The Corporation Page #6

So that farmers are not

able to save their seeds.

Seeds that will

destroy themselves

through a suicide gene.

Seeds that are designed to only

produce crop in one season.

You really need to

have a brutal mind.

It's a war against evolution

to even think in those terms.

But quite clearly profits are

so much higher in their minds

The profit motive

which drove Klutzy

to accomplish so much

may bring out the evil

as well as the good...

Hellooo?

My work spans

all industry sectors

I mean I virtually have

worked for like Id say

25 percent

of the fortune 500.

Ive posed as

an investment banker.

Ive posed as a

venture capitalist.

Ive set up

front companies

that are executive

recruiting firms.

Essentially I'm a spy.

I'll locate

your employees

and I will tell them

that I'm calling

from Acme

Recruiting Agency

and that I've got a

job that pays them

considerably more than

what they're paying.

Would they mind meeting

me for an interview?

And when the executive

shows up

what he doesn't

realize is

I'm actually debriefing him

on behalf of a competitor.

That there is no job

and that the office

that he's at

has been rented

and the picture on my desk

of my family is a phoney

and it's all just a big

elaborate ruse

to glean competitive

information from him.

I don't feel any guilt.

It's you know what I mean

you have to expect

that guys like me

are out there.

We're predators.

It's about competition

it's about market share

it's about

being aggressive

and it's about

shareholder value.

What is your

stock at today?

If you're a CEO

I mean do you think your

shareholders really care

whether you're Billie

Buttercup or not?

Do you think that

they really

they would prefer you

to be a nice guy?

Over having money

in their pocket?

I don't think so.

I think people want money.

That's the bottom line.

The fact that most of these

companies are run

by white men

white rich men

means that they

are out of touch

with what the majority

of the world is.

Because the majority

of this planet

are not a bunch

of rich white guys.

They are people

of other colours

they are the majority.

Women are the majority

the poor

and working poor

make up the majority

of this planet.

So the decisions

they make

come from not the reality

that exists in the world.

How much is enough?

How much is enough?

If you are a billionaire

would it be okay just

to be a half a billionaire?

Wouldn't it be okay

for your company

to make a little

less money...

When I bought those

two airplane tickets

for Phil Knight and myself

to fly to Indonesia

I was prepared for him

to say okay lets go.

Oh no not a chance

Not a chance.

No?

They're transferable.

I can change it

to another day.

And call me on it.

Call my bluff.

He's a smart guy.

I mean he's not

he's not stupid.

And so I thought okay

get ready for this.

Especially because you know

I bought first-class tickets.

So you know it would be a

comfortable ride at least

you know and of course he

tells me then on camera.

Ive never been to Indonesia.

And I'm like taken

aback by this.

I cant believe it.

The guys the head

of the company

he's never walked through

his own factories.

Oh you've got to go.

I cant go right now and

the rest of this year.

When we were done

filming he calls me up

a couple of weeks

later and he goes

I may have a chance to go

there with you to the factories.

Im going to the Australian

Open to watch some tennis.

And uh you know

maybe I can get up there

or at least

you can go there.

Would you like to go

to the Australian open?

For 21 years

I never gave a thought

to what we were taking

from the earth or

doing to the earth

in the making

of our products.

And then

in the summer of 1994

we began to hear questions

from our customers

we had never

heard before

What's your company doing

for the environment?

And we didn't have answers.

The real answer

was not very much.

And it really disturbed

many of our people

not me so

much as them

and a group in our

research department

decided to convene

a taskforce

and bring people from our

businesses around the world

to come together

to assess

our company's world wide

environment position

to begin to frame answers

for those customers.

They asked me if I would come

and speak to that group

and give them

a kick off speech

and launch this new task force

with an environmental vision

and I didn't have

an environmental vision

and I did not want

to make that speech.

And at sort of

the propitious moment

this book

landed on my desk.

It was Paul Hawkins book

The Ecology of Commerce

and I began to read The

Ecology of Commerce,

really desperate

for inspiration

and very quickly

into that book

I found the phrase

The death of birth.

It was E.O. Wilson's expression

for species extinction

The death of birth

and it was a point

of a spear into my chest

and I read on and

the spear went deeper

and it became an

epiphanal experience

a total change

of mindset for myself

and a change of paradigm.

Can any product be

made sustainably?

Well not any

and every product.

Can you make

landmines sustainably?

Well I don't think so.

There's a more fundamental

question than that

about landmines.

Some products ought

not to be made at all.

Unless we can make carpets

sustainably you know

perhaps we don't have a place

in a sustainable world

but neither does anybody else

making products unsustainably.

One day early in this journey

it dawned on me that

the way Id been

running interface

is the way

of the plunderer

plundering something

that's not mine

something that belongs

to every creature on earth

and I said to myself

my goodness

the day must come

when this is illegal

when plundering

is not allowed

it must come.

So I said to

myself my goodness

some day people like

me will end up in jail.

Ive got to be

honest with you.

When the September 11th

situation happened

I didn't know that

the and I must say

and I want to say

this because its

I don't want

to take it lightly

it's not a light

situation.

It's a devastating act.

It was really a bad thing

it's one of

the worse things

I've seen in my

lifetime you know.

But I will tell you and every

trader will tell you

who was not in

that building

and who was buying gold

and who owned gold and silver

that when it happened

the first thing

you thought about was

well how much is gold up?

The first thing

that came to mind was

my god gold must

be exploding.

Fortunately for us all

our clients were in gold.

So when it went up they

all doubled their money.

They've all doubled

their money.

It was a blessing

in disguise.

Devastating you know

crushing heart shattering

but on the

financial sense

for my clients that

were in the market

they all made money.

Now I wasn't looking

for this type of help

but it happened.

When the us bombed

Iraq back in 1991

the price of oil went

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