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Is 'Corporate Citizen' an Oxymoron?
theodp writes "Citing expert testimony from a recent House Science Subcommittee hearing on Globalizing Jobs and Technology, The Economic Populist challenges the conventional wisdom that maximizing profits should be a corporation's only responsibility, suggesting it's time for the US to align its corporations to the interests of the nation instead of vice versa. Harvard's Bruce Scott warns that today's global economy is much like the US in the later 19th century, when states competed for funds generated by corporations and thus raced to the bottom as they granted generous terms to unregulated firms. Sound familiar, Pennsylvania? How about you, Michigan?"
this is advocating a form of fascism, right?
Let the capitalist engine run unfettered.
the United States of American, is technically a Corporation aswell, so a United States of America Citizen, is also a citizen of a corporation.
However, an "American Citizen" is not.
http://www.jusbelli.com/usofa_is_corp.html
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lVsMUpPgdT0
http://home.iae.nl/users/lightnet/creator/federalgovernment.htm
yadda yadda...
In a sense they are right. If society on a whole is doing better than it did before than the environment the Corporations have to work in will improve and their profits will increase.
Through better education a society will gain individuals who will generally be able to earn more money and therefore consume more products and allow for a diversity in competing genres of products.
As in, it takes a bit of education for certain hobbies and if the population on a whole is more rounded it opens more niches and markets for new revenue streams.
Secondly, a corporation serves the interest of its shareholders in the end even if it fails to make a profit they can still choose to keep the current CEO and board if they don't vote them out (that is rare though) and the self interest of shareholders often include their own well being so if you own shares in a factory and they produced chemicals that caused the shareholder or someone they know cancer, they might take it up with the board of directors even though change in company policy might cause a loss in profit.
Having money does you no good if you are dead and dying right?
"I am the king of the Romans, and am superior to rules of grammar!"
-Sigismund, Holy Roman Emperor (1368-1437)
"Corporate Honesty" "Corporate Integrity" ... now those are oxymorons!
... at first, that these articles would lead to a concerted 'middle finger' aimed at Exxon/Mobile/etc, their excessive first quarter profits, and the like.
I interpreted much of TFA/links as little pissing matches involving legal loopholes that are so far below the obvious problem.
Too much crap in my house has a little sticker on it which reads "Made in [!USA]".
I'm pretty sure the Soviet Union tried that experiment already with unsatisfactory results.
Dupe
Wow, that is a HUGE straw man you have there.
A Corporation's rights and responsibilities should be listed in a charter, and failing to uphold their responsibilities should cause them to lose their rights.
The lack of a charter has caused corporations to grow to be superior to nations, but with little or no accountability.
Corporations have only two responsibilities: Maximize profits, and follow the law.
It is our responsibility to make the law just.
This is how a democracy harnesses the power of greed to provide justice and prosperity to all.
From 1917 to about 1980, fear of communism helped keep capitalism in line. During that period, capitalism had ideological competition, and there was a very real fear on the part of business owners that their companies might be nationalized. During that period, most telcos were state-owned. Britain nationalized the steel and coal industries during the 1950s, and most of the rental housing units in the country were state-owned. During the Great Depression, the U.S. Government ran many programs that employed people and built things, a form of socialism.
For over a century, communism was taken seriously as an alternative to capitalism. (Yes, it never worked all that well in Russia. Neither did monarchy, democracy, capitalism, or oligarchy. Russia did better in its communist period than before or since.) During that period, when it faced competition, capitalism had to deliver an ever-higher standard of living. Which it did. There was more talk of "corporate responsibility" during that period than there is now.
Companies used to fear public opinion. That ended during the Reagan administration. (This is why Reagan was such a darling of business.)
The triumph of unbridled capitalism may be temporary. Something similar happened in 1900-1929, when railroad and power companies ruled the world. That ended in the Depression, and for the next fifty years, businesses were strongly regulated and kept in line.
Rev. Wright, is that you?
"It is no surprise that the especially well connected and rich never die of AIDS (like Magic Johnson) while the poor in Africa are decimated by it."
The rich and well-connected don't die of many diseases that kill millions in cultures that produce failed states.
Africans are responsible for Africa, and results vary by country. Adults who reject modern science and prefer different AIDS "cures" (such as sex with a child or virgin) will make choices that have consequences...
"This post is an artistic work of fiction and falsehood. Only a fool would take anything posted here as fact."
...seem to be based on green power and big unions. Nothing to do with capitalism...
The Army reading list
Magic Johnson has HIV, not AIDS. While they are related - and often the former leads to the latter - HIV does not mean certain death; whereas AIDS does.
Caesar si viveret, ad remum dareris.
It's up to people to elect governments that will effectively regulate corporate behaviour - to set the rules of the game then let them play.
One of the biggest distortions that is happening in politics is that corporations have more resources and organization than ordinary people or even most ad-hoc groups of people, so the corporations can apply these massive resources to buying influence and opinion, through massive issue-framing and
marketing campaigns, through direct lobbying, and thus they can buy the steering control of even a democratic government.
Constitutions should be amended to prevent this excessive influence of corporations on democratic governance.
Then let them play again, because they do whatever we let them do very efficiently.
For more musings on group dynamics and social hierarchies, see my "blog" at http://criticality.wordpress.com/
Where are we going and why are we in a handbasket?
Another issue left out of TFA, was which stockholders interests are being represented by the board of directors? A stockholder who plans on holding the stock for the long term is going to have a very different idea of ideal corporate governance than a stockholder who wants to flip the shares as quickly as possible (e.g. Warren Buffett vs Carl Icahn).
A much better read on the subject is the debate between Milton Friedman vs John Mackey (Whole Foods Founder) on the Social Responsibility of Business.
Friedman is of course credited with coming up with the "Conventional Wisdom" referenced in the article.
"there is one and only one social responsibility of business--to use its resources and engage in activities designed to increase its profits so long as it stays within the rules of the game, which is to say, engages in open and free competition without deception or fraud." - Milton Friedman
http://www.reason.com/news/show/32239.html
TFA said maximize share value, which is closer to what I think the true financial mission of the corporation should be. "Maximizing profits" tends to lead to a short-term mentality (because profits in the distant future are unpredictable) and can result in corner cutting, with poor results. Think of Dell Computer under Ed Rollins' tenure as CEO, to take one random example.
Share price is supposed to factor in future results, albeit with present value discounting. Of course investors can be faddish or misled, too. Maybe a better test would be some sort of average of share price over the next three years.
Today, the very concept of a corporation entails the idea of profit maximization. That's why singling out one (Nike, Monsanto, Microsoft) and getting angry at it for making short-sighted moves in the name of profit is like getting angry at an alligator for eating meat. What did you expect? That's what it does.
"Corporate citizenship" or "corporate responsibility" are nothing more than marketing slogans. You can't ask an alligator to eat veggieburgers, and you can't ask a corporation to play nice. Even if it actually did so, its competitors would roll over it.
If you want an economy that responds to more than the richest 1% of 1% of the population, you need economic entities that are qualitatively different -- that measure success differently. That doesn't mean more government interference, because the state and the corporation have the same flaws, for the same reasons. The state and the corporation are rivals, not enemies.
Rather, what we need are economic bodies that are expressly designed in the interests of their employees and clients. The effective way to do it is through cooperatives.
There are countless examples that demonstrate that employee control works. It avoids practically all the evils of the corporate model: outsourcing, management/labor tension, secrecy, poor working conditions, creative accounting, and the list goes on.
Co-ops automatically are what corporations want you to believe they are. A co-op is a citizen of your community in a way a corporation never could be, because all its owners are citizens of your community.
What if I do the same thing, and I do get different results?
IMHO, most long term successes in business have balanced profit and citzenship. Look at businesses that have been around for 30+ years and you'll find that most try to balance their profit with philanthropy. One example that comes to mind is Target (formerly Dayton Hudson). Both corporately and at each retail store they have a policy of supporting worthy causes. WalMart also has a similar policy, but doesn't seem to apply it to it's own employees. ~
One may argue the motives of corporate philanthropy, but it does seem to help healthy businesses stay in the fight over the long haul.
Invenio via vel creo
Africa is a CONTINENT. Not a country.
That is what government regulations for. The social contribution from corporation comes in the form of corporate taxes that the government should apply for public good, like invading disobeying countries, spying on everybody and supporting countries that have never gave us any good, only troubles. /youknowwhatoff
The actions of corporation on the behalf of the society are voluntary actions of their owners. They do not benefit directly the owners but there are long term benefits in this life and hereafter for those who do good and forbid evil.
I do not believe in karma. "Funny"=-6. Do good and forbid evil. Yours, Oft-Offtopic Flamebaiting Troll.
The more capable you are, the bigger responsibility you have to your country. Therefore, the largest of corporations should be pillars of altruism. Sure their focus is to make money, but thats not impossible to do at the same time as making the world a better place.
The current corporate governance situation began with the "shareholder rights" movement that started in the 1980's. That movement was fostered by corporate raiders who had no long term interest in the corporations they attacked. They wanted to get in, make a quick profit, and get out.
The movement was focused on disregarding the rights and interests of the non-shareholding stakeholders in a corporation -- the communities in which they operate, their employees, their customers, those affected by their impacts on the environment and markets, and possibly others.
Those rights and interests had previously been protected by unwritten understandings, the so-called "social compact". The shareholder rights movement effectively broke the social compact because there was no legally-enforceable impediment to their doing so.
The way to fix this is to restore the social compact and protect the interests of non-shareholder stakeholders by law, regulation, or contract. This means restoring the power of unions, strengthening regulation of markets, and providing safeguards for the interests of communities, especially those that provide benefits to corporations without written agreements reflecting the reciprocal obligations of those corporations.
As a working technologist for the past two decades (I started in IT as a pre-teen) I have been content to let the suits figure out the economics and leave me to play with my toys. But, in the last few years since having a family of my own I have begun to see how unsustainable some "corporate cultures" really are and how a business could be seen as a way to find and keep people you think are "of quality" around yourself.
... the vote of people with control over special interests counts more than the vote of common people. That's because the lobbyists like to eat.
I don't think most businesses operate like this because we are developing a "management class" in America. These are people who graduate from school as bosses. They don't work their way up to become a boss or manager they come out of the factory sparkling and new as managers.
That creates a fundamental disconnect between the work force and management. It's one that creates a first and second class "citizenship" in the corporation. In many ways if you believe there is such a thing as a "corporate citizen" then this new path through the corporate ladder means that we have reverted to a feudal system in society.
In other words, we may be making "American Style" Democracy obsolete or unworkable. Democracy (in America) is already evolving
What this means is that corporate profit maximizing interests usually count more than individual or family interests over time. And that means whatever feeds profits best will win. If human rights feed profits, great. If family stability feeds profits, awesome. If healthy employees help profits, wonderful. But, how do retirement plans feed profits? How does universal health care help profits?
These things do help profits by creating a more stable society where individuals can take risks, make inventions, try new careers. But, they don't help any particular corporation. They don't help profits in the 18 month window. These are things that are financially stupid on anything but the 100 year scale.
Take the example of the educational systems in India. A net profit loss for fifty years that eventually lead to an economic boom in the 1990's. That's my big example of a long-sighted investment in the people that will not pay off any particular corporation in a time-line that can be appreciated by share-holders en masse... however a visionary could see it.
It is a sad fact that some of the things that help the citizens of a nation help all corporations that do business in that nation... and that means that a corporation that is doing those things is helping its competitor. That could mean that strategically undermining a nation may in fact boost profits for a corporate entity which can do things to hurt its competitors and find ways around that damage to make itself more competitive.
The goal of a government (in my view) should be to seek ways to balance the goals of profit making against long term goals. Both sets of interests serve human good because employees are citizens and so are share holders and they benefit all from profits in the short term and that is good. Governments can create incentives for long term investments in your competitors by creating short term incentives to do so using tools such as those dreaded taxes and tax breaks and inventing artificial economies such as the "Income Tax" industry which CPAs and income tax software vendors make their fortunes on.
The interesting thing is that Governments create jobs using red-tape.
[signature]
It's not really a problem with corporations, the problem is when you take away the accountability of the owners. That's the major loophole. Limited liability is one hell of a loophole...
Someone's confusing the word "flame" with the word "fact", I guess...
Caveat Utilitor
My friend has a Microsoft tattoo. Full colour wavy windows thingy. Apart from my forthcoming Tux tat, is there anything else I can do to help this corporate drone before he is forever lost?
A corporation is a "pretend person" created by a governmental process. There are various kinds, but they're all imaginary: charities, educational corporations, membership associations, foundations, etc. Corporations have no existence beyond what the government chooses for them, so their functions can be adjusted by the government as necessary.
No fascism about it.
I piss off bigots.
Maximizing profits IS a corporation's only responsibility, and that is the way it should be.
A corporation is a tool for making money. Period. That's neither good nor bad, it's just a tool.
It is not a person. It is not ethical or unethical, moral or immoral, any more than a hammer is.
The problem is that there is this quasi-religion that has grown up around corporations, fostered by corporate-sponsored economists and think tanks, based on the belief that giving them total free reign will produce a shower of benefit upon us all. Enacting special legislation on their behalf will increase the shower to a deluge. Anything which restricts their freedom or makes them responsible for their actions will bring disaster on us all. Nuts.
Maximizing profits is wonderful. But expecting anything else from a corporation is stupid. That is not their function.
Communism is a whole other thing. Go back to Poli Sci 101.
I piss off bigots.
If we start asking corporations to do something else as well, that something else won't be objective, especially if it is supposed to act in the interests of the nation. First, serving two goals that will undoubtedly conflict at times will only hurt their ability to serve either. Second, that other goal won't be set by the corporation, making the goals and plans of it subject to someone who may know nothing about it -- say, someone in Washington, D.C. And that person is going to be elected sometime every 2, 4, or 6 years, and who is not free from the undue influence of competitors and other third parties.
This post is actually turning into a post against regulation, which is essentially the goal of the article. But since the way they propose we determine "national interest" is through legislation, and since the legislators change every couple years, it would make it much better for corporations and us if they left "national interest" to someone else.
No they aren't. Every person who owns stock in that company is interested in that company's increased business abroad. Every consumer of that company's goods is concerned with the prices they can achieve through going global. But everyone who would rather buy local or not buy products from certain countries is free to buy from somewhere else. That varigated demand is all about higher standards of living and allowing each person to decide what that higher standard is for him or her. That freedom is only provided by the multitude of companies we have making our stuff for us. Forcing corporations to be held accountable to subjective "national interest" is going to limit their freedom to do what they want with their money (within reason) and limit our freedom to do what we want with our money for some cause that we as consumers may not believe in.
We vote with our dollars. Legislating a national interest infringes on our ability to determine for ourselves what that is. It would be great if we could eliminate competition and instead all cooperate (cooperation is inherently more efficient than competition). But since we'll never all cooperate, especially on an issue as broad and complex as national interest, we ought to stick to maximizing competition.
Funtime Candy Wow! - my plan for eventually conquering Japan.
Bird flu? They've been marketing that one for a few years now.
Caveat Utilitor
So who cares, who is going to do something ... as soon as I can go off planet ... I am getting lost in the new wilderness and ain't ever coming back.
... So, no matter how big their prick is ... I am safe from infection or worse.
Yo! ET call me ASAP. I wanna leave this company store way far behind me
Unaccountable leaders are masters, and unrepresented people are slaves. How do US and EU fare?
I agree, except I think this is not what the government should be doing, but what PEOPLE should be doing.
But I guess we, like corporations, are more interested in the short-term benefit of lower costs, rather than the long-term benefit of a business that keeps what we spend in the community as much as possible AND is directly answerable to our needs...and is usually staffed by people who are proud to be part of such an organization and are proud of the good work they do, resulting in...doing their jobs well.
Can I mod something +1 Scary if it's true but I wish it weren't?
That's what I really want: totally unregulated germ warfare laboratories!
The capitalist engine DID run unfettered until about WWI. Children in the mines, unsafe working conditions, rampant pollution, anybody who wants to unionize gets fired, women paid less than men for doing the same job... yeah, let's bring back them good ol' days.
I piss off bigots.
Corporations have been bad citizens ever since the courts defined fiduciary duty as "show a higher profit every quarter."
They say the mind is the first thing to
It's not quite the same, is it? People are held to much higher levels of accountability than corporations. Either hold the corps to the same levels, or make them accountable by taxing them and spending the money to right their wrongs.
Please hand over an addition 20% of your income to help make up for the national deficit.
Blar.
See The Corporation: The Pathological Pursuit of Profit and Power
See also The Myth of the Good Corporate Citizen
They don't exist in natural law; they are a fiction established by legislation. We can set them up to do anything we want them to do (hence nonprofit corporations, etc.). There's no reason why we can't change what they're supposed to accomplish.
I piss off bigots.
You force people who built their business in the USA to stick around even if it means less profits.
If the business owners don't agree, freeze their accounts, raid their homes, put them in prison.
If they have money overseas, use leverage to get those funds.
You seem to want to give these people the ability to do whatever they want by crying that the sky is falling if they are regulated and made to play fair.
You've crafted a false dichotomy, and all your concerns can be addressed by new laws. These companies get very rich off of our nation, they will be forced to give back to the people who made them rich.
Blar.
As a 'human' citizen I am subject to a great deal of rules and regulations. I have to pay tax's, I have to be tested to get a license to drive a car, I'm not allowed to harm or kill anyone, I'm not allowed access to private company data.....
If corporations were held up to the same standards then it would be rather cool, wouldnt it?
What if.... corporations paid tax's, passed tests to get relevant licenses, not harm or kill anyone and were not allowed to snoop on our private data......
Can I mod something +1 Scary if it's true but I wish it weren't?
Forgive my ignorance, but has any corporation in recent history actually been penalized for any such violation? Has any been dissolved for same?
Curious,
"What in the name of Fats Waller is that?"
"A four-foot prune."
The people of Michigan want fair wages and a clean environment to live in. How dare they! They'll eat poision and breath coal dust and LIKE it or else all the companies will leave and they will die.
Blar.
Corporations are self-interested. And plenty of them go out of business when their entire concern is making money. They're not going to engage in any risky behavior like putting something ahead of survival.
What you'd get would be a lot of clever lawyering to get around whatever regulations were put in. Then a lot of lobbying to do away with it.
Weaselmancer
rediculous.
Then write the equations that define the actions needed by each corporation to meet that definition of national interest.
Then collect the initial conditions that will allow solving those equations.
Then compute for the age of the universe.
Then throw the results away because conditions changed meanwhile. Do it again.
At the end of a long iteration, throw the results away because people don't act like machines, and you can't program for an open system.
How can a slashdot crowd throw away everything it knows about science and technology and allow such propositions to be debated as though they have some basis in external reality?
Lew
"The Constitution, the WHOLE Constitution, and nothing but the CONSTITUTION."
I don't have a link handy, I'm afraid, but I've heard from friends and read elsewhere that numerous MBA programs (at least in the US) actively advocate getting away with as much as possible in pursuit of profits. "Oh yeah, and don't break the law, kids (wink wink, nudge nudge)." It's not necessarily about following the law, instead it's about getting away with it when you don't.
Cheers,
"What in the name of Fats Waller is that?"
"A four-foot prune."
Is it not the duty of the US to serve its companies with information eavesdropped ( or spied ) from other companies worldwide? Do not ask what you can do for your country... or did I get something wrong? Maybe the second bullet came from this direction?
Ms. Blair has excellent credentials and affiliations with first rate universities and organizations. But with no law degree why is she telling Congress what the law should be? It appears that she is advocating corporate responsibility through increased regulation. She lives here in the US where we have capitalism. I don't have time to waste reading her book with its faulty premise. I learned in high school the principle that corporations exist to maximize profits. No mention has ever been made in high school, college, or even when I was in law school, that a corporation has any obligation other than to the shareholders.
Click any of the links, laugh a minute, then please mod down.
"Africa is a CONTINENT. Not a country."
Are you fucking retarded? Read what he said: "Africans are responsible for Africa, and results vary by country."
That "vary by country" part is a terribly obvious implication that there are multiple countries in Africa.
For fuck's sake, you mouth breather.
What may be the ultimate penalty is if dissolution leads to the revocation of the limited liability clause of virtually all corporations - institutional investors would be paying a lot more attention to management following the law if they knew they would be on the hook for knowing of illegal actions undertaken by management.
FWIW, one person who probably holds the most responsibility for the "Maximizing share price" BS is William Lerach.
I know that action is taken quite often; here's a few examples of such violations. Contrary to conventional wisdom, boards tend to draw the line at violating the articles of incorporation, as their own stakes - their own interests - live and die with the corporation. You'll usually see those guilty of such actions readily served up by the company - witness Ken Lay, the Rigas', and many others. The board will look for their own interests, and those usually align with the majority of the stockholders (since they're elected by the stockholders).
Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!
A corporation is essentially a group of people legally organized to do business. Thus the fact that a corporation's sole responsibilities to follow the law and make money stem from this fact.
Large corporations do engage in large social programs (such as the Ronald McDonald House for families) because they believe (and studies by organizations such as Harvard show) that such philanthropic acts improve the environment in which corporations operate--which help the corporate bottom line. (One reason why many tech companies have contribution matching programs is to make the area in which those tech companies operate better places to live, which help attract better quality workers.)
For anyone to stop and suggest that a corporation must (rather than 'should') engage in social responsibility--and to base that argument in a 'class warfare' style argument that corporations which solely profit seek are somehow evil (forgetting that even philanthropic activities are part of corporate profit seeking) is to suggest the people who created that corporation must engage in activities outside of the reason why they came together in the first place.
In the United States we bristle at the notion that people should be forced to provide services against their will in order to satisfy some notion of a "social good." The last time we forced a subset of our population to do work for what we considered at the time a large-scale social good without providing them compensation, we wound up fighting a Civil War over the issue...
The other way around. Fascism is where the citizens are ruled by Government in bed with Corporations. TFA is about making corporations responsible to the citizens. In essence, the concept is "the opposite", or at least antithetical, to Fascism.
Corporations (in the guise of the people controlling them) have lusted after the rights of citizenship since the middle of the 19th Century. I say give them what they want, but not exactly the way they wanted it -- being a corporate 'citizen' could mean being subject to all of the risks that we flesh-and-blood citizens take when exercise our rights, and being subject to the punishments as well. I've written a sequence of about two dozen short stories about one such company. The execs stole from the employee insurance fund, and arranged things so that the company took the fall. Unfortunately for them, the Supreme Court had already granted full rights to companies, so things don't go exactly as planned. The story of Fremont-Wayfarer's incarceration starts like this, in a story called "Full Circle"...
Edward Reese, 62 and a tad too well-fed, wrinkled his nose at the smell of the badly cleaned kitchenette in the motel room he'd just checked into. He didn't even want to think about what might be living in the mattresses. "Well," he grumbled, "at least I won't have to sleep in this dump."
He glanced at the ancient clock-radio on the night stand. Five-thirteen. About right for a five o'clock meeting, except that there had been nobody to walk in on. Re-aiming the bulky remote laying on the room's small table, he switched on the TV news, and sat down to wait. He hated waiting for anyone, especially people he considered beneath his station.
"...in the pending grand theft case against lodging and food-services conglomerate, Fremont-Wayfarer. The Honorable Wilfred Clary, who had presided over the murder trial of the now-defunct Consolidated Communications Corporation, has been assigned to the case. According to our legal analyst, the precedent set in the Supreme Court's SandHill Realty decision, which granted..."
There was a knock at the door. Reese turned off the news.
"Sorry I'm late," the rumpled 30-something said as the door swung open. "Small-town traffic jam."
You can read the rest here:
http://klurgsheld.wordpress.com/2007/09/01/short-story-full-circle/
P. Orin Zack
How is it a "race to the bottom" when states compete provide the best services for the lowest price (tax burden)? To attract companies, states, and countries, must do two things. 1) Keep taxes low enough to attract business and employees, 2) Provide the services and infrastructure which will attract the best employees. Neither of these entail bending laws to benefit business. It is not about favoring business over people, or the other way around. It is about removing favoritism and letting people get on with improving their way of life.
Is this hard? Of course it is, welcome to the real world where there is no free lunch.
Make no mistake, if our states do not start competing for business, then other countries will.
Spencer Ogden
Corporations can also decide to behave in ways that are good for the community, but usually they also serve to draw more consumers. It isn't just the leader or the people, but the "corporate peson" is involved. Often this happens through sponsoring local events or donating materials/time/money/employees to community activities. Usually they find it's good for business. That material/time/money didn't belong to the people at the corporation, but to the corporation itself. When Home Depot donates to Habitat for Humanity, it does so as a corporation. Granted people make the decisions at companies, but those decisions cause the company to act. So I think we mean the same thing when you say only the people make decisions and I say corporations make decisions.
Funtime Candy Wow! - my plan for eventually conquering Japan.
This article is whack. Libertarianism is just as valid now as it was back then. I'm sorry if you don't agree, you must be a /communist/!
RTFP, I didn't refer to "Africa" as a country.
African culture often produces failed states, but not always.
"This post is an artistic work of fiction and falsehood. Only a fool would take anything posted here as fact."
Interesting, thank you.
I'm not familiar with the Rigas, but as far as Ken Lay is concerned, one could probably argue that the board didn't abandon him until it was far too late to do anything productive beyond throwing a scapegoat out the door. The kinds of power supply shell games that Enron's teams had dreamed up are patent fraud just in common sense terms, let alone the various definitions for exactly why and how what they did was illegal. I must surmise either that the board was wholly ignorant, and therefore something close to criminally negligent regarding proper corporate governance, or that the board had at least some idea of what was going on, and was copacetic, and therefore complicit, until the law came calling. Either way, Enron doesn't appear to be a good example for how corporate articles are supposed to govern company behaviour and inform the board of directors' and other management decisions, inasmuch as the company was taken down not for violating its own articles, but rather for widespread and highly disruptive fraud. Then again, perhaps I'm missing a salient point?
Cheers,
"What in the name of Fats Waller is that?"
"A four-foot prune."
but most of them don't. There are congressmen who are simply industry shills. Or, congresswhores as I like to call them.
#1 on the list? Howard Berman.
Though mostly to blame are all of congress who passes legislation written by industry lobbyists.
It's happening now. Industries are lobbying congress to pass legislation which protects their business model, no matter how outdated it is.
This, according to Mussolini, is fascism. I agree. Corporations have become the government. They are in government only to protect and enforce being profitable.
If they aren't profitable, they break the law. And much like Darth Sidious, they will "Make it legal!"
As far as I'm concerned, some industries have gone way too far and are in gross violation of the constitution. The oil companies are all in collusion to fix prices. Since all we know about market economies says competition should be driving prices lower at some point.
The media industry buys senators and representatives off so they pass bills for them.
Corporations are anti-citizen. They are letting the American economy stagnate by investing in foreign nations. When you pay salaries to foreign workers, that money doesn't re-enter the American economy. It enters foreign economies. But it always trickles to the top. I think congress should mandate a law that states that "No employee of a corporation may make more than 10 times what the lowest paid employee makes". This would go a long way towards increasing the profits of corporations. Once executives stop making million dollar bonuses, that money can go back into the company.
If the CEO wants a raise, everyone gets a raise. If that's possible, it's because the whole company is extremely profitable. If not, the CEO shouldn't benefit for not producing results.
They're using their grammar skills there.
If the local manager of a store chain with 100,000 employees forces his 20 underlings to work night shifts without extra pay, the demand is typically along the lines that the board of directors be imprisoned.
No United Nations Secretary General will ever be demanded by those same people to be imprisoned because of anything, much less a UN deputy in some far-off country deciding to sell a container of food aid to the highest bidder.
Selective applicability of the law depending on whom you love and hate - interesting.
You are reading between the lines WAY too strenuously.
I wrote: "the concept". You are talking about implementation, and making quite a few assumptions along the way. The concept was as the author (and I) stated.
P Further, while "the state" must necessarily enact legislation, it does so under pressure from common citizens. (Theoretically, of course... that's the way it is SUPPOSED to work.) But in any case, there is nothing at all "fascist" about citizens pressuring the Government to make corporations more friendly to those same citizens. I think you missed the point.
Most corporate executives seem to have MBAs. Therefore, most can be presumed to have actually gone through MBA programs, with said programs likely having at least some impact on how such executives view their own responsibilities within the corporation and the responsibilities of the corporation as a whole.
Ergo, if enough executives are trained to view the law as an impediment that is to be surmounted whenever possible, this viewpoint, in the aggregate, will have a significant impact on how corporations behave. QED.
Cheers,
"What in the name of Fats Waller is that?"
"A four-foot prune."
If you understand the sampling problem your claim faces, you shouldn't use words like ergo and QED. One corrupt MBA program says little about MBA holders in general.
Nerd rage is the funniest rage.
How did this get marked as "troll?" Taking a position that is not popularly held is not 'trolling...'
Also, the views of executives should inform our expectations about how corporations *will* behave, not our expectations about how corporations *should* behave.
Nerd rage is the funniest rage.
The primary link is to Robert Oak's blog
- and Oak is unquestionably arguing for corporate governance enforced through legislation:
we must make corporate entities accountable to the citizenry of the United States. We must realize not only can we do precisely that, we must do precisely that. We must hold and make these US based corporations responsible and responsive to the United States national interest.
In order to convince lawmakers to pass legislation and enact policy we desperately need and also to console [sic] legislators, to assure such new legislation and policy would not be overturned in the courts...
- recalling the downfall of the National Recovery Administration {The Blue Eagle of the NRA] in 1935.
I am also uncomfortably reminded of the economic nationalism - or populism, if you prefer, of the Smoot-Hawley Tariff
Experiment fails you
What a strange and bizarre unreality Mr. Scott lives in. I wonder what color the sky is there. States competed for corporate funds? While many states certainly tried to extract taxes out of corporations in the 19th century, I don't think that's what he meant. A government "granting generous terms" by not regulating firms is like the mafia granting generous terms to the corner deli by not collecting protection racket extortion.
p.p.s. The idea that corporations must maximize profits is a new one. It came about because some malcontent stockholder sued their corporation for engaging in philanthropy.
Don't blame me, I didn't vote for either of them!
in theory, the two can coexist.
But in practice, theory does not work.
Hackers have long memories. It works both ways.
who's giving this a -1?
makes perfect sense and has very much to do with the second half of the (oxy)moronic term.
Hackers have long memories. It works both ways.
There should be a new legislative body created for the corporate entities. Companies may be considered a "person" in some ways, and they are certainly taxed, so they should have their own representation. The current solution where they have usurped real people's government thru lobbying would cease.
rewriting history since 2109
Orwell was criticizing English socialism. Those fascist's of WWII you speak of sprang from socialist countries. Orwell's hero admired the proles of the story.
The free market is antithetical to fascism. Fascists would claim direct control over the means of production. They would nationalize industries making them instruments of the state.
You have it exactly backwards. Free markets are a defense against fascism.
Why don't we just stop subsidizing both corporations *and* citizens?
It seems to me that corporations had a lot more to do with making the US a great country than did big government. Pity we flushed it all down the toilet with corruption and a nanny state.
Fascism must not be so bad then. I mean, Christians worship God, who they think is the strongest being in the Universe. Must be fascists, eh?
Libertarians worship liberty, because they believe that a totally free man is strong. I guess they are fascists too.
Ghandi thought that a free, totally non-violent man was strong. Fascist? You betcha.
And, in theory, if we had a system of governance that didn't worship strength, but still put people in Death Camps, you'd be ok with that, right? I mean, it's not perfect, but it's not fascist either.
Corporate citizen isn't any more oxymoronic than 'clean coal' or 'military intelligence'
"You'll get nothing, and you'll like it!"
It seems we agree.
Blar.
Even if you take an amoral approach, the responsibility of a corporations is to serve its owners. The most obvious way is by making money. But owners have other interests as well. As an owner I'm not well served if the corporation pays be a $10 dividend it earned by polluting my air and giving me cancer. As an American owner I'm not well served if my corporation pays me a $5 dividend it earned by selling advanced weaponry to China.
But taking a more enlightened view, owners of corporations are moral creatures who have moral obligations and moral duties. Our corporation should have the same moral obligations and moral duties we do because the corporation is acting our our behalf.
So yes, corporations should not just be good corporate citizens, they should also behave morally.
I often don't like the choices people make, but I like the fact that people make choices. That's why I'm a conservative.
I believe the issue is that cooperate entities in the US (and apparently elsewhere) have been given essentially all the rights of an actual person. But for the most part the people leading the corporation are protected from personal liability for the actions of the corporation. Furthermore there don't seem to be many ways to hold a corporation responsible either. You can't jail or execute a corporation. I seem to recall there was a time when the government could dissolve a corporation but that changed a long time ago.
The point of the article (to try to get back on topic) is that currently the people behind corporations use the argument of fiduciary responsibility as an excuse to base all decisions on short term financial gain and stock price. Regardless of whether those decisions are counter to the interests of the people of the planet, nation, or state in which they operate. Meanwhile, to attract business national and state governments keep reducing the responsibilities placed on corporations.
Some privacy policy Slashdot.
left leaning friends called some "right winger" a fascist I would be retired. The word fascist is thrown around far more by the left than the right. The left is constantly accusing the right of fascist policies, views, etc. when in reality, fascism is IMHO, best termed national socialism. Socialism is typically purely about class (workers vs. capitalists), division of assets, etc. (though each to more or less degrees depending on country and a "movement's" background). Fascism is about organizing society using socialist policies around the promotion of a particular country's interests by government control of economics and often times personal liberties as opposed to pure socialist class ideas. Socialism is about the plight of the individual, fascism is about the plight of a country. If you look at the early Nazi platform (minus the racial planks which predemoninately was unique to Nazi Germany - Italy's Mussolini actually had numerous Jews and other ethinicities in key government positions before jumping in bed with the Nazis) reads an awful lot like the Democratic National platform today. Workers rights, social contracts to transfer wealth to the lower rungs of the economic ladder, nationalized medical care, etc., were all key parts of the Nazi campaign propoganda. NOOOO - I am not comparing the Democrats to Nazis, I am comparing the ideological underpinnings of socialism (which the DNC has increasingly become the American Socialist Party to a large degree) to national socialism (errr, fascism) since both share a great deal in common and much of today's progressive movement (per Hillary Clinton how said she would rather be called progressive than liberal) can trace its roots back to the socialist and fascist movements of the '20s and '30s.
The idea that "power worship" is what drove fascists is laughable. It manifested itself that way in many cases since those that opposed a particular fascist movement were often the minority and the one thing that fascism/socialism cannot stand is dissent. Fascism in particular is about "everyone rowing the same direction" - it was not about who was weak or strong, it was about are you for us or against us. There are many examples in both Germany and Italy of very wealthy people either being "silenced" or fleeing the country, and it was not because of ethinic issues. They did not support the regime and were thus targetted by the movement. The current "green" movement is in many ways fascist since it advocates a restructing of national/world economics in support of not a nation, as is usually the case, but the Earth itself. Those that disagree are often denigrated, called inconsiquential, traitors, or worse.
Modern day fascists would have no problem with the poor, the weak, etc. in their own country. Their socialist underpinnings would in fact elevate those people as the reasons behind many policies that would restructure the ecomony and society in the interest of the nation. Mussolini co-poted huge chunks of the Italian economy with the idea that the fascists would make "the trains run on time" which really was about providing basic services to the common man. The nation is only as strong as its weakest link, and fascists would fit everyone into their society to make the nation stronger. Now, if you are a square peg being forced into a fascist round hole you would have issues, certainly more than in a purely socialist country that would take a softer view of your uniqueness in most cases.
Your last statement referencing Hitler really shows how little you know or understand fascism. Hitler had a fascist government, but again, the racial and "pure genetic" stances that were taken by Nazi Germany really work unique to Germany. Again, little of that has shown up in other fascist regimes with pre-Nazification fascist Italy being a prime example and I would argue that Hugo Chavez is a fascist and his regime does not have a racial overtone to it.
In my opinion most tax breaks are leading to our demise. By our, I mean every country in the world. Why do I think this way? It goes like this. A community has good infrastructure and schools. Businesses want to move there but they tell the local government that the taxes that support all of the good infrastructure are too high. So to attract the business, the local business gives the company tax breaks. Then all the local companies want the same breaks and to keep them the local government lowers taxes for them. For a short time, things go well but then there aren't enough revenues to pay for good schools, and to maintain the infrastructure. The government then either raises taxes on the people or lets things slide. The schools get infrastructure and schools get bad and businesses leave because things have gotten bad. I have seen it happen, I am from Michigan. A decade back, we had a tax cutting governor who let the condition of the states roads get so bad that he became known as "Pothole John". When the Michigan tax base was fair, at least we had decent infrastructure. Now after decades of tax cutting we have problems. There is a word to describe what is going on and it's called "Whipsawing".
Please note that my initial post says absolutely nothing about "should".
Cheers,
"What in the name of Fats Waller is that?"
"A four-foot prune."
You quoted the word responsibility from the post you were replying to. That implies that your post is about responsibility just as much as it is about behavior, and a discussion about responsibility is a discussion about shoulds.
Nerd rage is the funniest rage.
If the U.S. government burdens international corporations based in the U.S. with increasingly severe regulations and responsibilities, these corporations will do exactly what you would expect them to do.
They will move their headquarters elsewhere.
The U.S. no longer dominates the world economically as it once did. There are now effective counter weights in Asia and Europe, and this trend will only continue. The Economic Populist appears oblivious to this.
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.
The job of the corporation is to create jobs, maximize profits, create good profits and create share holder returns. By giving away money they are basically giving away customers money, giving away share holder money. Forced charity or charity where you give away others money is not charity.
They shouldn't allow *any* chinese crap in before the damn tariffs match. And did you know for the longest time the Feds gave tax breaks to corporations who off shored there? That single issue caused the largest drop in pure wealth productivity* of anything the government has ever done, just shipped off more than half the manufacturing capacity and gave them a tax break to do it, so a few could get stinking rich and they appeased the natives by throwing them some cheap crap at walmart, baubles.
*No, paper financial products are not examples of wealth production. They are high stakes bingo cards at best. And that's why all these insane huge banks are in trouble now and need to get bailed out with free money printed up on demand by the revolving door bankers-to fed reserve bank-treasury department heads - big trading houses bosses good ole boy back scratching network.
Crooks and thieves, all of the lot there. Every one. Traitors to boot.
I think we might be talking past each other. My initial post was not meant to convey what I think corporations should do, but rather what I think corporations will do -- much as you note in your preceding post. Thus, it appears that we might each be saying the same thing, but in sufficiently different ways that we've each missed the other's message.
Cheers,
"What in the name of Fats Waller is that?"
"A four-foot prune."
And it ISN'T that they have the responsibility to
... than everything else they do ...
a) maximize profits, &
b) follow the law...
it is, instead, that they have to
a) obey their articles of incorporation, which *usually* hold profit to be the Only Lord, &
b) make the law more amenable to corporate freedom to convert all world to profit
( hence corporate lobbying, arming mass-murderous dictatorships, etc. ), &
c) not be destroyed for breaking the law
( getting away with breaking the law is OK, because there isn't any penalty, see... )
Corporations are legally "persons",
but don't have souls.
Have artificial persons the right to consume the world's life for their temporary monetary sensation?
-shrug-
Anyone's answer to that question says more about whether they hold human worth to be more valid than money...
the corporate "persons" are the barons.
Corporations ARE accountable, silly! Customers control corporations in a free market society. If a corporation doesn't keep its customers happy, they bail and the corporation runs out of money. For example I point you to Arthur Andersen. They weren't convicted of any wrong-doing, just accused of it. But who is going to choose an accounting firm if they've even been *accused* of wrong-doing? Nobody, so no more Arthur Andersen. If you want more examples, just look at the companies listed in the Dow Jones fifty years ago. Or look at the Pennsylvania Railroad and the New York Central. They *both* went bankrupt, along with many other Class I railroads (e.g. the New York Ontario & Western).
Don't piss off The Angry Economist
"Corporations and people are both self-interested" But governments are never self-interested??
Don't piss off The Angry Economist
It's the bin-packing problem, which is NP-Complete.
Don't piss off The Angry Economist
"Corporate" power doesn't refer an american "corporation," in the fascist system.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corporatism
Also, anyone who use's the phrase "I'll call bullshit on that one" is a moron in my experience. It's the rhetorical equivalent of saying "like totally" or "hella" and not in an ironic fashion.
Corporations are not defined in the Constitution of the United States, thus Granting corporations citizenship to force upon them civic duties is not among the powers granted to our government representatives in the constitution. Corporations are unaccountable for their coming into being is a means to deflect responsibility and thus assure maximum profit. Anyone using the term "Corporate Citizen" harms the term "Citizen" or better yet the "Sovereigns of the United States" as was the intention of our founders. Corporations already acting among others in a group called "Special Interests" may elect to be granted voting blocks in elections based on the number of "Slave Laborers" they own. I am certain that the clause "Pursuit of Happiness" has limits, certainly they have already been abused by our government representatives having mercenaries run our wars and rob the Government's operating budget.
FASCISM IS THE CONVERGENCE OF CORPORATE AND GOVERNMENT INTERESTS.
The legendary bumbling, corruption and waste of public servants is a given.
But when corporate interests take-over public sector operations, the conflict-of-interest is automatic.
Having privateers raking it in PLUS the usual bumbling, corruption and waste, when government is ideally non-profit (funded by society-at-large), is the problem.
FASCISM: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Giovanni_Gentile
RR
Mussolini claimed he "invented fascism", but Giovanni Gentile is the man. ... he was Mussolini's mentor.
He was far more than Mussolini's speech writer
FASCISM: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Giovanni_Gentile
Moreover:
CORPORATE CITIZEN IS A CROCK! 1. All CORPORATIONS are fictions created by the STATE.
2. CITIZENS are also a fictions created by the STATE (either by royal/charter etc. or by the governed/people via DECREE).
3. Therefore in the 'COMMERCIAL WORLD' neither Corporations nor Citizens are real living beings and arguably neither are accountable - ie. LLC = limited liability company for the shareholders/investors that rake it in, and occasionally loose the lot.
4. It is an open door for corruption, thievery and exploitation.
IN FACT, 'CORPORATE CITIZEN' IS FASCISM ITSELF, taking control of everything - including nationality!
YIKES! MOM!
RR
This is the dude that INVENTED FASCISM! FASCISM: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Giovanni_Gentile
the insane complexity of the corporate tax system. The Michigan FairTax plan collapses six taxes into the existing sales tax system, raising the sales tax rate from 6% to 9.75%. There's a "prebate" that pays people the equivalent of the tax on basic living expenses so the poor are protected. Right now the tax compliance costs for small businesses are often higher than the taxes themselves. Big businesses are merely annoyed by the complexity since they benefit from the suppression of smaller competitors. Unfortunately Comrade Granholm is more interested in hiking taxes than simplifying anything, which is why so many smart people are fleeing the state.
I still favor the Flat Income Tax at the federal level. At the very least it's too dangerous to switch to a Fair Tax system while the income tax amendment remains on the books.
Worker training is corporate welfare at best. If businesses know that the can fire people who don't work out without getting sued they'll take more risks with hiring, especially as the labor market tightens.
As I mentioned, read the articles at http://criticality.wordpress.com/ and you will see that my basic premise is that all human groups, including governments and corporations, religious organizations and criminal gangs, behave in essentially the same ways, as hierarchically organized "organisms" mainly concerned with their own self-preservation, just like individual people.
Where are we going and why are we in a handbasket?
How about North Carolina, where corporate welfare reigns king?
but can a corporation run linux?
Whatever you say, Obama.
Too much Law; not enough Order.
You were saying?
Blar.
"...In addition to more corporate power, a fascist is also encouraged to merge the health of a nation into a combinatorial individual that is both Male and Female, so in both disabling the female-half of the indivual voter as well as having self-propogating sexuality for added redundancy for any cases of isolated populations into dungeons. Also, fascists just plain love hermaphroditic orgies, especially when accompanied with an armadillo named Corey." - Bonita Mussolini
Well, lets start with the similiarities. Like you, catholic schools (alterboy, paper-route, boyscouts..)
Worked through college, dropped out, tried corporate, returned to schooling, graduated, self-employed,
modestly successful.
Like you, I despise the misuse of my tax dollars and the seemingly endless parade of fees and surcharges
that get attached to every bit of legislation/regulation created. Together, we are anti-government;
but you somehow believe that government is not a reflection of push capitalism.
I guess that's where likeness ends, because it seems to me that the realities affect your world-view:
=> that multi-national corporations and privatization is a solution to government
=> that the masses of "lazy, uneducated, unable" who "decry their inability to gain position in life",
somehow have ONLY themselves to blame and that, whether domestically or abroad, the forces of
capitalism have nothing to do with it or their situation.
I am not a defeatist, and, on par, my railing that "the MAN is keeping me down" is no less than
a reality than your saying the same; that the MAN of Government instead of Corporate is keeping you
down with their left-leaning, mis-guided, ideologies.
I manage, I get by. I live with needs and not wants, credit-free.
Our difference is that I don't see how placing the desire for individual freedom above social justice
for all can create an environment that is blow-back free enough for all to prosper, or at least reach
one's potential, whatever that may be.
Your using the Declaration and the cry of Liberty becommes little more than a mask for your
own selfishness. It allows you believe that we all have a 'level playing field' from which to find
our station. That the poor schmuck born to a ghetto, or some 3rd world shithole, has potentially
the same ability as you or I to get ahead.
There is an enormous difference between business and corporatism. Business in this country is almost
exclusively small (under 5 million or 500 employees). Business, and enterprise, is a good thing.
Business AS government is not. But that is what you would like to see. Privatization of the State,
run under market-conditions; survival of the fittest in a game that's fixed from the start.
"Leftists see large corporations and unequal success as opponents and problems to be solved..."
Only when one comes at the cost of the other
"Rightists see both as results of Freedom and a Liberty."
Sure, your freedoms and your liberties, not everyones'
"Leftists decry the multinationals and their billions in profits;"
Only when those profits come from gaming the system, at great human cost. In your world, it would
be only right and natural to have slave labor building widgets, no safety standards...
" Rightists celebrate the triumph of the many working for a common goal,"
Right, the many stockholders, the many who join up each saturday on the golf course.
Self-interest is the driving force, of the corporation, of the Right and of you. By your own
account, you see no obligation (aside from being an employer - fair or otherwise) to society at large.
"As far as education goes, you call for half the Defense budget for education. I say bravo! Let us implement that immediately!"
1st, the budget is far more than 480bl, but using your figures that would reduce my school tax burden
by 1/2. Good News! Now lets get rid of pork, earmarks, waste, $500 hammers, and see how much more
tax dollars can be re-claimed.
2/3rds of my State taxes toward education. I have no kids. If parents want 5 kids and want them schooled, let them pay for it accordingly; let them carpool or
drive their kids to the main road for the schoolbus, or let them walk.
They should subsidize more of their kids education as reflecting a choice they made.
I agree the education system is screwed up. Not by the Left or Right, but by bureaurocracy (sp?)
and the mediocracy (sp?) of t
resist propaganda