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Any publicly traded corporation can be sued if they put anything else but the bottom line first.

And a corporation could have it's corporate charter revoked if it no longer serves the common or public good. And if this behavior qualifies as a good then things are really screwed.

Falcon

But corporations are. The whole point of corporations is that both shareholders and executive are insulated from certain liabilities that enable them to do things a private person legally could not.

No, corporations were given corporate charters, which grants that limited liability, only if they served the common or public good. Businesses were given limited liability if it was thought the business would help people. The first two corporations given charters, specifically for this reason, was the British East India Company the Dutch East India Company. Corporations have had their corporate charters revoked because they no longer served the public good. Petitioners requested Unocal have it's charter revoked after it supported the military in Burma in forcing Karen tribesmen to vacate land they owned and to work as porters and in other low wage positions for Unocal.

Falcon

Third parties do win. Over 200 Greens hold elected offices.

Santa Monica enacted a local ordinance to that effect. Within 24 hours, all of the banks directed their ATM's to only dispense cash to customers of that particular bank. In short, you couldn't go to a Bank of America ATM and get money from an Commerce Bank account.

Reference

Basically, they legislated what the banks could and couldn't charge, so the banks reduced services.

How can you even begin to be a viable choice if you don't have candidates across the board in a majority of electorial races. Even if your positions are fantastic on the issues without at least a glimmer of support from the congress you are dead in the water.

Assuming that Green Party candidate David Cobb gets the same opportunity as Badnarik, I hope you ask the same question. Cobb represents the so-called "electoral" wing of the Green Party, as opposed to the "ideological" wing.

He wants to *elect* Green candidates -- starting at the school boards and building up. Nader, on the other hand, has shown no such flexibility, prefering to tilt at windmills instead of opening the little door at the bottom. He gave us name recognition -- political oxygen, if you will -- but didn't know when to step aside. So at their convention, the Greens gave him a not-so-gentle push. I think the 2004 convention will be remembered as the day the Green Party grew up.

I suspect that Cobb's answer to your question will be along the lines of "We do indeed have candidates, both on the ballot and currently serving, in races from the top of the ballot to the bottom. Watch us grow!"

For the Libertarians' sake, I hope Badnarik can give the same answer.

Riiiiiiight, because instead of running, bitching about the system on /. will make all those problems go away won't they?
(since you are the one that is trolling while calling me a troll, I will give you a free lesson)
What about the Green Party
Or the reform party(they don't have a nice little list of people in offices like the greens on their website), or the Southern Seperation party if that is your thing.
Yeah, it's not going to be easy, but, correct me if I am mistaken, it doesn't say in the constitution that you are guarenteed a right to win an elected office.
Oh I'm sorry, what am I thinking, doing stuff, I'll just go back to complaining on slashdot, that will solve everything!

This might be true if the Greens were a small, young party based around a few popular characters, like the Reform party. In fact, they're a well-established organization with over 250 candidates running in the 2000 American elections, as well as allied green parties throughout the world. To some extent, they're willing to bend the party line to admit good, honest candidates (e.g., Nader himself), but they're hardly too small to hold together in the face of popularity.

- Michael Cohn