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The Left doesn't like capitalism and wants to promote an authoritarian, centralized federal bureaucracy at all times.
So it's ideologically obligated to demonize "corporations" at every opportunity. Of course, a "corporation" could be a grandmother running an Ebay business from her kitchen table, so they have to keep the term nice and vague.
Effective regulation (not the same as MORE regulation) is absolutely crucial, and maybe one day we'll have it. But we can count on the Left to demonize private industry at every turn. Their adoration of, and devotion to, government requires it.
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Total nonsense. It is this kind of post that reveals your true far right colors.
The real problem is conservatives don't understand what constitutes a true free market and what constitutes a
captured market.
There is nothing wrong with corporations. Corporations are a good thing. They encourage us to take risks. They maximize wealth. They create jobs. They're a great thing, but they should not be running our government. The reason for that is they don't have the same aspirations for America that you and I do. A corporation does not want democracy. It does not want free markets, it wants profits, and the best way for it to get profits is to use our campaign-finance system -- which is just a system of legalized bribery -- to get their stakes, their hooks into a public official and then use that public official to dismantle the marketplace to give them a competitive advantage and then to privatize the commons, to steal the commonwealth, to liquidate public assets for cash, to plunder, to steal from the rest of us.
And that doesn't mean corporations are a bad thing. It just means they're amoral, and we have to recognize that and not let them into the political process. Let them do their thing, but they should not be participating in our political process, because a corporation cannot do something genuinely philanthropic.
A free market is the most efficient and democratic way to distribute the goods of the land, and that the best thing that could happen to the environment is if we had true free-market capitalism in this country, because the free market promotes efficiency, and efficiency means the elimination of waste, and pollution of course is waste. The free market also would encourage us to properly value our natural resources, and it's the undervaluation of those resources that causes us to use them wastefully. But in a true free-market economy, you can't make yourself rich without making your neighbors rich and without enriching your community.
But what polluters do is they make themselves rich by making everybody else poor. They raise standards of living for themselves by lowering the quality of life for everybody else, and they do that by evading the discipline of the free market. You show me a polluter; I'll show you a subsidy. I'll show you a fat cat using political clout to escape the discipline of the free market and to force the public to pay his production costs. That's what all pollution is. It's always a subsidy. It's always a guy trying to cheat the free market.
Corporations are externalizing machines. They're constantly figuring out ways to get somebody else to pay their costs of production. That's their nature. One of the best ways to do that, and the most common way for a polluter, is through pollution.
The rule is the commons are owned by all of us. They're not owned by the governor or the legislator or the coal companies and the utility. Everybody has a right to use them. Nobody has a right to abuse them. Nobody has a right to use them in a way that will diminish or injure their use and enjoyment by others.
Our founding fathers completely understood this.
Our founding fathers did not subscribe to Adam Smith's 'invisible hand'. They believed in very heavy regulations and restrictions on corporations. They were men who held ethics as the most important attribute. They viewed being paid by the American people for their services as a privilege not a right. And they had no problem closing down any corporation that swindled the people, and holding owners and stockholder personally liable for any harm to the people they caused.
Early laws regulating corporations in America
*Corporations were required to have a clear purpose, to be fulfilled but not exceeded.
*Corporations licenses to do business were revocable by the state legislature if they exceeded or did not fulfill their chartered purpose(s).
*The state legislature could revoke a corporations charter if it misbehaved.
*The act of incorporation did not relieve corporate management or stockholders/owners of responsibility or liability for corporate acts.
*As a matter of course, corporation officers, directors, or agents couldnt break the law and avoid punishment by claiming they were just doing their job when committing crimes but instead could be held criminally liable for violating the law.
*Directors of the corporation were required to come from among stockholders.
*Corporations had to have their headquarters and meetings in the state where their principal place of business was located.
*Corporation charters were granted for a specific period of time, such as twenty or thirty years (instead of being granted in perpetuity, as is now the practice).
*Corporations were prohibited from owning stock in other corporations, to prevent them from extending their power inappropriately.
*Corporations real estate holdings were limited to what was necessary to carry out their specific purpose(s).
*Corporations were prohibited from making any political contributions, direct or indirect.
*Corporations were prohibited from making charitable or civic donations outside of their specific purposes.
*State legislatures could set the rates that some monopoly corporations could charge for their products or services.
*All corporation records and documents were open to the legislature or the state attorney general.
The Early Role of Corporations in America
The Legacy of the Founding Parents
The first thing to understand is the difference between the natural person and the fictitious person called a corporation. They differ in the purpose for which they are created, in the strength which they possess, and in the restraints under which they act. Man is the handiwork of God and was placed upon earth to carry out a Divine purpose; the corporation is the handiwork of man and created to carry out a money-making policy. There is comparatively little difference in the strength of men; a corporation may be one hundred, one thousand, or even one million times stronger than the average man. Man acts under the restraints of conscience, and is influenced also by a belief in a future life. A corporation has no soul and cares nothing about the hereafter.
William Jennings Bryan, 1912 Ohio Constitutional Convention