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"The Corporation" features Robert Hare's analysis of corporation as psychopath. RMS is likely referring to this when he said:

Q: As somebody who's had your set of experiences and expertise, I'm curious: Do you feel like you've had any experiences that lend particular insight into how these companies work?

A: They're corporations. Corporations have been compared to psychopaths.

The Corporation is an excellent documentary. I highly recommend the 2-disc DVD set and the additional features and alternate audio tracks. There are other copies on archive.org too. And I see the same team is now working on a sequel.

Also watch the documentary The Corporation

I highly recommend the book & documentary "The Corporation"—watch it online and buy a copy. I highly recommend the 2-disc DVD set because the interviews and extras on the second DVD are compelling. It continues to be valuable to debunk the corporate-friendly media that passes for informative entertainment today. I watch this documentary at least once a year and I always manage to find something I'd almost forgotten in it. It's deeply informative, compelling, and the underlying thesis is intriguing. Rewatching with the audio commentary (particularly the Joel Bakan commentary which continues the examination and places a few figures in a more interesting context, such as one of the CEOs that got high praise for his interview but can be seen in an entirely different light when one thinks about his role as a CEO) is also highly recommended.

I see on their homepage (linked above) that they're working on a sequel as well.

I highly recommend the book & documentary "The Corporation"—watch it online and buy a copy. I highly recommend the 2-disc DVD set because the interviews and extras on the second DVD are compelling. It continues to be valuable to debunk the corporate-friendly media that passes for informative entertainment today. I watch this documentary at least once a year and I always manage to find something I'd almost forgotten in it. It's deeply informative, compelling, and the underlying thesis is intriguing. Rewatching with the audio commentary (particularly the Joel Bakan commentary which continues the examination and places a few figures in a more interesting context, such as one of the CEOs that got high praise for his interview but can be seen in an entirely different light when one thinks about his role as a CEO) is also highly recommended.

I see on their homepage (linked above) that they're working on a sequel as well.

Oh I agree wholeheartedly. The Corporation did a fantastic analysis identifying them as psychopaths.

The problem is, what is everyone else doing about it? :-(

> They are treated as legal persons for very good reasons that go back hundreds of years for certain purpose.

Total nonsense. Corporations became legal persons OVER time based on greed TO LIMIT LIABILITY. Corporations want all the benefits and do everything in their power to avoid having to pay for them.

Date Decision, Legal Right Affirmed
1889 "Minneapolis and St. L. R. Co. v. Beckwith", Right for judicial review on state legislation
1893 "Noble v. Union River Logging R. Col", Right for judicial review for rights infringement by federal legislation
1906 "Hale v. Henkel", Protection "against unreasonable searches and seizures (4th)
1908 "Armour Packing C. v. United States", Right to trial by jury (6th)
1922 "Pennsylvania Coal Co. V. Mahon", Right to compensation for government takings
1962 "Fong Foo v. United States", Right to freedom from double jeopardy (5th)
1970 "Ross v. Bernhard", Right to trial by jury in civil case (7th)
1976 "Virginia Pharmacy Board v. Virginia Consumer Council)", Right to free speech for purely commercial speech (1st)
1978 "First National Bank of Boston v. Bellotti", Right to corporate political speech (1st)
1986 "Pacific Gas and Electric Company v. Public Utility Commn of California", Right against coerced speech (1st)

Reference:
* A Short History of the Corporation
http://cnx.org/content/m17314/latest/

Also see:
http://www.thecorporation.com/index.cfm?page_id=314

Specifically, "The Corporation complete film transcript (PDF)"
http://hellocoolworld.com/files/TheCorporation/Transcript_finalpt1%20copy.pdf
http://hellocoolworld.com/files/TheCorporation/Transcript_finalpt2%20copy.pdf

> All justices, judges, and magistrates accept that corporations are legal persons. This is neither surprising, nor debatable, and is a fundamental part of Common Law tradition.

Total nonsense. Corporations became legal persons OVER time.

Date Decision, Legal Right Affirmed
1889 "Minneapolis and St. L. R. Co. v. Beckwith", Right for judicial review on state legislation
1893 "Noble v. Union River Logging R. Col", Right for judicial review for rights infringement by federal legislation
1906 "Hale v. Henkel", Protection "against unreasonable searches and seizures (4th)
1908 "Armour Packing C. v. United States", Right to trial by jury (6th)
1922 "Pennsylvania Coal Co. V. Mahon", Right to compensation for government takings
1962 "Fong Foo v. United States", Right to freedom from double jeopardy (5th)
1970 "Ross v. Bernhard", Right to trial by jury in civil case (7th)
1976 "Virginia Pharmacy Board v. Virginia Consumer Council)", Right to free speech for purely commercial speech (1st)
1978 "First National Bank of Boston v. Bellotti", Right to corporate political speech (1st)
1986 "Pacific Gas and Electric Company v. Public Utility Commn of California", Right against coerced speech (1st)
Reference:
http://cnx.org/content/m17314/latest/

Also see:
http://www.thecorporation.com/index.cfm?page_id=314
Specificaly, "The Corporation complete film transcript (PDF)"
http://hellocoolworld.com/files/TheCorporation/Transcript_finalpt1%20copy.pdf
http://hellocoolworld.com/files/TheCorporation/Transcript_finalpt2%20copy.pdf

> Because otherwise, they couldn't own property, and could not be sued.
At one time in America they couldn't OWN other corporations. This limited the collateral damage they could do. This was a GOOD thing.

> Let's have a hypothetical.
The fact that OWNERS wanted to separate their liability is based on thing: Greed.

Corporations pay no death tax (estate tax) because corporations NEVER die. That fact right there is a HUGE problem. It slowly strips the wealth (power) out of individuals and consolidates it -- total anathema to the original intent of State and Federal separation and balance of power.

It would behoove you to watch "The Corporation"

been doing that for 2 years, dude. consider yourself lucky that i'm a software (libre) developer, not a marketing droid. mwahahahah all your base are belong to us, we are Ltd Company pathological liars who will do annnnything to get your moneyyyy mwahahah. http://www.thecorporation.com/

Or as the wonderful Canadian documentary The Corporation pointed out, if a corporation is legally a person, then it is a sociopathic person. It's not that they're actively trying to do bad things, it's just that they don't care if they do evil, so long as it benefits them.

Actually, the wonderful Canadian film The Corporation argues fairly convincingly that if you were to treat a corporation as a person, you would be forced to diagnose them as a complete sociopath.

> That's a common myth: gold-backed currency has "real value" and fiat currency has no "real value".

That's because people don't understand (hyper) inflation or what causes it.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zimbabwean_dollar

> The thing is: money serves as an exchange medium of value.

Ok, you understand the first meaning of money ...

> Since the usefulness (or value) of gold (or just about anything else physical) depends on many factors, the only sane option is fiat.
... but not the 2nd or 3rd meaning.

With all due respect, you are either insane, an idiot, or ignorant of history. Try google "Local Currency", and research specifically, "LETS", for one.
e.g.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Local_Exchange_Trading_Systems

Second, read this white paper:
"What Has Government Done to Our Money? " by Murray N. Rothbard
http://mises.org/books/whathasgovernmentdone.pdf

Third, at least watch "The Corporation"
http://www.thecorporation.com/

May I remind you of a famous quote:
    "Permit me to issue and control the money of the nation and I care not who makes its laws. â" Mayer Amsched Rothchild, a prominent European banker in the eighteenth century"

Other links that may be of interest ( I don't particular agree with them, but they do provide some perspectives.)

Money as Debt by Paul Grignon
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-9050474362583451279

The Corruption that is Modern Banking - Money as Debt
http://bsalert.com/news/2085/The_Corruption_That_Is_Modern_Banking_Money_As_Debt.html?r3

You don't need fiat currency, and you don't need usary to have an economic model. The only reason economic systems fail is for one reason only: greed.

Until we either have 1 global currancy,

Beautiful summary !

"The Corporation" is a wonderful documentary that analyzes the behavior of corporations and comes to the conclusion that they are psychopaths.

* Video on youtube http://www.youtube.com/view_play_list?p=FA50FBC214A6CE87
* Transcript avail. at http://www.thecorporation.com/index.cfm?page_id=314

Copyright is a public policy issue and it should be decided by the public, not by a cartel of businesses.

Wait, so you want it to be different than most other public policy issues these days?

As one guy described it in The Corporation, public policy decisions these days get hashed out in small rooms where the people involved are generally US government agencies and representatives of the major corporations in the respective industries. The public debates in Congress and the press are basically a sideshow.

"Blockbusters" will always be the equivalent of fast food. Made as cheap as possible, trying to be flashy to get as many people in and out the door.

If you want stuff with a story, you're going to have to find stuff that was either limited release or maybe didn't even make it to the states. Look at what has won Sundance or Cannes, usually movies with good stories and not enough $$ for big effects.

Apple trailers usually has trailers for independent films as well.

You may have to resort to "piracy" to find some of it too. On a whim I grabbed and watched The Man from Earth. it was everything Hollywood was not. A story, thought provoking, almost everything was shot in a single house, NO Fx.

The guy that made it even thanked pirates for raising his movie's profile.. I sent the guy $20 over paypal and I know that there wasn't any hollywood accounting keeping it from him either.

Heck, not all Documentaries are super politically slanted or as boring as the stuff you sat through in grade school. 420 The Movie and Bigger Stronger Faster, Food, Inc, and The Corporation were all entertaining AND thought provoking.

> What the heck is wrong with marketing? Doing scientific research into how to make children more effective naggers is plain immoral.

Many commercial companies will ethically compete with each other.

Strike down the antitrust law and see what happens. Corporate entities as we know them are by definition free market enemies. With one and only rule, the end justifies the mean. the en being profit++. The mean, anything goes.
You can take any member of any corporation as an individual, a good chance he's a man (human being) of ethics and principles, but as a group that corporation has one goal; profit. http://www.thecorporation.com/ is a good source.

Great idea. It really fits in, but nicely counterbalances, the whole corporation as legal individual idea (albeit a psychopath - http://www.thecorporation.com/)
At least from my gut reaction.

if anyone is interested, there is ,imho a great documentary on the subject called "the corporation".
see http://www.thecorporation.com/ and or http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Corporation for more info.

Now they're a huge company, but that doesn't mean they must be evil.

Actually, yes, it pretty much does.

Corporations have exactly one interest and function: maximize shareholder return. If Google could increase its profits by powering its servers with forsaken children, it would do it -- otherwise it would face shareholder lawsuits.

Large for-profit corporations are, in essence, psychopaths, lacking any sort of conscience or empathy. They will do only and exactly what is in their own interest, regardless of how it effects others. If that's not "evil", nothing is.

They are multinational corporations... what kind of national loyalty are we expecting from them?

They behave exactly as legislation allows them to behave. If you don't like it, change the legislation.

Exactly, if you want to understand why watch this documentary.

Maybe you'd like to watch or read "The Corporation" by Joel Bakan. http://www.thecorporation.com/ ...or watch the whole thing here

I'm not sure I agree with the way they "show" that a corporation is like a psychopath. That part is anthropomorphizing appeal to emotions, but I think it still has lot's of background and insight.

This issue has been covered before in the documentary The Corporation.

If I recall correctly, they argue that if corporations were analyzed as if they were individuals by psychiatrists, they would be classified as psychopaths.

No, you're not cynical. You are bang on.

There is an interesting film called "The Corporation" that argues that if corporations were individuals they would be diagnosed as psychopathic, primarily because their sole motive is shareholder profit.

One of the problems of this is that legally companies are considered a person. Go watch the free documentary The Corporation, then perhaps you can start to plan ways around this distorting the governments view between a person and a "person."

Our corporate system encourages normal/good people to do "evil" things, systematically, and Google is no exception. Check out this film:

http://www.thecorporation.com/

It's a liberal diatribe (there are Michael Moore's bits in it), but I found many of the points very persuasive.

How do we tweak the system to limit corporate abuse while maintaining her economic efficiency?

While the parent is speaking regarding upper level execs (and maybe even the rank-and-file PHB), there is an interesting documentary called "The Corporation" that deals with a lot of this kind of thing. It argues that the "legal person" that a corporation is, is fundametally sociopathic. There is a good synopsis of their argument on their webpage. Granted, it is certainly not without bias, but was the turning point in my understanding of corporate ethos. Definately worth a DVD rent or a viewing at your local independent cinema.

It makes sense to me that the management of the company would recruit those lacking empathy (or other ethical constructs) to boost profits. It also makes sense that management influenced by this corp. ethos would not hold IT to any standards, other than to protect the corporate interests (e.g. don't do anything that would get us in trouble that you can't cover up), and to cover their own asses (IT can't open Exchange mailboxes without approval from management even at the request of users (for support purposes) to make sure upper management's inside-men don't get pinched.).

If you want to argue execs deserve huge pay because so much money is at stake, then they should also stand to leave the company hundreds of millions poorer than they came into it, if they underperform.

This is the whole purpose behind corporations; they were originally given the rights and privileges of a human being in order to alleviate much of the risk to the execs. If the company goes bankrupt, the people associated with the corporation (particularly, the execs) get off scott-free. The movie The Corporation gives a pretty good (albeit somewhat biased) overview of the history, legal structure of corps.

in fact, I forget where it was, but I seem to remember reading someone psychoanalyzing a corporation (as if it were a human) and finding that it's insane.

You may want to try watching the documentary The Corporation

For some reason people seem to think that the point of (most) corporations is to help the public. Clue : It's NOT. The ONLY responsibility of a corporation is to its SHAREHOLDERS. Otherwise it's business as normal. Can we fire 2,000 people and still have the business run? Does it save money in operating expense? Then do it. The thought that corporations somehow are supposed to care for what they do to the public at large is totally foreign to the concept of the corporation in the first place. It's a sociopathic entity, a non-being given the rights (in some cases more rights than actual human beings.) Yes there are some beneficial corporations out there, but they are the exception rather than the rule.

I hope this clears a few things up : http://www.thecorporation.com/ I believe there is a 'shareware' version of the entire movie available for viewing. It goes through the history of the corporation among other things. Also I believe there was a book written that basically puts corporations on a psych couch and examines them, interesting read ;-)

In closing, corporations are not your friend, they were originally a business deal granting extra rights for a limited time to a company so that they could perform works for the public good. After a few interesting court decisions that last part was effectively removed.

A.A

In the US corporations are give status as a legal 'entity' not 'entities'

I will say right now that I am vehemently anti-corporate, anti-corporatization, and anti-consumer, so you know my bias beforehand.

Now, if you really want to learn the history of corporations, and how they went from being chartered by the state, rather heavily regulated, and with very few rights, to the monstrosities we have today that exert control over governments and individuals, ransack our earth, place profits over people, and, due to diffusion of responsibility, can care for nothing but a bottom-line for their shareholders, I suggest these sources as good starting points:

Prof. Noam Chomsky on Microsoft and corporations. Chomsky is interviewed by Corp-Watch. He expounds on Microsoft and the anti-trust cases levelled against it, but he also goes into some depth regarding the history of corporations in America. I highly recommend Chomsky, of course because I by and large agree with his assessments, but also because he always includes his sources. He actually spends much of his time scouring over declassified government documents in order to back his assertions up. Also check out his website for an absolute wealth of information.

The Corporation. An excellent documentary, directed by Mark Achbar and Jennifer Abbott, based on a book written by Joel Bakan. The corporation is examined, as if it were an individual (as it is seen to be in the eyes of the law), from a psychological standpoint. Not very surprisingly, corporations are diagnosed as psychopathic. Many interviews with CEOs, marketers, capitalist "think tanks," labor groups, and intellectuals. Rightly enough, the documentary can be downloaded freely via Bittorrent. I believe there is a link at the site.

Hopefully I've helped you out a bit, despite the obvious bias involved on my part.

Companies aren't people, and as such do not have the same rights that people have

That is incorrect. In the eyes of the law, corporations are considered to have the same rights as people. Juristic person describes some of this, but I found the documentary The Corporation to be enlightening on the matter.

Hmm. Not a directly comparable situation -- arguably the opium traders were acting in Britain's interest (reversing the yawning deficit from the tea trade) while not doing harm to Britain itself (the same way Francis Drake was knighted for acts of piracy against Spanish vessels). The Colombian drug cartels, on the other hand, perpetrated acts of violence in Colombia itself (though as I understand it, most non-governmental actors over there, left and right, finance their operation with drug money too).

But then again, the robber barons of 19th century U.S. certainly became respectable, even though their monopolies arguably harmed their own country..

In these days of global outsourcing, the closest equivalent to the old British trading houses are probably companies like Nike and Disney, that are still partly family-owned and whose benefits to the countries they outsource manufacturing to are questionable*

* http://www.thecorporation.com/

You may want to see the free documentary called, The Corporation, which tells the history of how the law and rights have evolved the governing force behind corporations, along with how the constitution amendment that freed slaves seeded the quest for greed and corporation gaining the legal status of a person.

Google has never been any better or worse than the average corporation. They are, after all a corporation with all the intrinsic qualities. For more on intrinsic qualities of a corporation see "The Corporation" one of the best documentaries in many years.
Their mottos and slogans are nothing more than marketing platitudes designed first of all to defend and protect their business plan.

http://thecorporation.com/

Right *there* -- you hit it on the nose.

I don't have the link, but remember (and belive) reading about when Walt Disney and friends were first shown a VCR device for diplaying their movies.

They were absolutely HORRIFIED with the concept! People can have their friends over and allow them to watch. They can watch it more than once. You can't count the number of people watching it, and so HOW are you going to charge them for it??

Their whole objection (world-view at the time) was that they made a movie, expected to fill seats, and then charge for those seats for every showing. Since they controlled (OK, were in cahoots with) the distribution and delivery methods, this was a shocker! They suddenly couldn't control (read: charge) for those methods, which was how they paid their employees, themselves, and their shareholders.

This wasn't a technology advance, this was abhorrent!

As I remember, they nixed the idea, with great prejudice.

And on a different topic, http://www.thecorporation.com./ In particular, companies are expected, no _mandiated_, to make as much money as possible for their shareholders (constituants??) The RIAA and friends *have* to do this. If not, as a shareholder (of 1 stock, after I buy one from www.oneshare.com so that it looks nice on display in the courtroom), *I* can sue them for deleriction of duty and make a mint.

So blame the media companies only for what they do, but remember who *taught* them all of this and told them it was good -- blame their parents, the government (and by implication, **US**.)

-cmb

I'm always confused by the way people claim Microsoft is an evil company. The leadership of Microsoft has never been evil. To the contrary, they do tremendous good for all sorts of charitable causes.

Well, I always thought the same about MS... I do not dislike its products although I dislike its MONOPOLY PRACTICES. Aside of that, as everyone else said we could argue that Microsoft and Bill Gate's foundation are completely separate thing... ... at least I thought so, unfortunately it happens that Mr. Gates wisely used his "unevil" foundation to /push/ my country into using Microsoft's solutions instead of Open Source ones... now *THAT* is bad...

You can read about it on this article . You might recognize the name of Miguel de Icaza who was one of the principals on the e-Mexico initative.

an interesting snippet:
"I thought I was going to be the only person for Linux," de Icaza said. "But HP surprised me, IBM surprised me and Sun surprised me."

Despite general agreement that open-source technologies would be more flexible and cost efficient, Mexico's Linux revolution was quashed after Fox met with Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates, according to de Icaza.

"Bill Gates flew down to Mexico, and they announced a donation of $30 million dollars ... and Linux was dropped," de Icaza said.

And here is where he used his nice foundation:
The software maker has also allotted $10 million to train workers in small and mid-size businesses, along with an additional grant from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation to the country's Vamos México program to be used to move the country's libraries online. .

Note that this "Vamos Mexico" foundation is being investigaed for fraud and corruption in Mexico.

So yeah, I used to defend Bill Gate's foundation with the premise that, even though the Corporation "Microsoft" was bad, that did not mean the foundation was bad... but the e-Mexico issue made me change my views.

As for your question:
Where exactly does the evil come from? How do a group of people who are not evil get together and do something evil?

My thought has always been that a Corporation is evil by definition, because the objective of any corporation is to profit, no matter what they do. You should see The Corporation film. They explain it very well. Basically, a corporation has all the properties and rights a human been has... except that it does NOT have a "soul" or "conscience" or whatever you want to call it. That is why it has no "minimal ethics" and you see corporations going to the end of the third world where slaving is allowed in order to maximize their profits which is what they do (Nike, Starbucks, Apple, etc, etc etc...).

I assume the parent wrote about ebook versions of printed books, which governments already buy to give to students in public schools. It would make sense then.

If these books were produced without the costs of printing and distributing physical books, they would certainly cost less, for they could be digitally copied and distributed.

If ebooks sold to the general public actually do not cost less than their physical counterparts (I don't know if this is so), it's because the printing corporations are extracting even more profit buy charging relatively more, given the less work their employees have to produce and distribute ebooks, compared to the cost of producing and distributing physical books.

I, for one, do think ebooks must be less expensive (given the reduced costs of production and distribution) -- even if ebooks have their own features and advantages over physical books, for they have disadvantages and lack features too.

I always found it particularly ironic that the film was made by Big Picture Media Corporation, according to their website - a subsidiary company of British Columbia Film. I think BC's Annual Report speaks volumes:

Economic Impact: Film and television production has emerged as a global industry with a worth of approximately $50 billion annually. Almost every country around the globe now competes for a share of this growing and very lucrative market

If you haven't seen it, download it for free.

Big difference. In this case the news item is clearly attributed to the nonprofit group. Those fake news stories are passed off as being 'real' when they were in fact funded by corporations with an agenda. If the tv news reports were to say " we now present this story produced by a public relations firm working for Exxon Mobil" the actual ethical problem would go away. of course most news organizations wouldn't be caught dead doing that. But they'll pass them off with news if they think they can get away with it.
For a better understanding of corporations and why they do these kinds of underhanded things, watch:
http://www.thecorporation.com/

well they are portable, imagine kid from hong kong comes down to airport in say frankfurt, wants a new game, and his gameboy tells him to take a hike. I'd toss that console pretty fast. Stationary entertainment systems don't travel as much, so their market share won't be dented as much by the "annoyed" customers. Or so I'd think from their prespective. I mean even if you get copy of windows, you don't own it you get licenced to use a copy that can be , logistically speaking revoked. Thinking in twisted corporate ways, sometimes lets you figure a way to untwist them.
Remember corporations of now have been desclared to have presonalities of psychopath [1]. What can you really expect ;-)

[1] http://www.thecorporation.com/index.php?page_id=2

To be fair, this incident was a LOCAL station and not Fox News Channel. However, the station is owned by Fox and not an affiliate.
They were a CBS station before some purchases had affiliations jumping around all over the dial IIRC, and part of the news cast remains. They do have a decidely biased slant on their reporting and some really asinine op ed pieces, but then again they also have a pretty damn good weather department and "Skytower HD Viper" which is nice here in Florida I suppose.
The Corporation also had a bit about this incident and along with the decidely smug segment that aired during the news broadcast about the "victory" in court. Of course, there was no mention of any sort of lying or attempt at altering the original piece, but that's pretty much to be expected.

Correct. A business makes money.

If a corporation were a human individual, it would be an individual with severe psychosis.

News organizations don't stay in business when they blatently lie and misrepresent the core facts of an issue.

Thats the current assumption of the national media, But the facts show that they dont have to tell the truth. Go see the movie The Corporation Here is a brief about what happened when fox news wouldnt tell the truth.

THE PRICE OF WHISTLEBLOWING
It turns out that standing for the public good is an expensive proposition. Ask Jane Akre and Steve Wilson, two investigative reporters fired by Fox News after they refused to water down a story on rBGH, a controversial synthetic hormone widely used in the United States (but banned in Europe and Canada) to rev up cows' metabolism and boost their milk production. Because of the increased production, the cows suffer from mastitis, a painful infection of the udders. Antibiotics must then be injected, which find their way into the milk, and ultimately reduce people's resistance to disease.

They eventually went to court and lost the case on the grounds that media companies are not required to tell the truth. So Im sorry to say my friend, they are in the business of not telling the truth, when it could cause them economic damage. They weigh the costs and if its to expensive to tell the truth, they lie, its just not brought out into the public.

The Corporation is a documentary with left wing, right wing, capitalist, and academia views describing what the corporation really is and why these types of things occur.

In essense, big businesses are owned by shareholders who are far-enough removed that they can profit from a corporation's illegal actions without directly being responsible or affected (well, maybe with their shares falling in value).

So, this is not suprising, this will happen and in fact it *should* happen unless the likes of Ballmer can prove to their shareholders why it would be in Microsoft's best interests NOT to sue other entities that are violating their patents, or to put it another way - not playing the game according to the rules (that they sometimes write through lobbying).

Ahhh....wouldn't the world be so much better off without publicly traded companies?

OK, so here's another idea. When creating your games, make sure to contract everything where the rights to any franchises and whatnot go back to the original employee who came up with them in the event that your company goes out of business or is bought by another one ;)

Riiight. There's no such thing as "excess profit". If a business could sustainably produce somthing for one cent, and sell it for a hundred dollars, and get away with it, then they'd gleefully do so. Go watch The Corporation and Enron: The smartest guys in the room to get a taste of what businesses are really like.