Conservatism's Death Gusher

[Oddball]

Recent number crunching by whom?

Do you speak in any language other than granola muncher cliches?

 

[Big Fitz]

That doesn't answer the question, Mr. Godwin.

Who do you propose to be the Commissar of Needs?

YAAAYYYY!!! The pre-story for Atlas Shrugged right there! A bureaucrat who decides who needs what? The ultimate expression of the leftist rainbow of evil.

Atlas Shrugged giving all conservatives what they can't find anywhere else: a moral justification for their selfishness and irrational desire for more than they need, i.e., greed.

Try Lord of the Rings

Ringwraiths serve the conservative ideology of greed and death far more efficiently.

1. No one has the rights to the profit of your labor or property except when given of your own free will. This is called charity. Supporting the essential needs of government functionality (Courts, military, trade agreements and the like) it is taxation. When government takes it from you against your will to give to another citizen, it is thievery regardless of the law.

2. Yes yes, Frodo lives. Atlas Shrugged is nigh prophetic in describing how the parasitic looters will always come for you and yours for the 'sake of others in need' or 'for your own good'. This is because they intrinsically believe the lie that they have a right to what you have because they or someone else have a need.

3. Sauron is more liberal ideology if you really want to go down this cretinous path. Total government control.

 

[Avatar4321]

If you don't like oil, stop using oil and oil based products. You have a choice you know.

 

[georgephillip]

YAAAYYYY!!! The pre-story for Atlas Shrugged right there! A bureaucrat who decides who needs what? The ultimate expression of the leftist rainbow of evil.

Atlas Shrugged giving all conservatives what they can't find anywhere else: a moral justification for their selfishness and irrational desire for more than they need, i.e., greed.

Try Lord of the Rings

Ringwraiths serve the conservative ideology of greed and death far more efficiently.

1. No one has the rights to the profit of your labor or property except when given of your own free will. This is called charity. Supporting the essential needs of government functionality (Courts, military, trade agreements and the like) it is taxation. When government takes it from you against your will to give to another citizen, it is thievery regardless of the law.

2. Yes yes, Frodo lives. Atlas Shrugged is nigh prophetic in describing how the parasitic looters will always come for you and yours for the 'sake of others in need' or 'for your own good'. This is because they intrinsically believe the lie that they have a right to what you have because they or someone else have a need.

3. Sauron is more liberal ideology if you really want to go down this cretinous path. Total government control.

Did you give your government permission to donate the profit from your labor and property to Goldman Sachs?

If by "parasitic looter" you mean Pete Peterson, the billionaire who wants my Social Security to pay his taxes, he's a text book example of how for thousands of years all governments have been controlled by their richest citizens to socialize cost and privatize profit.

You might profitably ask yourself if the Rich even exist without war and private debt, i.e., usury?

 

[topspin]

wow Dude, stop hating on george!!!
This is some of the funniest shit on this site. You eat a burger and your destroying the rain forrest.

LOFL, this tool probably has a car and fly's in planes. Calculated that georgey boy

 

[georgephillip]

wow Dude, stop hating on george!!!
This is some of the funniest shit on this site. You eat a burger and your destroying the rain forrest.

LOFL, this tool probably has a car and fly's in planes. Calculated that georgey boy

Top:

'Haven't had a car since '93.

Haven't flown in a plane since '66.

During my most recent 14 month homeless episode I calculated that I walked over 1000 miles...

 

[topspin]

wow Dude, stop hating on george!!!
This is some of the funniest shit on this site. You eat a burger and your destroying the rain forrest.

LOFL, this tool probably has a car and fly's in planes. Calculated that georgey boy

Top:

'Haven't had a car since '93.

Haven't flown in a plane since '66.

During my most recent 14 month homeless episode I calculated that I walked over 1000 miles...

OK, so your eco friendly because your poor

 

[Bfgrn]

YAAAYYYY!!! The pre-story for Atlas Shrugged right there! A bureaucrat who decides who needs what? The ultimate expression of the leftist rainbow of evil.

Atlas Shrugged giving all conservatives what they can't find anywhere else: a moral justification for their selfishness and irrational desire for more than they need, i.e., greed.

Try Lord of the Rings

Ringwraiths serve the conservative ideology of greed and death far more efficiently.

1. No one has the rights to the profit of your labor or property except when given of your own free will. This is called charity. Supporting the essential needs of government functionality (Courts, military, trade agreements and the like) it is taxation. When government takes it from you against your will to give to another citizen, it is thievery regardless of the law.

2. Yes yes, Frodo lives. Atlas Shrugged is nigh prophetic in describing how the parasitic looters will always come for you and yours for the 'sake of others in need' or 'for your own good'. This is because they intrinsically believe the lie that they have a right to what you have because they or someone else have a need.

3. Sauron is more liberal ideology if you really want to go down this cretinous path. Total government control.

Your problem big fizzle; you don't even know who the BIGGEST parasitic looters are.

Parasite Power

In 2002, over 61,000 transnational corporations (TNCs) with over 900,000 foreign affiliates conducted operations around the world. According to the UN Conference on Trade and Development, just the foreign affiliates of these TNCs produced $17.6 trillion in sales and employed 54 million people. The largest 100 TNCs accounted for 14 percent of the sales and 13 percent of the employment.

The wealth of the largest corporations rivals or exceeds that of many national governments. One comparison measures the revenues of corporations against national output expressed as gross domestic product. Of the 100 largest economies in 2002, 50 were corporations. But much of the wealth measured by GDP is produced by private interests. Perhaps a better relationship is the one between corporate revenues and government expenditures. By this measure the discrepancies are even starker. Of the world's largest 100 national governments and corporations in 2002, 76 were corporations. The largest, Wal-Mart, had revenues higher than the expenditures of all but six national governments.

There are two linked problems with such concentrations of corporate power. First, that power increases corporations' ability to influence societal affairs, from fixing prices to altering laws. Second, while corporations and governments may have similar amounts of power, the latter are designed-at least nominally-to serve the public interest, and many are accountable to these publics. Because of shareholder pressures and other demands, most corporations today focus almost entirely on maximizing profits for their shareholders-and they do so primarily by externalizing as many of their social and environmental costs as possible.

In his book Tyranny of the Bottom Line, Ralph Estes examined the extent of this cost externalization in the case of U.S. corporations. Factoring in workplace injuries, medical care required by the failure of unsafe products, health costs from pollution, and many others, Estes found that external costs to U.S. taxpayers totaled $3.5 trillion in 1995 - four times higher than the profits of U.S. corporations that year ($822 billion). This sort of externalization toll is routinely evident in hazy skies, injured consumers, and impoverished workers in the United States and elsewhere.

According to a 2004 report released by U.S. Representative George Miller, one 200-employee Wal-Mart store may cost federal taxpayers $420,000 per year because of the need for federal aid (such as housing assistance, tax credits, and health insurance assistance) for Wal-Mart's low-wage employees. Moreover, many corporations fill their labor needs offshore in order to exploit unorganized workers in low-cost and politically friendly countries. Over 40 million people now work in export-processing or "free trade" zones. These areas, often exempt from national legislation, allow manufacturers to demand long hours, pay lower wages, and ignore health and safety regulations.

Corporations have achieved considerable freedom to act in ways that harm the host on which they depend. They have done so primarily by means of regulatory capture, the redesign of societal laws by vested interests for their preferential benefit. This is not new; corporations have always sought to influence lawmakers. TNCs' current levels of power, money, and freedom are unprecedented, however, and regulatory capture has become widespread. The results can be seen in the scores of laws and court rulings that now protect corporations' right to profit, right to pollute, right to patent intellectual property-at the expense of citizens, farmers, workers, consumers, communities, and indigenous peoples. As U.S. President Rutherford B. Hayes once remarked, "This is a government of the people, by the people, and for the people no longer. It is a government of corporations, by corporations, and for corporations." That was in 1884; it's truer now than ever.

Parasite hosts are generally helpless to alter the destructive behavior of the parasites that have invaded their systems-a limitation that is often fatal. Humans, in contrast, can regain control and shape the role of the corporation to benefit the host rather than destroy it.

When Good Corporations Go Bad | Worldwatch Institute

 

[Soggy in NOLA]

wow Dude, stop hating on george!!!
This is some of the funniest shit on this site. You eat a burger and your destroying the rain forrest.

LOFL, this tool probably has a car and fly's in planes. Calculated that georgey boy

Top:

'Haven't had a car since '93.

Haven't flown in a plane since '66.

During my most recent 14 month homeless episode I calculated that I walked over 1000 miles...

Wow.. a real "go-getter" huh?

 

[topspin]

being poor is a choice, I have no problem with that.
I thought he might be a limosine liberal, you know step over a homeless person to spit on someone wearing fur. Fact is he is the homeless person.

 

[CrusaderFrank]

Atlas Shrugged giving all conservatives what they can't find anywhere else: a moral justification for their selfishness and irrational desire for more than they need, i.e., greed.

Try Lord of the Rings

Ringwraiths serve the conservative ideology of greed and death far more efficiently.

1. No one has the rights to the profit of your labor or property except when given of your own free will. This is called charity. Supporting the essential needs of government functionality (Courts, military, trade agreements and the like) it is taxation. When government takes it from you against your will to give to another citizen, it is thievery regardless of the law.

2. Yes yes, Frodo lives. Atlas Shrugged is nigh prophetic in describing how the parasitic looters will always come for you and yours for the 'sake of others in need' or 'for your own good'. This is because they intrinsically believe the lie that they have a right to what you have because they or someone else have a need.

3. Sauron is more liberal ideology if you really want to go down this cretinous path. Total government control.

Your problem big fizzle; you don't even know who the BIGGEST parasitic looters are.

Parasite Power

In 2002, over 61,000 transnational corporations (TNCs) with over 900,000 foreign affiliates conducted operations around the world. According to the UN Conference on Trade and Development, just the foreign affiliates of these TNCs produced $17.6 trillion in sales and employed 54 million people. The largest 100 TNCs accounted for 14 percent of the sales and 13 percent of the employment.

The wealth of the largest corporations rivals or exceeds that of many national governments. One comparison measures the revenues of corporations against national output expressed as gross domestic product. Of the 100 largest economies in 2002, 50 were corporations. But much of the wealth measured by GDP is produced by private interests. Perhaps a better relationship is the one between corporate revenues and government expenditures. By this measure the discrepancies are even starker. Of the world's largest 100 national governments and corporations in 2002, 76 were corporations. The largest, Wal-Mart, had revenues higher than the expenditures of all but six national governments.

There are two linked problems with such concentrations of corporate power. First, that power increases corporations' ability to influence societal affairs, from fixing prices to altering laws. Second, while corporations and governments may have similar amounts of power, the latter are designed-at least nominally-to serve the public interest, and many are accountable to these publics. Because of shareholder pressures and other demands, most corporations today focus almost entirely on maximizing profits for their shareholders-and they do so primarily by externalizing as many of their social and environmental costs as possible.

In his book Tyranny of the Bottom Line, Ralph Estes examined the extent of this cost externalization in the case of U.S. corporations. Factoring in workplace injuries, medical care required by the failure of unsafe products, health costs from pollution, and many others, Estes found that external costs to U.S. taxpayers totaled $3.5 trillion in 1995 - four times higher than the profits of U.S. corporations that year ($822 billion). This sort of externalization toll is routinely evident in hazy skies, injured consumers, and impoverished workers in the United States and elsewhere.

According to a 2004 report released by U.S. Representative George Miller, one 200-employee Wal-Mart store may cost federal taxpayers $420,000 per year because of the need for federal aid (such as housing assistance, tax credits, and health insurance assistance) for Wal-Mart's low-wage employees. Moreover, many corporations fill their labor needs offshore in order to exploit unorganized workers in low-cost and politically friendly countries. Over 40 million people now work in export-processing or "free trade" zones. These areas, often exempt from national legislation, allow manufacturers to demand long hours, pay lower wages, and ignore health and safety regulations.

Corporations have achieved considerable freedom to act in ways that harm the host on which they depend. They have done so primarily by means of regulatory capture, the redesign of societal laws by vested interests for their preferential benefit. This is not new; corporations have always sought to influence lawmakers. TNCs' current levels of power, money, and freedom are unprecedented, however, and regulatory capture has become widespread. The results can be seen in the scores of laws and court rulings that now protect corporations' right to profit, right to pollute, right to patent intellectual property-at the expense of citizens, farmers, workers, consumers, communities, and indigenous peoples. As U.S. President Rutherford B. Hayes once remarked, "This is a government of the people, by the people, and for the people no longer. It is a government of corporations, by corporations, and for corporations." That was in 1884; it's truer now than ever.

Parasite hosts are generally helpless to alter the destructive behavior of the parasites that have invaded their systems-a limitation that is often fatal. Humans, in contrast, can regain control and shape the role of the corporation to benefit the host rather than destroy it.

When Good Corporations Go Bad | Worldwatch Institute

You know, there are people all over the world who believe in what you say and govern accordingly. Maybe you should move to North Korea or the Sudan and give it a whirl?

 

[Bfgrn]

1. No one has the rights to the profit of your labor or property except when given of your own free will. This is called charity. Supporting the essential needs of government functionality (Courts, military, trade agreements and the like) it is taxation. When government takes it from you against your will to give to another citizen, it is thievery regardless of the law.

2. Yes yes, Frodo lives. Atlas Shrugged is nigh prophetic in describing how the parasitic looters will always come for you and yours for the 'sake of others in need' or 'for your own good'. This is because they intrinsically believe the lie that they have a right to what you have because they or someone else have a need.

3. Sauron is more liberal ideology if you really want to go down this cretinous path. Total government control.

Your problem big fizzle; you don't even know who the BIGGEST parasitic looters are.

Parasite Power

In 2002, over 61,000 transnational corporations (TNCs) with over 900,000 foreign affiliates conducted operations around the world. According to the UN Conference on Trade and Development, just the foreign affiliates of these TNCs produced $17.6 trillion in sales and employed 54 million people. The largest 100 TNCs accounted for 14 percent of the sales and 13 percent of the employment.

The wealth of the largest corporations rivals or exceeds that of many national governments. One comparison measures the revenues of corporations against national output expressed as gross domestic product. Of the 100 largest economies in 2002, 50 were corporations. But much of the wealth measured by GDP is produced by private interests. Perhaps a better relationship is the one between corporate revenues and government expenditures. By this measure the discrepancies are even starker. Of the world's largest 100 national governments and corporations in 2002, 76 were corporations. The largest, Wal-Mart, had revenues higher than the expenditures of all but six national governments.

There are two linked problems with such concentrations of corporate power. First, that power increases corporations' ability to influence societal affairs, from fixing prices to altering laws. Second, while corporations and governments may have similar amounts of power, the latter are designed-at least nominally-to serve the public interest, and many are accountable to these publics. Because of shareholder pressures and other demands, most corporations today focus almost entirely on maximizing profits for their shareholders-and they do so primarily by externalizing as many of their social and environmental costs as possible.

In his book Tyranny of the Bottom Line, Ralph Estes examined the extent of this cost externalization in the case of U.S. corporations. Factoring in workplace injuries, medical care required by the failure of unsafe products, health costs from pollution, and many others, Estes found that external costs to U.S. taxpayers totaled $3.5 trillion in 1995 - four times higher than the profits of U.S. corporations that year ($822 billion). This sort of externalization toll is routinely evident in hazy skies, injured consumers, and impoverished workers in the United States and elsewhere.

According to a 2004 report released by U.S. Representative George Miller, one 200-employee Wal-Mart store may cost federal taxpayers $420,000 per year because of the need for federal aid (such as housing assistance, tax credits, and health insurance assistance) for Wal-Mart's low-wage employees. Moreover, many corporations fill their labor needs offshore in order to exploit unorganized workers in low-cost and politically friendly countries. Over 40 million people now work in export-processing or "free trade" zones. These areas, often exempt from national legislation, allow manufacturers to demand long hours, pay lower wages, and ignore health and safety regulations.

Corporations have achieved considerable freedom to act in ways that harm the host on which they depend. They have done so primarily by means of regulatory capture, the redesign of societal laws by vested interests for their preferential benefit. This is not new; corporations have always sought to influence lawmakers. TNCs' current levels of power, money, and freedom are unprecedented, however, and regulatory capture has become widespread. The results can be seen in the scores of laws and court rulings that now protect corporations' right to profit, right to pollute, right to patent intellectual property-at the expense of citizens, farmers, workers, consumers, communities, and indigenous peoples. As U.S. President Rutherford B. Hayes once remarked, "This is a government of the people, by the people, and for the people no longer. It is a government of corporations, by corporations, and for corporations." That was in 1884; it's truer now than ever.

Parasite hosts are generally helpless to alter the destructive behavior of the parasites that have invaded their systems-a limitation that is often fatal. Humans, in contrast, can regain control and shape the role of the corporation to benefit the host rather than destroy it.

When Good Corporations Go Bad | Worldwatch Institute

You know, there are people all over the world who believe in what you say and govern accordingly. Maybe you should move to North Korea or the Sudan and give it a whirl?

Yea Frank, we call them our founding fathers...

During the 18th century, Enlightenment ideals began to challenge the power of monarchies and corporations, and the power of the queen’s corporation began to fade. The Boston Tea Party of 1773 signaled not only a victory over the economic tyranny of the East India Company, it also helped pave the way for the political uprising known as the American Revolution. Also around this time, Adam Smith published the Wealth of Nations, arguing for free market economics, but against the concept of large corporations, claiming that they limit fair competition among smaller-sized merchants and artisans.

When the United States gained its independence in 1776, there were 336 corporations in the United States, but most had been chartered by state governments for specific public works projects. The Founding Fathers, still mindful of the crushing power once wielded by the East India Company, severely limited the power of corporations and never would have dreamed of nor allowed the trans-national behemoths we see today. In fact, the original limitations seem laughable when we consider our modern corporations:

1) Corporate charters were granted for fixed periods of time, usually between 10 and 40 years.

2) Corporate charters could be promptly revoked for violations of law or for causing public harm.

3) Corporations could engage only in activities necessary to fulfill their chartered purpose.

4) Corporations could not own property that was not essential to the fulfilling of their chartered purpose.

5) Corporations could not own stock in other corporations.

6) The personal assets of corporate shareholders were not protected from the consequences of corporate behavior.

Were they around today, the Founding Fathers would look at our corporate climate and our economic situation, and they would say, “We tried to warn you!” But America has not heeded their wisdom. Almost as soon as the country was born, big business interests began to chip away at these constraints on corporate power.

The Founding Fathers Did Not Want Large Corporations

 

[CrusaderFrank]

I still can't find any mention of these limits on Corporation in the US Constitution.

 

[Big Fitz]

In 2002, over 61,000 transnational corporations (TNCs) with over 900,000 foreign affiliates conducted operations around the world. According to the UN Conference on Trade and Development, just the foreign affiliates of these TNCs produced $17.6 trillion in sales and employed 54 million people

You are under the false impression I don't want to slit their throatsas well, vis a vis their subsidies. I want ALL welfare to stop, particularly corporate welfare. Green energy can't survive without it? Tough shit. Agricorps can't produce as much, fine let independents fill the gap who can. Oil companies can't produce, guess they need to revisit their model or move where they can. Banks invested poorly? Sucks to be them. Privatize FDIC and force banks to purchase private deposit insurance to function (A PROPER application of the ICC) and there you go.

I am a Nationalist, not a globalist. I hate free trade in all nations except those with equivalent cultural and societal costs and mores. If it gives an unfair competitive advantage over our industries, institute reciprocal tariffs on them to equalize the playing field till their societal costs equal ours.

You don't know as much about me as you think you do BFdingaling.

 

[Bfgrn]

I still can't find any mention of these limits on Corporation in the US Constitution.

THAT is because the Constitution is the framework of what our founding fathers created; GOVERNMENT...created to serve We, the People. NOT created to serve private entities or a collective groups of stockholders. The Constitution's genesis is Thomas Jefferson's Declaration of Independence.

Declaration of Independence
The Unanimous Declaration of the Thirteen United States of America

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. That to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.

The Constitution
We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.

 

[Oddball]

IOW, there's no constitutional provision at all.

At the same time, we'll never ever see you screech and howl about the excesses and bloat of the District of Columbia Corporation.

 

[topspin]

80 percent of millionaires are first generation rich.

How many made their first million without help from Wall Street?

I didn't Made it all from wall street, it's the easiest way. We call it Capitalism

 

[Chris]

80 percent of millionaires are first generation rich.

How many made their first million without help from Wall Street?

I didn't Made it all from wall street, it's the easiest way. We call it Capitalism

And capitalism without government regulation is the Mafia, or the Crips and the Bloods, or the Cali Cartel, or BP, or Goldman Sachs....

 

[Chris]

Your problem big fizzle; you don't even know who the BIGGEST parasitic looters are.

Parasite Power

In 2002, over 61,000 transnational corporations (TNCs) with over 900,000 foreign affiliates conducted operations around the world. According to the UN Conference on Trade and Development, just the foreign affiliates of these TNCs produced $17.6 trillion in sales and employed 54 million people. The largest 100 TNCs accounted for 14 percent of the sales and 13 percent of the employment.

The wealth of the largest corporations rivals or exceeds that of many national governments. One comparison measures the revenues of corporations against national output expressed as gross domestic product. Of the 100 largest economies in 2002, 50 were corporations. But much of the wealth measured by GDP is produced by private interests. Perhaps a better relationship is the one between corporate revenues and government expenditures. By this measure the discrepancies are even starker. Of the world's largest 100 national governments and corporations in 2002, 76 were corporations. The largest, Wal-Mart, had revenues higher than the expenditures of all but six national governments.

There are two linked problems with such concentrations of corporate power. First, that power increases corporations' ability to influence societal affairs, from fixing prices to altering laws. Second, while corporations and governments may have similar amounts of power, the latter are designed-at least nominally-to serve the public interest, and many are accountable to these publics. Because of shareholder pressures and other demands, most corporations today focus almost entirely on maximizing profits for their shareholders-and they do so primarily by externalizing as many of their social and environmental costs as possible.

In his book Tyranny of the Bottom Line, Ralph Estes examined the extent of this cost externalization in the case of U.S. corporations. Factoring in workplace injuries, medical care required by the failure of unsafe products, health costs from pollution, and many others, Estes found that external costs to U.S. taxpayers totaled $3.5 trillion in 1995 - four times higher than the profits of U.S. corporations that year ($822 billion). This sort of externalization toll is routinely evident in hazy skies, injured consumers, and impoverished workers in the United States and elsewhere.

According to a 2004 report released by U.S. Representative George Miller, one 200-employee Wal-Mart store may cost federal taxpayers $420,000 per year because of the need for federal aid (such as housing assistance, tax credits, and health insurance assistance) for Wal-Mart's low-wage employees. Moreover, many corporations fill their labor needs offshore in order to exploit unorganized workers in low-cost and politically friendly countries. Over 40 million people now work in export-processing or "free trade" zones. These areas, often exempt from national legislation, allow manufacturers to demand long hours, pay lower wages, and ignore health and safety regulations.

Corporations have achieved considerable freedom to act in ways that harm the host on which they depend. They have done so primarily by means of regulatory capture, the redesign of societal laws by vested interests for their preferential benefit. This is not new; corporations have always sought to influence lawmakers. TNCs' current levels of power, money, and freedom are unprecedented, however, and regulatory capture has become widespread. The results can be seen in the scores of laws and court rulings that now protect corporations' right to profit, right to pollute, right to patent intellectual property-at the expense of citizens, farmers, workers, consumers, communities, and indigenous peoples. As U.S. President Rutherford B. Hayes once remarked, "This is a government of the people, by the people, and for the people no longer. It is a government of corporations, by corporations, and for corporations." That was in 1884; it's truer now than ever.

Parasite hosts are generally helpless to alter the destructive behavior of the parasites that have invaded their systems-a limitation that is often fatal. Humans, in contrast, can regain control and shape the role of the corporation to benefit the host rather than destroy it.

When Good Corporations Go Bad | Worldwatch Institute

You know, there are people all over the world who believe in what you say and govern accordingly. Maybe you should move to North Korea or the Sudan and give it a whirl?

Yea Frank, we call them our founding fathers...

During the 18th century, Enlightenment ideals began to challenge the power of monarchies and corporations, and the power of the queen’s corporation began to fade. The Boston Tea Party of 1773 signaled not only a victory over the economic tyranny of the East India Company, it also helped pave the way for the political uprising known as the American Revolution. Also around this time, Adam Smith published the Wealth of Nations, arguing for free market economics, but against the concept of large corporations, claiming that they limit fair competition among smaller-sized merchants and artisans.

When the United States gained its independence in 1776, there were 336 corporations in the United States, but most had been chartered by state governments for specific public works projects. The Founding Fathers, still mindful of the crushing power once wielded by the East India Company, severely limited the power of corporations and never would have dreamed of nor allowed the trans-national behemoths we see today. In fact, the original limitations seem laughable when we consider our modern corporations:

1) Corporate charters were granted for fixed periods of time, usually between 10 and 40 years.

2) Corporate charters could be promptly revoked for violations of law or for causing public harm.

3) Corporations could engage only in activities necessary to fulfill their chartered purpose.

4) Corporations could not own property that was not essential to the fulfilling of their chartered purpose.

5) Corporations could not own stock in other corporations.

6) The personal assets of corporate shareholders were not protected from the consequences of corporate behavior.

Were they around today, the Founding Fathers would look at our corporate climate and our economic situation, and they would say, “We tried to warn you!” But America has not heeded their wisdom. Almost as soon as the country was born, big business interests began to chip away at these constraints on corporate power.

The Founding Fathers Did Not Want Large Corporations

Beautiful post.

The Founding Fathers also owned slaves.....

 

[Soggy in NOLA]

These proponents of bloated government never cease to amaze me. All they hold dear is an abysmal failure, yet the can't seem to get enough of it. Amazing.