The Founding Fathers put limits in the US Constitution on the powers elected officials could have because, at the time, they were the most powerful members of society. Since then, the power has shifted away (though not entirely) to businesses and the people who run them. Should there be a Constitutional amendment to change this?
I’m not being “anti-capitalist” here. I’m just asking if there shouldn’t be a limit as to what a corporation or an extremely wealthy individual can do? I realize that there are laws which are supposed to protect citizens from abuse by corporations and wealthy people are supposed to be treated as equals under the law, but we all know that doesn’t happen. The current furor over Microsoft is an example of where people think a company has gotten too powerful, and the OJ Simpson not-guilty verdict is one I think most people agree wouldn’t have happened had OJ not been able to afford a slew of high powered lawyers.
So, should we set limits (via a constitutional amendment) to how powerful a company gets and how much money an individual can have? How should it be structured? How can it be written so that it doesn’t harm economic growth or discourage the wealthy so much that they move to another country?
I’m beginning to think that there should be some kind of amendment, but I’ll be damned if I can think of how to word it so that it would have the desired effect and not get shot down by those it would effect.
Should publicly traded corporations have CEOs run for elections?
It seems like there is to me.
Ack! Both cases were subject to the justice system; if you disagree with those results that doesn’t mean that Microsoft got away with anything, or that OJ did either, for that matter. OJ was tried, and due to whatever circumstances, the jury found him not guilty. Were you on the jury?
As far as Microsoft goes, I’ve been reading some comments made by people involved with the case. There were, in fact, a large number of circumstances involved in the decisions reached, and some persons are not giving up the fight.
No!
It can’t.
I think we may need some tightening up of laws regarding coporate operations, and we definitely IMO need to make the monopoly laws less ambiguous and arbitrary (right now the government can bring about a monopoly trial for just about any behavior whatsoever).
Bottom line to me: no one exists to serve my interests except politicians and persons in the service industry, and even then in a limited extent set by the job duties themselves. To use politicians to get non-politicians to serve my interests is pretty immoral. There is a certain amount of influence one gains from being exceptionally wealthy, but with the laws we currently have in place I certainly wouldn’t want any more restrictions which may cause disincentive.
If we resolve campaign financing and lobbying, and other methods of private and public (but non-governmental) influence over politicians so they can listen to issues instead of their greed (which I don’t have a problem with) I think we will have removed much of the problem.
erislover, I’m in a hurry so I’ll tackle only one of your comments for the moment.
I never said that I disagreed with the OJ Simpson verdict. I merely stated that had OJ not been able to afford a top-notch defense team, he’d have gone to jail. Were I to be accused of the same crime as OJ and have the same amount of evidence against me, I’d most definately be sitting in jail because I couldn’t afford an attorney and would have to rely on the Public Defender. (Not bashing, PD’s, but let’s face it, almost all of them are over-worked and under-paid, I doubt that any one of them would be willing to spend the time defending a person when much the evidence is against them.)
>> The Founding Fathers put limits in the US Constitution on the powers elected officials could have because, at the time, they were the most powerful members of society. Since then, the power has shifted away (though not entirely) to businesses and the people who run them
You cannot be serious about this. The Federal Government has steadily gained power, not lost it. In the times of the Founding Fathers the power of the Federal Government (and its “elected officials”) was much less than it is today. While corporations may not have had the power they have today, wealthy individuals and families had a lot of (economic) power. One hundred years later, in the last half of the 19th century the railroads and other businesses had immense power. What makes you think corporations today are more powerful than they were 100 years ago? I don’t believe so and, in any case, as has been pointed out, they are subject to the laws like everybody else.
Well, some would argue that in that sense, things HAVEN’T changed much from a century ago, that money can buy the law; if you have the cash, a lot of laws simply don’t apply to you, local, state, federal, or otherwise.
Now, I would think that it’s less true these days than the days of Standard Oil, but I believe there’s merit to it…
I think it’s naive to suggest you can eliminate the abuse of power by limiting the amount of money a person can have or how much a corporation can own. When you do that, you’ve simply switched the potential to abuse power from the wealthiest citizens to the citizens with the best political connections. Think back to 1828 Andrew Jackson instituted the spoils system; it shifted power away from a lot of the richer elements in America to Jackson’s lower-crust cronies, but few would say it limited the abuse of power in government.
I consider the checks and balances system and the constitutional limits on federal power to be a far better guarantee against governmental abuses than expanding the power of government further into the lives of private citizens by imposing absolute limits on their wealth.
Could the law be written so that the wealthy couldn’t move to another country? Sure: deny passports to all with money above a certain net worth, and audit everybody else’s assets so the wealthy can’t hire other people to sneak their wealth out of the country for them. Anybody want to see this implemented? Not me.
Incidentally, most of the Founding Fathers were themselves wealthy businessmen, counting tobacco farming and lawyering as businesses, so a government dominated largely by wealthy businessmen would have been no shock to them.
I believe that money rules in the U.S. I believe that this has always been the case. The only way to eliminate this phenomenon would be to isolate moneyed interests from government officials. This, I believe, is impossible. As long as there are vast supplies of money being offered up to serve the interests of politicians, this country (and all other countries, for that matter) will continue to be run by the rich.
Let me make a few things clear here that I didn’t in my OP. I used the example of the OJ Simpson trial because most people think that OJ (regardless of whether or not they think he really did it) was able to get a “not guilty” verdict because he could afford a good defense team.
I also wasn’t trying to say the the Federal Government’s powers hadn’t increased, just that at the time the country was founded it was generally only elected officials who could screw up the country. Back then, if a wealthy person shut down and moved his business the impact of this would be limited to a single city or state. Today, if GM were to suddenly shut down all its US plants and move them to Mexico, the entire US would be plunged into economic chaos.
Again, I’m not trying to pretend that there was ever a time in US history where money didn’t buy power (Hell, there’s never been a time or place in the history of the world where this didn’t happen!) Its just that with our elected officials there’s things in place which make it difficult for them to get away with too much for too long.
To take my earlier example, if GM did decide to shut down all its US operations and move them to Mexico, there’s nothing in place to prevent this from happening, or even slow the process down, except the threat of the villagers showing up at the doors of the GM execs with torches and pitchforks.
I am largely in agreement with the OP’s sentiment, but I think its focus on lawmaking as a possible solution is mistaken.
He seeks, and reasonably, IMHO, to limit the power of the rich in a country that celebrates raw greed. Unfortunately, they already have the power, and show little inclination to let it slip.