McDonalds, Starbucks, Amazon, and Apple are all big corporations known around the globe. While these corporations provide us with convenient services and high quality items, they are also infamously known for doing things that are viewed as “evil”.

For example, tax havens and tax evasion have existed since the 1930s and maybe even earlier, and it seems that big companies often use tax havens to evade taxes. There are a lot of companies, including the really big ones, that pay no taxes at all.

However, big corporations argue that they do a lot more good than bad, such as driving economic growth, providing important services that smaller businesses are unable to provide, or just by making everything a lot cheaper.

Does the good outweigh the bad? Is it okay for big corporations to keep getting away with doing bad things as long as they keep providing us with convenient services? Are big corporations evil? Let’s explore both sides of the issue.

1. Yes: big corporations are evil

We can probably all, off the top of our heads, list a few ways big corporations can be considered evil. Everyone knows that Amazon barely pays taxes, everyone knows that Nike shoes are built on the suffering of low wage workers, and Facebook has all but admitted that they are selling our data to advertisers and other tech companies.

One of the biggest concerns with social media companies is privacy. Social media tracks our behavior online and is responsible for using said information to make personalized ads and show users more and more content to make them keep scrolling just a bit longer. Recent scandals, like Facebook selling our data, has shown how willing these social media platforms are to make a profit, even at their users’ expense.

Another way big companies can be considered evil is mistreating workers. Big companies pay workers as little as they can get away with. Amazon, Nike, and McDonald’s, three well known brands, have all been called out for poor treatment of workers, giving them bad pay on top of cramped workplaces and terrible working conditions. Companies should take better care of their employees since they’re what’s keeping the company running.

Perhaps the most well known example of companies being evil is tax evasion. Companies that make billions of dollars every year pay basically no taxes, and some of them aren’t even trying to hide it.

On top of all this, there are numerous reports of companies cutting corners and doing illegal things such as Volkswagen faking emission tests. Other examples of companies causing harm to their customers include encouraging harmful behavior, like the big tobacco companies hoping to entice new addicts and McDonald’s offering unhealthy menu items.

Perhaps the most unforgivable thing these big corporations do is a strategy called “starve the beast“, which is, in very simple terms, denying the government money as a way to weaken it. While this policy doesn’t seem to be working as intended, the fact that this is an authentic theory and strategy is despicable. For people within a country, to actively try and weaken their own government is something that is harmful to their fellow citizens and just goes to show what lengths these corporations are willing to go to gain more profit.

2. No: big corporations are perfectly fine

Sure, companies do some really terrible stuff, but they also do a lot of good things, right? Without big corporations, Facebook, Amazon, Target, and Apple wouldn’t exist. If those important companies disappeared, Instagram, overnight shipping, online shopping, and some of the best technology we have would also disappear with them.

Big corporations provide a lot of convenient services. Although they do this mainly for profit, the end result is still something that is greatly useful for society.

Companies provide services that governments are unable to provide, either because the government just decides not to, or doesn’t have the ability and funding required to. Especially in America, many companies have their own healthcare plan because the government isn’t able to provide any. There are also other things that the government should really be doing but is instead being handled by companies and corporations.

Some companies provided employees with paid leave or let them work from home when COVID first struck, and Domino’s pizza is filling potholes, which really feels like something the government should be doing. While they are doing this to attract more customers, they are still doing good things that they shouldn’t have to.

Plus, it’s not like some corporations aren’t trying to be better. Recently, the McDonald’s salad was removed from the menus, not because they didn’t want people to eat healthy, but because people weren’t buying it. Other companies such as CVS have made better decisions, but at their own expense, the former tobacco company is predicted to suffer 2 billion dollars in losses from cigarette sales.

Answer: big corporations are kind of evil, but we also need them.

Are big corporations evil? Certainly. They do stupid and harmful things for profit, and cause a lot of problems for everybody when they go too far. However, they are, at least for now, a necessary evil. Companies might do some terrible things to our communities, but without them, everyone else would struggle to replace the countless convenient and good things corporations produce. Besides, some companies are trying, it’s just that the nature of the market doesn’t really allow them to be anything but ruthless.