“Free enterprise” is the opiate of the masses.
What really pisses me off right now is the power of China. When i was growing up we feared the communists and would not do anything to help them. The old belief system was they wanted to take over the world and were our enemies. But we could feel better because they were very poor and uncompetitive. They were backwards in technology and we were way ahead of them. That gave us some peace.
So our corporations moved industries there, lock ,stock and intellectual property. They moved our technology there to make short term profits ,to avoid environmental regulation and get lower worker costs. So now China is an economic powerhouse. They did not invent a better mousetrap. We sent them ours. Most of us see our position in the world has been diminished.
The fastest computer in the world was recently made in China. That would have been impossible a couple decades ago. If we went to war with them, the old industrial base we had is old, smaller and getting obsolete. They are cutting edge with new factories and machinery.
Some believe that through trade, we will become friendlier toward each other. I don’t see it happening. They will carry us as long as it makes financial sense for them. Their rhetoric gets unfriendlier all the time. It was all caused by our businessmen moving our industry there. The American people had no say. It only benefited the few at the top.
I speak only for myself, not leftists in general, but I am opposed to corporations as a form of business organization for many reasons.
Corporations as considered under US law are abominations. The idea of a legal fiction which can address other legal fictions, such as deeds, contracts, titles, etc. is not the problem.
- granting that legal fiction any rights comparable to citizens. Citizens are entitled to rights. Assemblies of citizens may have some rights as to its constituent members - IMHO journalists and publishers as individual citizens have the right to freedom of the press, not the legal fiction they create to deal with legal matters such as advertising or compensation contracts;
- corporations created too perfect a shield from liability such that no one was accountable (Sarbannes-Oxley did mitigate this somewhat). It is one thing to protect an organization and its members from undue or unnecessary liability, it is another to prevent any all together;
- As the law currently stands, a corporation’s primary duty is fiduciary - it is required to pursue the profit motive at the expense of all other stakeholders. I consider that a failure of the law, not corporations per se, but investors choose corporations knowing that is the case.
- As an organizational model, it is undemocratic oligarchy, and creates unnecessary divisions between labor, management, investors and other stakeholders. The primary one is that investors and management wants labor to do the greatest amount of work possible for the least amount of compensation. Labor wants the exact opposite. ESOPs are just whitewashing and do nothing to counter this. Yet executive-level management argues that they have to pay themselves a premium to attract worthy talent, but I have yet to see a reason why this only applies to the corporate offices and not the shop floor. If productivity is so paramount, then a corporation should be willing to pay the highest wage possible to attract the best workers to create the best products.
- Also as an undemocratic oligarchy, it is detrimental to democratic processes in the rest of society. It encourages the false belief that money and economic utility is the most important criteria in decision-making. It is a factor, but only one among several.
- Finally, there is nothing unique to the corporate model that cannot be handled by other organizational models such as partnerships, non-corporate cooperatives, or even non-profits. It is only due to the power of Wall Street and their railroad/robber baron ancestors that corporations achieved the status they have in the US. They are a cultural artifact, not a ‘key’ to progress anymore than single-family homes are a ‘key’ to American society. It is the way it happened. It is true that they shape us and make us who we are, but that is not to state that there are not more preferable models which could create a stronger economy or society.
That other countries are allowing ‘corporate personhood’ under their legal systems is more a reflection on the power of US multinationals, not any inherent worthiness to that fiction.
All that said, I do see positive developments in the reform or replacement of the corporate model. Social accounting, or triple bottom-line accounting (people, planet and profit, not just profit) and related audits are helping ensure that ‘corporate social responsibility’ is more than just a catchphrase, though I prefer the term ‘organization’ or ‘enterprise’ to ‘corporate’.
Get over it, bra, and do something different. PM me for details. 
“Capital gains” are simply theft and should dealt with as such. Tar and feathers? A spell in Gitmo?
Well, that’s actually my first point.
The fact that corporations can be sued as their own entity means that if me and 1,000 other persons create a corporation, each of us kicking in a substantial form of capital, if the corporation gets sued the most we can lose is that initial investment.
At least in common law countries, going back to time immemorial you couldn’t file suit against non-persons. That’s why the ability of a corporation to be sued in its own right sort of established the concept of “corporate person hood.”
To me the concept of corporate person hood is precisely about deciding in what ways to do we need to treat corporations as their own legal entities, and in what other areas should we treat them very differently? I think those are valid debates and arguments to have. What puzzles me is that people think corporations shouldn’t have legal rights at all, and that all legal matters involving corporations should have to go through various complexities involving the owners of the corporation directly.
I don’t believe the word double taxation has any meaning. Outside of very rare instances in which a specific transaction or specific thing is truly taxed twice at the same time.
An example of this would be various “sin taxes” which are levied on the selling price of a good very often right along with sales tax and other local taxes. That’s an example of one thing being taxed multiple times. A $10 bottle of wine may be subject to a 6% sales tax and a 5% wine and liquor tax, for a total of $1.10 in tax levied on the item.
Or, if you make $40,000 a year and you have to pay 15% in Federal, 5% in State and 2.5% in municipal income taxes, all of them based off of that same $40,000 and none of them offering deductions based on taxes paid to the other levels of government. That is double taxation.
Me paying taxes on a new car and then selling it to a used car dealer and paying taxes on the transaction and then the next buyer paying taxes on his used car purchase isn’t double or triple taxation. There were three separate transactions, each taxed at the time of transaction. The fallacy with corporate taxes and capital gains being double taxation is based on that kind of thinking.
So it’s your belief that we shouldn’t have corporations at all? How should business be conducted? Are you arguing it shouldn’t?
What puzzles me is why people think corporations have rights that we haven’t given them.
:smack:
I would also question why someone would think a corporation would have rights under the law that statute or court decision hasn’t given them. Since I believe this thread is really only talking about the rights corporations currently have under the American legal system specifically and Western legal systems in general, I’m puzzled by your comment. :smack:
Local trade markets work well. The merchants must respond (reasonably) honestly to local need. After all, they live with their neighbors.
How exactly are capital gains theft?
Slee
Unearned income.
Well capital gains can be balanced against capital losses. Capital losses get you a tax break. So what is the problem?
Capital gains are not theft except in the instances where common goods were taken from the public without paying, or the government joined with big business to give them an advantage, or where workers were exploited in ways which are or should be unlawful, or where there was out and out fraud, to name a few instances. Granted, that does describe a huge number of the capital gains, but hardly all.
Gains are privatized, losses are socialized. So what’s the problem with socialism among the fully lost?
WTF?:smack:
99%?
I have no problem with basic commerce - people, i.e. citizens, should be allowed to engage in whatever lawful transactions they desire.
My issue is that the corporate model disengages people too much from those transactions. This being the holiday season, I am drinking my fair share of cocoa - and only Og knows how many people were mistreated in creating that cocoa. Fair Trade labels are a step in the right direction, but the fact we cannot trust corporations and have to rely on third-party assessments to determine if they are behaving properly says a lot about the status quo.
From an economic and strategic management perspective, there is certainly a need for larger commercial organizations. GE would not be GE and have the technological and strategic capabilities it possesses if each division where a separate firm, but it creates problems of accountability that the corporate model only aggravates. How much of those issues are due to its legal status and how much is due to its size is an open question.
Corporate or enterprise governance is a developing field where the scope of the field is still being debated, let alone the particulars. So with that in mind, I am extremely skeptical of any model that proclaims superiority only because of its longevity, or worse, prevalence. Many institutions have outlived their usefulness and were often created for contemporary political reasons, not for their utility, either economic, physical or legal.
I do not know what the field will develop into, which is one reason why I study it. But I certainly have my ideals that I would like it to encompass (i.e. my contemporary political reasons). But an organizational model that encourages or even requires participation by all stakeholders would definitely be preferable over modern corporations which only have two classes of ‘owners’, i.e. debt holders and equity holders (the first class tending to have all the ‘political’ ownership while equity investors are still technically the legal owners, regardless of how many board seats they may actually control) and everyone else who has to deal with the corporation is told to suck it…especially labor.
And don’t come up for air until we’re ready!
The corporate model is inefficient. When IBM wanted to make a home computer in a hurry, they went to Bill Gates. They knew developing it inside would cost too much and take too long. Corporations develop layers of management and paperwork that slows real work down. The bigger it gets the more inefficient it gets.
They do increase political power though.