Slashdot Mirror
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?"
Yep. Partly.
Ice Cream has no bones.
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.
Why should a corporation be treated as an individual?
I will treat a corporation as an individual the day a corporation is sent to jail for stealing pension funds!
Or maybe it should be treated like the individuals who run corporations (and make decisions) but who never seem to be punished for their egregious misdeeds, because, "oh, it was the corporation that did it"?
Can I mod something +1 Scary if it's true but I wish it weren't?
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]
I'll call bullshit on that one. There is one guy who knew EXACTLY what Fascism is because he invented it.
"Fascism should more properly be called corporatism because it is the merger of state and corporate power." -- Benito Mussolini