Hello,

I am going to be taking the GRE within the next month and have wrapped up content review for the test and have now started prepping for the essay. I have just finished doing my first one through the Gregmat random generator and was wondering for some feedback. Thanks in advance!

Prompt: Some people believe that corporations have a responsibility to promote the well-being of the societies and environments in which they operate. Others believe that the only responsibility of corporations, provided they operate within the law, is to make as much money as possible.

Write a response in which you discuss which view more closely aligns with your own position and explain your reasoning for the position you take. In developing and supporting your position, you should address both of the views presented.

Essay:

Corporations are the driving force behind the both the economy and subsequently peoples lives. Many across the nation not only work in corporations, but are tied to them both monetarily and rely on them for their well being. The prompt proposes the question about the extent to which corporations are required to promote the well-being of the society as opposed to the their financial motives. To this, I agree to a moderate extent that corporations have a responsibility to promote the well being of society, however it is isn't mutually exclusive as the prompt suggests.

Firstly, corporations should be responsible to promote the well being of society in that they should not be harming society for financial motives. Take for example the infamous Purdue Pharma scandal. Purdue Pharma was an a drug manufacturing company that produced many drugs, however its most profitable drug were the extremely potent opioids. After a whistleblower report was given to a major news network, it was revealed that Purdue Pharma was intentionally underplaying the strength of these opioids and were aggressively marketing these drugs as panaceas to both doctors and patients, while charging unfathomable prices. According to a study conducted by the New York Times, these underhanded tactics caused the deaths of thousands of people, as well engendering a whole new generation of addicts which has ruined families to this day. This exemplifies how a corporation can use its own greed and avaricious nature to destroy a subset of people, and how even while operating within the law can be extremely harmful for society. This is proof that corporations should not purposely harm society while profiting as it not only killed many, it cost them their company and the chance to help millions more with their other life saving drugs.

The prompt seems to suggest that the responsibility of corporations is either to promote the well-being of the society or to make as much money as possible are mutually exclusive, however I disagree with that premise. I believe that the a corporation can be motivated by financial reasons while still providing benefit to the people within society. One of the biggest corporations in this world, Meta, exemplifies this to the highest degree. Meta, formerly known as Facebook, is one of the world's largest social media companies composing of applications such as Instagram, Facebook, and Whatsapp. It has been argued and even explicitly stated by their CEO Mark Zuckerburg that their primary motivations are money. This is evidenced by the the overwhelming amount of advertiser campagins that have been run through Facebook, Instagram, and Whatsapp which has brought is billions of dollars to Meta as a whole. However, even though money is the primary motivator for Meta, it has still created a product that is extremely beneficial to society. Through its social media apps, Meta has brought an interconnectedness throughout the world that has never happened in history before. The amount of information sharing has skyrocketed, and a study conducted by the University of Chicago found that the youth in society are now more knowledgeable than ever not only regards to academic but also to present day news. From this example, it is obvious that even a corporation that has finanical reasons as its primary motivator can contribute good to society and as a result corporations shouldn't be restricted to just promoting to the well-being of society, rather can be guided by money and still achieve that same result.

Overall, corporations have as much as a responsibility to themselves and their financial motives as they do to promoting the well being of society. The prompt suggets these are mutually exclusive events, however as seen by the provided example this is not the case. Corporations that are not purposely harming the public to achieve their monetary gains can achieve the same result as a corporation that is only guided by their motivation to help society.