"Corporations are People"

http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0811/61111.html

in one word—no

will some in a third party
please stand up

a corporation will never get thrown in jail for stealing or commiting a crime for items under $1000. a corporation will never get tazered or beaten by cops for making their voices known. a corporation will never give birth, die in a war (though if they're on the "losing" side their profits might), be limited by all the rules and regulations that us "meatbags" have to follow and obey but are unreasonable for them to follow.

this list could go own for ever and really the only people who can with no guilt or shame or humanity tout anything akin to "corporations are people" are indeed robotic facists that will and have lead this country towards a new era of slavery where, wages are lower, the rate of incarceration keeps increasing with tougher rules on us "meatbag" lawbreakers. speaking of which there was a great piece last week on democracynow about this group ALEC (which i'd never heard about) that has helped contribute to make tougher laws to increase prison populations while at the same time creating more prison jobs to replace union and public worker jobs. more instance of union hate meets corporate welfare and not suprisingly scott walker was part of that group previously as well.
http://www.democracynow.org/2011/8/5/secretive_corporate_legislative_group_alec_holds


edit: on a positive note at least one scumbag got his due for doing the above
http://www.philly.com/philly/news/2..._in__kids_for_cash__case.html?cmpid=124488489

We have here in jurisdiction a distinction between "a natural person" and "a juristic person".

Juristic persons are companies, a coporate is basically a juristic person which consists of natural persons.

The thing now is, that if a disaster happens, the juristic person won't be sentenced, even althought it WAS the fauklt of the juristic person (see Concorde disaster), because the jurisdiction ALWAYS tries to punish the individuals within that juristioc person - and too often indivuduals cannot be found guilty. Which means that the juristic person can go on as before.

To me, this is a very suble yet effective way to delegate and avoid responsibility : If the reasons resons for accidents cannot be found by employees within the juristic person, then the accident won't be punished at all.

And with no punishment = no fine or penalty = no losses at all.

Implicitely, I see with this (and other) example(s) that the law privileges (right word ?) juristic persons.

It's also a great way of taking power away from the people and putting it in the hands of the few. Imagine the millions of employees at these different corporations that likely have different political beliefs working for these companies making them tons of money that then goes to fund the opposite of what they want. It's insane.

Simple, make the CEO (or equivalent) of any Corporation the PERSON legally liable under law. With great remuneration should come great responsiility!!

Does humanity dream its own future? In teens I kind of dreamed and wrote about dark rainy world (dark&gritty like aldrik always puts it?) where I worked in megacorporations which had more power than nations. I lived in an apartment with large rooms and lots of high tech stuff. Its funny how dreams come true. Perhaps its time for the next generation of people to decide how the world will be governed.

In anycase I think its time to start the long waited deus ex marathon Ive been saving for the release of the sequel.

curious said:

on a positive note at least one scumbag got his due for doing the above
http://www.philly.com/philly/news/2..._in__kids_for_cash__case.html?cmpid=124488489

Click to expand...

I remember that case. God damn that was nasty.

Corwin said:

Simple, make the CEO (or equivalent) of any Corporation the PERSON legally liable under law. With great remuneration should come great responsiility!!

Click to expand...

I thought this was the case already? "Legal persons" such as corporations or football clubs have real people ("physical persons") who take responsibility for their actions. The board, the chairman, the directors…

The laws are already there, even if the implementation sometimes leaves a bit to be desired.

A corporation is a bureaucratic organization. All such organizations have the same problem.

In Japan a company is perceived as a society within itself, a culture where people grow old. Knowing the culture is very important. A new director to be often spend years working at each and every position before taking over, just to have personal experience and insight in every aspect of the company.

In the western business model a company isn't perceived as a society/culture. It's often top-controlled by people without experience about the society they lead. They often come from educations involving numbercrunching, optimization, expanding, profitbuilding but nothing about how humans function, no anthropology, no psychology, no sociology.

When the board of directors decide rules and regulations for things they have no experience about and focus on optimizing the effectiveness rather than to build a stable society, they tend to create a system which punishes "out-of-the-box-thinking", that optimize rather than functionalize, that strive for perfect data rather than a healthy living organism. Each individual is reduced into doing their specific role, without any responsibility for their neighbor nor moral responsibility over the company's byproduct. It's "just a job". They aren't "payed to think".

But the board is also part of the chain, pressured by making sure everyone have a job to come back to tomorrow. If they fail to keep the money flowing, everything goes down. That's their role. They aren't there to do out-of-the-box-thinking. End workers rely on them to make decisions and would rather not have the responsibility. It's freedom to put responsibility for ones action on someone else, to blame the superiors.

It's therefore not a problem that can be blame on someone within the bureaucratic organization, the workers nor it's leaders. The problem is the whole culture in which the individual and only the individual is responsible for what concerns just them and their role. In which responsibility for ones social surrounding isn't promoted at all and even disencouraged. It's a culture in which we are to "mind our own business".

Indeed, a flood is not caused by a raindrop. That is ridiculous when you think about it.



It have been said that the holocaust would be impossible without a bureaucratic organization as guards were just following orders.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y6GxIuljT3w

JemyM said:

When the board of directors decide rules and regulations for things they have no experience about and focus on optimizing the effectiveness rather than to build a stable society, they tend to create a system which punishes "out-of-the-box-thinking", that optimize rather than functionalize, that strive for perfect data rather than a healthy living organism. Each individual is reduced into doing their specific role, without any responsibility for their neighbor nor moral responsibility over the company's byproduct. It's "just a job". They aren't "payed to think".

But the board is also part of the chain, pressured by making sure everyone have a job to come back to tomorrow. If they fail to keep the money flowing, everything goes down. That's their role. They aren't there to do out-of-the-box-thinking. End workers rely on them to make decisions and would rather not have the responsibility. It's freedom to put responsibility for ones action on someone else, to blame the superiors.

Click to expand...

It's even worse then that.

the responsibility of the Board of Directors in a Western corporation is to sell stock. Their thinking seldom accounts for anything except which promotes the sale of stock. They will happily fire everyone if they thought they could sell more stock. Culture? Does it sell stock? Responsibility? Does it sell stock? Working conditions, job security, the social aspects of business, internal as well as external, only matter in terms of improving efficiency, which builds profits and cash, and those, in turn, sell stock.

Zaleukos said:

I thought this was the case already? "Legal persons" such as corporations or football clubs have real people ("physical persons") who take responsibility for their actions. The board, the chairman, the directors…

Click to expand...

At least here, I can say, depending on the organization form (grammar ? spelling ?) of the company, their responsibility is limited ONLY to a certain amount of money.

I think it was 500.000 Euros in a German GmbH ("Gesellschaft mit beschränkter Haftung" = "Society with limited accountability" - rough translation).

Only so much. And depending on the size of the organization, this limit can even be further decreased, I think (but I'm not absolutely sure on that, since I'm not an expert), to the point where it is just a joke - depending on the size. Just look at Tepco, the company responsible for Fukushima.

Interestingly, the smaller the company, the higher the responsibility. The smallest German company possible (again : I'm not very sure on that) is the one with the biggest responsibility - up to personal stuff.

At least that's how I have it in my memory.