The free market knows best

[jakee 1,571]

There are plenty of people around who still push the self serving fantasy that market forces are all that is needed to make corporations act fairly and properly in accordance with their responsibilities to society. So here's an article about a multinational cement company which willingly collaborated with ISIS at the height of its expansion and paid tens of millions of dollars into its machine of conquest, torture and oppression in order to keep making money from just one factory.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/sep/17/french-cement-company-lafarge-paid-millions-to-islamic-state-syria

It also notes that while the situation was so dangerous that all western execs were evacuated, the head of security bragged about using 'military methods' to make the local laborers keep coming to work. A French court ruled the company couldn't be prosecuted for this as laws which protect workers' rights in France do not apply in Syria. Three thumbs up for deregulation!

[Phil1111 1,149]

This has been playing out for quite a while. Oct. 2022

"A global building materials manufacturer and its subsidiary pleaded guilty today to a one-count criminal information charging them with conspiring to provide material support and resources in Northern Syria from 2013 to 2014 to the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham (ISIS) and the al-Nusrah Front (ANF), both U.S.-designated foreign terrorist organizations. Immediately following the defendants’ guilty pleas this morning, U.S. District Judge William F. Kuntz II sentenced the defendants to terms of probation and to pay financial penalties, including criminal fines and forfeiture, totaling $777.78 million."

It may have led to the corporate world abandoning Russia when it invaded Ukraine. As profits from other western companies could have been subject to seizure for aiding Russia.