Google’s “Don’t be evil” corporate mantra may suit its purposes today, but in the brutal dystopian future presaged by so many classic sci-fi films, such naive axioms will prove laughably inadequate. Smart-thinking executives recognize that in order to excel in tomorrow’s hyper-competitive global marketplace, ethical corners will have to be cut.
Below are eight sci-fi companies whose excellence in the field of malevolent business practices have set the standard for all other future evil corporations to follow:
Omni Consumer Products (Robocop)
Industries: Security, Military Hardware, Aerospace
Successfully exploiting the violence and chaos of our dystopian future requires serious out-of-the-box thinking. In the city of Detroit, Omni was able to boost demand for its law-enforcement products by partnering with the local criminal element to help expedite urban decay.
The ICS Network (The Running Man)
Industry: Broadcasting
In addition to serving our future society’s demand for quality ultra-violent entertainment, ICS’s top-ranked reality shows like The Running Man and Climbing for Dollars also perform an important public service, helping to pacify naggingly riot-prone lower classes while simultaneously ensuring that agitators perish in sufficiently gruesome fashion. And it’s helping to solve the nation’s obesity epidemic, too:
Weyland-Yutani Corp (The Alien Franchise)
Industries: Space Colonization, Mining, Weapons Manufacturing
Weyland-Yutani maintains its industry-leading commitment to research and development by scouring the universe for new technologies, braving harsh alien landscapes and exposing its employees to excruciating deaths at the hands of hostile life forms. Sometimes, the price of innovation is measured not in dollars but in blood.
Soylent Corporation (Soylent Green)
Industry: Agribusiness
The eco-conscious technicians at Soylent have addressed the three-pronged challenge of environmental devastation, rampant overpopulation, and widespread malnutrition by taking advantage of our planet’s most abundant renewable resource: us! The company employs a sophisticated strategy of subterfuge to protect its brand, using disinformation, extortion, and even murder to prevent its proprietary formula from being revealed:
Tyrell Corporation (Blade Runner)
Industries: Genetic Engineering, Temporary Staffing
With rising employee pension and health-care costs wreaking havoc on corporate balance sheets, Tyrell emerged with an ingenious solution: Genetically-engineered humanoid replicants who not only never get sick, they automatically expire after four productive years on the job. Displaced human workers, meanwhile, are finally free to roam the colorful streets of future L.A.’s teeming techno-slum.
RDA Corporation (Avatar)
Industries: Energy, Mining
Meeting the energy needs of a resource-depleted future Earth requires bold, aggressive solutions, and RDA is equipped to provide them. Its first-rate crew of feckless administrators and sadistic mercenaries plunder alien worlds with ruthless efficiency, ravaging pristine native ecosystems and eradicating peaceful indigenous populations to ensure the lights of our barren home planet never go out:
Multi-National United (District 9)
Industries: Private Security, Weapons Manufacturing, Construction
Whereas others may view a community of angry, indigent, unassimilable alien refugees as an unwelcome burden or costly nuisance, MNU sees an it as an opportunity. Researchers at MNU work around the clock to find productive uses for non-humans, from adapting their technologies to using them as involuntary test subjects for experimental weaponry.
Energy Corporation (Rollerball)
Industries: Petroleum Drilling and Refining
A key ingredient in Energy Corporation’s recipe for global marketplace dominance is a corporate culture that stresses workplace unity, cohesiveness, and absolute, unhindered loyalty. All individual effort and achievement is vigorously suppressed, with dissenters dealt with swiftly and brutally — as the company’s esteemed chairman, Mr. Bartholemew, so eloquently states, “No player is greater than the game itself.” Or, to use today’s parlance, don’t hate the game, hate the player:
