[wardrox]

One of the strongest memories I have regarding IBM is from the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. I visited it on a school trip to Washington years ago, I took with me quite a few very strong memories, and one, was of a machine used by the Germans to help produce the Jewish Registry. It was sat behind some glass, with the easy to recognise IBM logo stamped proudly in the corner.

As I say it was a fair few years ago and I was quite young, but it made me start to realise that business has basically no morals. It's probably shaped the way I view business today. Not super dramatically, don't get me wrong, but this video reminded me of that.

You can Google for IBMs involvement with the holocaust, it's quite interesting.

[zoomzoom]

What's amazing is that it was not just IBM - the germans got oil from Standard Oil, their tanks were made by Opal (a GM subsidiary), and in many other ways the German war effort was financed and enabled by "Allied" conglomerates.

Makes one wonder about the ways we are helping our enemies today...

[newt]

their tanks were made by Opal (a GM subsidiary)

I came here to check that, but you seem to be right - see the wikipedia article on Opel (note correct spelling)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opel The company ... has been a wholly owned subsidiary of General Motors Company since 1929.

Makes one wonder about the ways we are helping our enemies today

You don't have to wonder - google "US arms sales" or "us arms sales to dictators".

[pavel_lishin]

A corporation is sociopathic by definition.

[Confusion]

And not only are companies amoral: they force all other companies to become amoral as well. In the end, a lack of morals always allows one to be more competitive.

What I like best about small companies in new markets and startups is that they still have room for positive moral behaviour.