Who hates corporations?

[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.