the United States of America?
Do tax payers fund a federal state system tasked with providing safety and general welfare in the most places possible? Or do we defund the federal system and allow economics dictate how people live their lives within the structure of a corporate America? An honest answer to either question should at least address the dichotomy between good business decisions and the public good. Who is the ruler? The People or Corporations? A good business decision is not often equivalent to what is good for the public. It’s given that incorporation is a process for accumulating wealth while limiting liability and little else. U.S. cell phone corporations discovered in the 1990’s that a saturated consumer base leads to luring customers from competitors. Luring customers away from one corporation to the next, eventually whittles the market down to the few strongest competitors. Rather than spurring on competition and driving down prices, many c cell phone corporations simply formed, merged and disbanded until four now remain. On paper a bunch of people existed and disappeared as corporations but, in-the-world as the field narrowed to four many vacant jobs disappeared. For better or worse, the process of making the industry most efficient removes places for people to earn a living. Fairly recent U.S. cell phone corporate history demonstrates a destabilizing path blazed toward market efficiency and maximization. In 2000, there were no fewer than ten national wireless companies in the U.S. (i.e. Verizon, MCI WorldCom, AT&T, Sprint, Bell South, Qwest, Cellular One, Voice Stream, SBC and Nextel.) As jobs to be done in each organization declined, a sameness spread across the industry. It’s not necessarily bad, but it’s the same. American workers must live within the vision of someone else or start their own business. Either choose the vision of wireless service imagined by Sprint, Verizon, AT&T or T-Mobile; or, begin a very long uphill fight against industry leaders.
It would seem our situation always deteriorates whenever we are left with few sources for anything. One source of political rule has been deemed a failure by history. One source of spiritual enlightenment has been commonly rejected by the masses.
In this way, the corporation has minimized possibility in-the-world more than expanded possibilities and proven to be at odds with the interest of the people. The relatively recent history of professional wrestling is another example of how corporations have done a disservice for citizens of the United States of America. Professional wrestling, as we know it in the United States today, started in late-nineteenth century carnivals and fairs. In 1948, the National Wrestling Alliance (NWA) formed to bring a national structure to territorial professional wrestling companies. As if a franchise owner, the NWA offered many local wrestling promoters access to the World Heavyweight Champion in local markets in exchange for local market recognition of the World Heavyweight Champion.
In the 1980’s, many territorial wrestling companies ran sound business that turned a profit. During this time, two corporations began to take over the business of promoting professional wrestling. Turner Entertainment (owner of World Championship Wrestling- WCW) and Titan Sports (owner of the World Wrestling Federation- WWF) both created significant profits through their use of television, wrestlers and storylines. Prior to WWF and WCW dominating national airwaves, companies like Mid-South Wrestling, AWA, GCW, WCCW and Mid-Atlantic Wrestling broadcasted their own wrestling programs in Oklahoma, Minnesota, Georgia, Texas and North Carolina. The audiences were not allows as big as audiences drawn by the WWE today, but promoters were able to make money and wrestlers had a place to work. The wrestlers at the time were not generally under contract, so many would travel from territory to territory collecting a paycheck when they could. Each promoter had their own style and each wrestler had another place they could travel to when things just weren’t working out in a territory. Small television markets meant wrestlers could work two shows as two totally different characters. In this time period, a wrestler’s character development arose from a need to feed the family, because no work meant no money. The public could love you or hate you, but they needed to care in order for you to get another paycheck in that market. THE CRUX The corporate take over of professional wrestling can be interpreted in the light of language itself. Kenneth Burke’s concept “terministic screen” might provide aid in understanding how a perceived semi-legitimate sports event became a cartoon with soap opera flourishes (more info on Burke's philosophy at: http://bradley.bradley.edu/~ell/burke2.html.)
The world itself is not different for either person, but what they notice and talk about in the world is different as well as what they don’t talk about. In this way, it’s almost as if they are living in two different worlds. Terministic screen suggests that language is something that: selects a part of the world to reflect while deflecting another part of the world. It is beyond the ability of anyone’s language to escape their terministic screen in order to include the entire world in any of their communications. Understood this way, our inability to include the entire world is part of the human condition. This does not make us powerless and weak though because we can exchange terministic screens if we cannot be rid of them entirely. This is where the impetus to act begins! If we accept terministic screen as part of the human condition, then we must analyze the benefit of the organizations we promote as a society. Cop-like communication comes about because we like the security provided by the police. Mailman-like communication comes about when we like to physically send letters. Corporate-like communication comes about because people like making more money and positions of authority. Without an explicitly expressed public benefit, the corporate form, in effect, advocates for avarice without responsibility. Today, corporations consciously reflect positive images of their paper persona while actively deflecting personal criticism. Within a corporation, accountability is the key to success. From the outside, accountability is pinned on the corporation rather than people who make up the corporation.
The Corporate Take Over of Professional Wrestling Corporate take over of professional wrestling in the United States impacted at least three areas of involved people’s lives. Corporations controlled television access which determined which product an audience was able to view. While corporations controlled which wrestlers were used; determining who had a job and who was unemployed. Corporate programming also determined which storylines people would be asked to perform and watch.
“[T]he terriorties died from Crockett and McMahon being selfish and going national” is an emotional response regarding the corporate take over from some pro wrestling fans. This is an emotional response; because, Jim Crockett, Ted Turner and Vince McMahon did not introduce corporations into professional wrestling. According to the wrestling history website kayfabememories.com corporations existed long before McMahon or Turner started their respective corporations. “A long-standing member of the National Wrestling Alliance, the Gulas/Welch Wrestling Enterprises, Inc. (later Gulas Wrestling Enterprises, Inc.) was a successful but notoriously low-paying territory. By the mid-70's, a mutiny arose and wrestlers Jerry Jarrett and Jerry Lawler jumped ship to form a new company, Jarrett Promotions, Inc., to run the Memphis wing of the Gulas circuit.” Corporations in wrestling initially sought to dominate their market place in order to move people to buy a ticket the night of an event. Ticket sales drove the business and television was a way to get people to the arena. The tensions created by these corporations were fought and resolved at local levels, generally within a state or three and this allowed for one set of wrestlers, like the Road Warriors, to be packaged and displayed in various fashions on television. Road Warriors promo AWA
Somehow an inherent, unspoken presumption that corporations ARE GOOD FOR EVERYONE pervades the speech of media channels and other dictators of public consciousness. Political obsession with stock market increases and declines has allowed the corporate form in America to become an insatiable spreader of banal strings of Wal-Marts, Home Depots and Applebee’s across the landscape.
Avarice controls the creation of better tomorrow’s through an intense desire expressed through corporations for continually increasing returns. The stock market is seemingly understood as a bet that will continually produce money through products developed and sold primarily by corporations. Is it truly possible that anything could continually increase without stopping? Yet, corporations seek continual growth against good reason and it becomes a mantra for everyday people. This need for perpetual growth causes inequity and injustice, however, it is not the only negative impact produced by corporations in the world.
Arguments can be made that all the corporate mergers which got us to four national outlets were good for the consumer (e.g. cell phone service is cheaper now with more benefits than in 2000.) Arguments can also be made that the corporate mergers were bad for people (e.g. less innovative ideas to attract consumers because there are fewer companies to offer them.) The fact that these two reasons exist-in-the-world with each other doesn’t mean one needs to be wiped out and that is the problem with the corporate form. Corporations seek to control availability, price and kind of products available in-the-world.
Monopolistic business practices have judicially been discouraged with different degrees of verve for a long time in the United States of America. Monopoly, defined in economic or legal jargon, negatively affects the market by decreasing public prosperity. However, there is a psychological monopoly perpetuated by the corporate way-of-being-in-the-world. Winners and losers must be determined because the corporate form is a hierarchical system of people placed in degrees of authority to one another based, largely, on relationships rather than experience or expertise.
HISTORY
A local market could draw big money and crowds with local heroes and villains while bring in a national name periodically to pop bigger crowds than usual. Drawing money at this time meant moving the public into seats in an arena by creating believable tension in the ring. Television introduced professional wrestling to an even larger audience than it already enjoyed in the 1950’s, but technology did not allow people in Philadelphia to watch wrestling television programs originating from St. Louis. The introduction of cable television first allowed wrestling promoters an opportunity to program for a national audience rather than just regional U.S. territories.
Terministic screen refers to a belief that: people communicate from their place in the world and communication is how we know the world around us. If I’m a cop, then I see the world as a cop because I engage in “cop-like” communication. If I’m a mailman, I see the world as a mailman because again I’m engaged in “mailman-like” communication.
This mix up of communication increasingly affects our understandings of the world with technological evolutions in instant communication. Corporate-like communication reaches more people at an exponential rate and changes the way in which we react to one another. This process of social evolution creates tension. Resisting this tension is the right of any human being subjected to it, even when the tension itself is unexpressable in common language. However, this form of resistance is open to charges of ambiguity and frivolousness. Therefore, it is beneficial to first try to better understand the tension created between corporations and people.
Corporations entered into the business of creating public events (largely played out in local arenas) and evolved it into a television program designed to move merchandise. Thanks to the medium of professional wrestling, the change caused by corporations is largely visual, spatial and emotional. This is a reflection corporate control over television, wrestlers and programming.
Television:
As Scott Keith reports, “Up until the mid-80s, the players in the game that was wrestling were upstart Vince McMahon Jr’s WWF, Jim Crockett Jr’s steadfast WCW/Mid-Atlantic territory, and the reliable workhorse that was Verne Gagne’s AWA.”
Each of these promotions sought to define wrestling for a television audience at the expense of smaller promotions. However, during the mid-1980’s smaller promotions were still able to display a vision of professional wrestling for their audience. Charles Laffere describes one promotion which did particularly well with spreading their vision of televised wrestling.
“Television programming was an area of strength for Mid-South/UWF. Unlike other promotions which featured poor production values, squash matches and cartoonish, cliched interviews, Mid-South/UWF didn't waste a whole lot of time with talk and the matches were usually high energy. It was one of the few promotions in the country during that time that had a title match on TV almost every week. Often, several defenses would be made on one show. Mid-South/UWF seemed to be a promotion that pioneered the concept that TV was an important place to set up angles and that action usually spoke louder than words. During this time, even the WWF was featuring lots of matches involving their job squad of Mario Mancini, Johnny K-9, the Brooklyn Brawler, etc.” The way in which the wrestling was presented was defined by promoters like Bill Watts who ran Mid-South/UWF wrestling. Road Warriors promo Mid South Wrestling
However, promoters like Bill Watts were not rewarded with more business because of their production innovations and financial risks. By means of securing exclusive national television deals and signing wrestlers to long term contracts, the WWF and WCW were able to promote dying interest in local promotions by taking top talent and limiting exposure to larger audiences. These actions were not taken in the name of public good but rather marked by a desire for maximizing profits for a corporation.
Charles Laffere wrote of Mid-South/UWF wrestling’s demise,
“Even though the promotion went through a name change, the UWF remained a regional promotion. Watts could not compete with the WWF's media blitz and celebrity glitz or Crockett's cable saturation on TBS. Another factor was Watts himself. By many accounts, Watts was difficult to deal with.”
As the story would be told, continued doggedness and epic competition thrust the WWF and WCW into the national wrestling spotlight. The part of the story that went largely untold was the narrowing of: places for a wrestler to earn a paycheck; visions for how wrestling could be expressed; and programs for audiences to support.
Road Warriors promo WCW
This story continues into the eventual triumph of the WWE regarding national wrestling promotion on television, until the relatively recent introduction of TNA wrestling on cable channel Spike. WWE, Inc. is ultimately considered the lone victor in the national competition to make a profit in the world of professional wrestling. That story might sing the praises of the tenacity and creativeness it took in order to crush opposition.
We might look to: improvements in television production; increased earnings made by wrestlers because of TV; or contemporary products offered to audiences on TV and with those selections build a story of corporate success benefiting both corporation and public through the medium of television. However, the impact of the professional wrestling corporate take over also impacted people’s ability to make a living.
Wrestlers:
The corporate take over of wrestling meant professional wrestlers had fewer and fewer places to earn a living.
Dusty Rhodes Mid-Atlantic Promo
Bill Camp suggests, “McMahon, Sr., like his son, was a fan of the flashier wrestlers, even if they possessed a lower quality of mat skills” This preference for flashier wrestlers largely expressed itself in conjunction with the mid-1980’s decline of territorial wrestling television programming. It was during this time Hulk Hogan signed a contract with the WWF and left the AWA.
Hulk Hogan WWF Promo
Hulk Hogan helped the WWF narrow the vision for what wrestling should be along with a few people hiding behind the corporation (at this time Vince McMahon continued to pretend to be just an announcer for the WWF rather than present himself as the owner.) With Hogan, McMahon signed away top money drawing wrestlers from territorial promotions. There was no sudden burst of corporate creativity or enlightenment. Rather, a corporation facillitated the signing of wrestlers to contract from other territories without the audience really understanding who was responsible. In the end, Vince McMahon was able to hire away the top wrestlers from everybody else.
“[I]f you look at the WWF in the 80's, waves of new talent came every other year or so. In 1983, it was Piper, Valentine, Tito and Hogan. In 1985, it was Savage, Bundy, Steamboat and JYD. In 1987, it was DiBiase, Duggan, Rude and Warrior. Finally 1988/1989 saw Boss Man, Earthquake, Brainbusters and Bushwackers.”
WWF talent raids of other wrestling promotions are fairly well documented. Tony D reports, “The Midnight Rockers in the Central States area…lost the belts to Badd Company, Paul Diamond and Pat Tanaka in Las Vegas on March 19, 1988. They went to the WWF as The Rockers and won the WWF World Tag Team Titles from The Hart Foundation in 1990.”
It has been suggested that the WWF may have encouraged wrestlers to leave in the middle of territorial programs without much notice causing disruption to television programs being planned in the territories. Taking the wrestler is one thing, but promoting the demise of your competition at the same time is something characteristic of corporate take over.
Jason Hess notes that when wrestlers left promotions to work at the WWF they didn’t always do so in the most professional manner. “[In 1984] JYD left Mid-South with no notice, and a string of no-shows to enter the WWF.” Scott Keith suggests WWF owner Vince McMahon actively sought to destroy rival to the national spotlight AWA by consistently signing AWA wrestlers to contract with the WWF.
“Indeed, the AWA was rapidly becoming Vince McMahon’s personal wrestler shopping center. From 1986-1991, Vince took, practically at will, every major (and minor) star developed or signed by Gagne until finally entire title reigns were being dictated by the whims of the WWF and how soon they were likely to sign away the champions at a given time. Curt Hennig left in 1988, The Rockers followed soon after, along with Ron Garvin, Rick Martel, Sherri Martell, Boris Zhukov, Baron Von Rashke, Bobby Heenan, Ken Patera and anyone else that the WWF felt like signing away to a big money deal. Buddy Rose was even claimed for no conceivable reason other than to rub it in Verne’s face.”
Kevin Von Erich/ Michael Hayes WCCW Promo
As with the decline of Mid-South wrestling, the AWA also disappeared. Along with the disappearance of these territorial wrestling promotions, places for wrestlers to work and television programs for people to watch disappeared as well. The 1980’s wrestling situation quickly degenerated into significant wrestlers of the 1990’s working for either corporate WWF or WCW. The wrestlers who had the opportunity to entertain crowds without massive corporate exposure declined as well.
Today’s dominant success of WWE, Inc. has in reality meant the loss of jobs for wrestlers and a narrowing of the vision of what wrestling can be for the public through the focused elimination of competition. By reflecting on this part of the corporate take over of wrestling, corporations benefited at the expense of the public good.
Programming:
Not only has the corporate take over of professional wrestling resulted in a drop in demand of workplace and outlets, but it has also resulted in the performance of outrageous programming decisions with no clear alternative left for the consumer. Take, for instance, the ridiculous WWE, Inc. Katie Vick campaign to create tension between wrestlers HHH and Kane in 2002 after the demise of WCW. In this program, HHH pretended to be Kane having sex with a dead body.
HHH and Katie Vick
The Katie Vick episode left many people scratching their heads wondering what this had to do with professional wrestling. But, there was no other place to go. The WWF was the only national wrestling promotion on television at the time and stupidity seemed to reign as long as money was coming in. The programming became stagnant with fewer minds applied to the problem of how to draw an audience to a wrestling event. Creative programming in professional wrestling seemed stunted and it seems shock was the last recourse of a corporation with no more competitors from which to borrow ideas.
The loss of competition not only affected a wrestler’s ability to work, or the audience’s ability to choose, but it affected outcomes. Jason Hess described how tag team the Fantastics couldn’t attract an audience for one company but another made them local stars. “[M]atch quality was not a problem. The problem was that they were either two years too late…..or too early. They failed to get over as well as many would have hoped, and left during the fall for World Class, where they would get over like gangbusters.”
The Fantastics were able to bankroll the success they established in WCCW and begin working in other territories as a money drawing team. With the corporate take over of wrestling, markets for developing programming alternatives have disappeared and wrestlers have a minimum number of visions to follow in order to achieve success. Some people suggest McMahon and Turner could only have been so successful in crushing their opposition because their competitors were weak.
However, Tim Dillis claims, “Despite what some may believe about the business of professional wrestling, it was alive and quite well in a number of territories in 1983. The revisionist history espoused by some about how the business of wrestling was breathing its final breath before the McMahon empire gave it mouth-to-mouth resuscitation in 1984 should be taken with a grain of salt. Although changes were underfoot and some territories had fallen by the wayside, wrestling was doing well in the northeast, mid-west and south.”
Older wrestling fans generally love the wrestling from the territory they watched and that love stems as much from the programming as the wrestlers. Take, for example, Charles Laffere’s enthusiasm concerning Houston wrestling.
“Houston Wrestling was the best. I was raised on Channel 39 every Saturday night from 10:00 to 11:30 P.M…Paul Boesch was a promoter who would bring in just about any wrestler if the guy could draw money.”
In Memphis, Jerry Lawler entertained fans as the King for decades.
Jerry Lawler gets a haircut (hair vs. hair match) Memphis Wrestling
All of these different promotions had a touch of the outrageous which reflected the people from their area. In Philadelphia, ECW fans purported to intensely hate the cartoon variety of wrestling programmed by WWF and WCW.
Shane Douglas & “Doink” Matt Borne Promo ECW
When nothing but WWF (the proud owner of most defunct wrestling organization video libraries) and WCW remained, the public was left with severely limited options. The corporate take over of wrestling did not only impact businesses in a financial sense. The corporate take over of wrestling impacted how wrestling fans would view and interact with wrestling.
The corporate take over of wrestling also impacted a wrestler’s ability to seek employment. The take over changed the way wrestling will be viewed in the U.S. for a long time to come. Based upon this evidence, the good of a corporation does not equate to what’s good for the public. This corporate phenomenon can, and should, be judged without devolving into economic quibbles over the free market system and state run markets.
CONJECTURE
One interpretation of the effect a Corporation can have on American life is presented by the corporate take over of professional wrestling. When reflected upon from the question are corporations good for the public, an example like the WWE’s rise to dominance can be illustrative of how many ways a corporation functions in society. Starting as a single player in a field of many players, a corporation ultimately seeks to dictate how workers will perform services for the public. Corporation-like communication set single players in a market along the course of becoming the only player in a market. Just because it doesn’t always work out that one corporation can dominate a market; it doesn’t mean that it isn’t the corporate objective.
Maximization of returns through the process of fine tuning efficiencies in the system is a part of the current corporate structure of communication. Internal accountability without external culpability has seeped from corporate structures to pervade the way the public thinks about and understands being with one another in the world. As the single player takes control, jobs are shed from the economy in a move toward maximizing output performance with the lowest amount of financial input. What’s good for the corporation, therefore, is not inherently good for the public and although we might too often select financial winners to the feature in our stories, the story of the loser is just as valid as are their concerns.
The nameless people impacted by the evolution of corporation outnumber the nameless people who benefit from the evolution of corporation. As has been shown in this paper, a corporation can only exist within an already established orderly society. In a place without rules, there is no reason to acknowledge a person on paper. Therefore, the corporation owes its existence to the established order and should somehow be accountable to that order. As corporate conversation generally plays out today, harm is expressed as having been done in a physical, emotional or financial sort of way. The largest harm done by corporations, however, does not fit into any of these three qualities of life. Instead, a fourth area of harm needs to be considered when holding corporations accountable in society. Corporations have impacted our ability to relate and communicate with one another. This impact can be qualified as detrimental to our prospects for better tomorrows. This form of harm limits our collective possibilities together and shuts down possible solutions for our collective future.
It is this form of harm which the corporate structure mostly heinously inflicts on the world today. This spread of sameness across the globe damages our species and enables our children in being less sophisticated thinkers. Although no one person can be blamed, I suggest, the corporation in its current form narrows our future by elevating base values to exalted positions. The desire to be number one has perverted into a desire to be the only one. That is a dangerous way to think about the world. For this reason, the future of corporations in the world should be reevaluated by all people for how they benefit the public good.
Categories: It's Not a Conspiracy It's a Corporation man!, Scholarly-ish Work
Tags: What is wrong with a corporation globalization corporate take over of professional wrestling
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