Who hates corporations?

[ryoder]

Did you know that Harvard is the oldest institution of higher learning in the United States and the first corporation chartered in the country?
England was mighty pissed off that the colonies created a corporation. Corporations are built by ordinary people, not the power elite, the nobility, kings, queens, or politicians.

[dcan]

Yes but corporations also have massive political power in this country, moreso than the average citizen. In fact, with major corporations owning all the news and entertainment, everything you see and hear is controlled. If you doubt it just look for the massive media coverage of Ron Paul. Go ahead. Yeah, I'm still waiting. Whatever you think about his policies, it is undeniable that he has massive support among the people, yet the media routinely ignored him to the point that they passed over his name when reading poll results live on the air. (Literally!)

Corporations do a lot of good but they also do a lot of evil. They are amoral. For every "good" corporation you can name you can also name one that has committed atrocities. Just look at Bhopal: 25,000 people dead, 38,000 disabled, 555,000 injured, and 25 years later seven executives get two years and $2,000 in fines. It's sickening.

Corporations write bills, lobby senators and representatives to pass them, and ensure we get screwed in the process. SOPA/PIPA is just one example of corporate power run amok. Corporate welfare is another. Where's the "Average American SuperPAC"?

I'm not saying capitalism is bad -- it is the single best system ever invented for moving people out of poverty. But capitalism != corporations, so restraining corporate influence is not (despite GOP screaming to the contrary) restraining capitalism, but instead protecting citizens. (or should be, anyway)

A prime example is what is happening this year. In 2008 a handful of people at an investment firm gobbled up the oil futures market and by doing so created the skyrocketing gas prices and collapsed the agriculture market -- all in order to make (in their words) "a sh*tload of money." People starved around the world as a result. It's about to happen again now. Why? Because the GOP (pushed by investment banks) watered down the regulations that would rein in how much investment banks could speculate in the oil markets. So the "party of the middle class" is siding with major corporations to screw us as Americans. And yeah, the other party is often just as bad. We currently have the former head of Goldman-Sachs (heavily involved in the financial collapse) as the head of the Fed, which coincidentally pushed Lehman Brothers (a Goldman competitor) into liquidation. I'm sure he has no job lined up when he leaves the Fed. And the revolving door spins 'round and 'round.

The often-changing structure of corporations also provides a breeding ground for sociopaths/psychopaths to rise to the top. Says Bloomberg. Also, a German study compared stock traders to clinically-diagnosed psychopaths. The traders made the psychopaths look tame.

"Naturally one can't characterize the traders as deranged," Noll told SPIEGEL. "But for example, they behaved more egotistically and were more willing to take risks than a group of psychopaths who took the same test."

Particularly shocking for Noll was the fact that the bankers weren't aiming for higher winnings than their comparison group. Instead they were more interested in achieving a competitive advantage. Instead of taking a sober and businesslike approach to reaching the highest profit, "it was most important to the traders to get more than their opponents," Noll explained. "And they spent a lot of energy trying to damage their opponents."

Using a metaphor to describe the behavior, Noll said the stockbrokers behaved as though their neighbor had the same car, "and they took after it with a baseball bat so they could look better themselves."

Source: Spiegel

TL;DR Corporations are amoral and represent a catastrophic potential public hazard and should be treated as such. There is a balance between regulation and deregulation, but history has shown unregulated or loosely-regulated industries have wreaked major havoc with little consequence. Corporate influence in politics prevents meaningful regulation.

[beargins]

Yes but corporations also have massive political power in this country, moreso than the average citizen. In fact, with major corporations owning all the news and entertainment, everything you see and hear is controlled. If you doubt it just look for the massive media coverage of Ron Paul. Go ahead. Yeah, I'm still waiting. Whatever you think about his policies, it is undeniable that he has massive support among the people, yet the media routinely ignored him to the point that they passed over his name when reading poll results live on the air. (Literally!)

Corporations do a lot of good but they also do a lot of evil. They are amoral. For every "good" corporation you can name you can also name one that has committed atrocities. Just look at Bhopal: 25,000 people dead, 38,000 disabled, 555,000 injured, and 25 years later seven executives get two years and $2,000 in fines. It's sickening.

Corporations write bills, lobby senators and representatives to pass them, and ensure we get screwed in the process. SOPA/PIPA is just one example of corporate power run amok. Corporate welfare is another. Where's the "Average American SuperPAC"?

I'm not saying capitalism is bad -- it is the single best system ever invented for moving people out of poverty. But capitalism != corporations, so restraining corporate influence is not (despite GOP screaming to the contrary) restraining capitalism, but instead protecting citizens. (or should be, anyway)

A prime example is what is happening this year. In 2008 a handful of people at an investment firm gobbled up the oil futures market and by doing so created the skyrocketing gas prices and collapsed the agriculture market -- all in order to make (in their words) "a sh*tload of money." People starved around the world as a result. It's about to happen again now. Why? Because the GOP (pushed by investment banks) watered down the regulations that would rein in how much investment banks could speculate in the oil markets. So the "party of the middle class" is siding with major corporations to screw us as Americans. And yeah, the other party is often just as bad. We currently have the former head of Goldman-Sachs (heavily involved in the financial collapse) as the head of the Fed, which coincidentally pushed Lehman Brothers (a Goldman competitor) into liquidation. I'm sure he has no job lined up when he leaves the Fed. And the revolving door spins 'round and 'round.

The often-changing structure of corporations also provides a breeding ground for sociopaths/psychopaths to rise to the top. Says Bloomberg. Also, a German study compared stock traders to clinically-diagnosed psychopaths. The traders made the psychopaths look tame.



TL;DR Corporations are amoral and represent a catastrophic potential public hazard and should be treated as such. There is a balance between regulation and deregulation, but history has shown unregulated or loosely-regulated industries have wreaked major havoc with little consequence. Corporate influence in politics prevents meaningful regulation.

Nice post Dcan, I personally like Ron Paul. Theres definitely good and bad apples(corporations) out there , not that it justifies criticizing the bunch as a whole. I'm not a big fan of the outsourcing, and manufacturing going overseas, nor am I a fan of certain mega corps paying their laborers peanut wages, because the same individual still ends up on gooberment welfare and leech off the tax payers, while the corp still keeps its low wages and high profits.

[dcan]

Nice post Dcan, I personally like Ron Paul. Theres definitely good and bad apples(corporations) out there , not that it justifies criticizing the bunch as a whole. I'm not a big fan of the outsourcing, and manufacturing going overseas, nor am I a fan of certain mega corps paying their laborers peanut wages, because the same individual still ends up on gooberment welfare and leech off the tax payers, while the corp still keeps its low wages and high profits.

Thanks. I don't mean to imply all corporations are like this. The vast majority are not. However, the ones we think of when we think "corporation" usually are, because the are the "big ones" that wield the influence. It seems to me that there is a point where a corporation ceases to be "just a company" and becomes "a significant force in the economic, political, and physical well-being of the citizenry." I believe it is at this point that government must take a larger role. Less regulation at the lower levels, more intrusive regulation as you move towards the higher, more dangerous levels. Companies are already held liable for the actions of their people, but often the liability is far out of line with the crime. We have all seen corporate officers get away with hundreds of millions or even billions in profits based on malicious negligence and/or malicious manipulation of a market only to eventually settle for a fine of $50 million or something equally insulting and no admission of guilt.

I'm all for societal mobility and loosening the restraints on entrepreneurship. I heard the other day about a woman who wanted to open an ice cream parlor in California, $20,000 in permits and $100,000 in legal fees just to open the doors. That is equally insane and unjust.

[ryoder]

You know how bad Harvard is? They have enough money to give free education to all of their students but they won't do it because a Harvard education is a Veblen good. Its prestige is based on the fact that it costs so much and is in limited quantity. It is like the South African controlled diamond market.
If people knew how many diamonds there were down there, they wouldn't spend $10k on a rock for their girlfriend.

Khan Academy and others are the polar opposite of Harvard.
I am not actually against Harvard, but I think that if UOP did the same thing, people would be outraged.

[LaterBloomer]

Theodore Roosevelt said something about needing big government to regulate big business. He was right. (Though how that will work in the world of multi-national corporations is anyone's guess.)

Also, do you think any part of the corporations' problems is brought about by mutual funds? When I was younger, you used to hear about little old ladies speaking out at stockholders' meetings. You never hear about that sort of thing. Do the heads of T. Rowe Price, Fidelity, et al. use the fact that they're stockholders to get corporations to lower the salaries of the executives, or behave in a manner that shows that they care about anything other than short-term profits?

Just a thought.

[ryoder]

I do not trust big government, so I can never recommend it in any circumstance. It is part of my world view, much like a socialist puts his belief in a large government guaranteeing prosperity and equality of condition through redistributive means.

I do think that mutual funds have caused people to become "zombie investors" who are detached from the companies in which they invest. That is why I do not invest in mutual funds. I invest only in cash equivalents and bonds.

I also do not like the marriage of big business and big government. It reeks of fascism and USSR style central planning. Whenever one hears "public/private partnership" remember the public/private partnership between VW and Hitler's Germany.