The Supreme Court Corporation of America

[Diarmuid]

Re: The Supreme Court Corporation of America

A Good article by Manuel Garcia - Corporate Personhood and Political Free Speech

What is a person - much meaning in a word, good lecture from McCarraher - more in Sapiens Forum

Why Corporations Have the Rights of Persons, - Dr. Eugene McCarraher

[Rajiv]

Re: The Supreme Court Corporation of America

The link to Sapiens thread - The Controversial Person by GM Fletcher

[Rajiv]

Re: The Supreme Court Corporation of America

Thanks Diarmud -- a good lecture

[Raz]

Re: The Supreme Court Corporation of America

Please allow me to present a differing view.

May I suggest that the purpose of regulation is to reduce corruption, hence that regulation should run cyclic to corruption (not counter-cyclic to general economic prosperity.) When there is too much corruption about, ramp up the enforcement.

In my view, we still have an excess of debt and corruption. So we need further debt reduction (by whatever means, it will be painful) and stepped up regulation (more laws or better enforcement, whichever.)

To suggest, as it seems to me you're doing, that we need less regulation now in order to increase debt seems to me to be imprudent.




Yes, my recommendations would continue to reduce prosperity. I would suggest that such further reduction in prosperity is inevitable, until we reach

• a level of economic activity that is sustainable using lower energy availability,
• a level of debt that is sustainable on that lower level of economic productivity, and
• a higher, sustainable proportion of our economic activity going toward improving and maintaining means of production, rather than toward conspicuous consumption.

Mooo...ooo, Mr. Cow. You read my thoughts.;)
This is the hard reality that we can choose to face - or it will be forced upon us.

[ThePythonicCow]

Re: The Supreme Court Corporation of America

Mooo...ooo, Mr. Cow. You read my thoughts.;)
This is the hard reality that we can choose to face - or it will be forced upon us.

I find that there is another iTuliper who agrees. On the February 10, 2009 thread Interview: Steve Keen - New World Order or New Era of Global Bickering? some chap named "EJ" (odd, that sounds familiar ) considers this at length, with such comments as:

The debt defaults were what we expected to happen and we also expected the government to step in to try to stop them from happening. The defaults and bankruptcies that were healthy and were clearing the market and allowing the debt dissipate, that would have created the foundation growth to pick up again, but that process was halted – as usual – to try to re-inflate the debt. Now the effort is put towards re-inflating housing prices, and helping mortgage debtors continue to pay their debts. This is also what the Japanese did.

This Mr. EJ chap seems to think it is necessary and healthy (albeit quite painful) to somehow cancel this debt, not pile it higher and deeper, not move it from private to public balance sheets.

[tsetsefly]

Re: The Supreme Court Corporation of America

"A businessman man can't buy favors from a bureaucrat that has no favors to sell" paraphrasing a quote that is from sheldon richman.

People always look at business to blame for "buying favors" from politicians. But it is greater government involvement in the economy that allows for government to in essence decide to the winners and losers will be, ala 1980-present when it was clear the FIRE economy was chosen. It's government responsibility not to take the bait. However politicians basically sell their services in the form of subsidies, tax hikes or breaks, regulation on competition, quotas, tariffs etc. in exchange for votes, money or future job opportunities.
Countries where political power is greater will always have more of these type of deals. Btw, a great and sickening book on the subject is: The Big Ripoff, How big business and big government steals your money

As for this past week's decision, I cant see what the problem with it is. Politicians already sell themselves if anything this might give us a better chance at following the money if we x corporation is putting ads up for x candidate. Someone above me posted an aritcle where it said government should remove 1st amendment and 5th amendment protection for corporations. First that would make corporation useless so many would abandon them. Second, it would lead to great abuses of power to government that already abuses its power tremendously.

Can you imagine corporations being closed down for whatever opinion they put out? or government taking over the property.

[Rajiv]

Re: The Supreme Court Corporation of America

Please see the video posted by Diarmud above

[tsetsefly]

Re: The Supreme Court Corporation of America

Please see the video posted by Diarmud above

I did and he brings up some good points that I myself have thought about, in particular to liability and who really owns a corporation.

But i disagree with his premise on going back to the old definition of corporations. And the fact that he believes corporation are a "public good". I think that is nonsense. He also does not give a definition of what a corporation would be under this new "old" law. Would it be any place of employment of more than 15 employees? If Bill Gates would rebuy microsoft does it stop being a corporation? What if its a partnership of 3 people?

So what defines a corporation??

Also he shows a lack of understanding when it comes to rights in two areas, one that comes up in the Q&A:

1. He claims, unlike europe, their is no "public property" in America or very little, because you cant go to a mall and protest. Well he misses the point incredibly in failing to see that the mall is PRIVATE property owned in some cases by a corporation in some by an individual. Whoever owns that piece of land has precedence over how that land will be used, who can enter etc.

2. As for worker's "rights" he once again fails to see one vital point. The contract of agreement between an employer and employee. No company forces a worker to work for them, if they do well then that is imprisonment and its a violation of the workers right to be free. But when an employee signs on to work, he is aware of what he is signing. If the company requires drug testing and he does not like that he can walk away from the contract if he wants to. Now off course in some cases the employee has leverage in others the employer has it, but that is another argument.

In essence he misunderstands why the bill of rights was written. It was to prevent government from taking those rights from its citizens because only government has the monopoly of law and force. It is to protect us from government that the rights were written. It is almost a given that a person cant violate another's rights, mainly because of the use of force that would have to be involved.

[Aetius Romulous]

Re: The Supreme Court Corporation of America

There were no corporations or free markets...or democracy for that matter when the constitution was written. Certainly no sense of a nation with all three and technology, world markets, highly advanced finance as well as virtually every other thing we know.

I wonder if they were alive today, would those old dudes pen that parchment exactly the same? What changes would they make? Would they find it silly that we today are still clinging to letter of their words when all common sense suggests that they are woefully out of date?

Hmmmm.....

[thriftyandboringinohio]

Re: The Supreme Court Corporation of America

Would they find it silly that we today are still clinging to letter of their words when all common sense suggests that they are woefully out of date?

Your point is foolish. Sometimes a person or group uncovers a great truth and it remains true forever. Older than the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution are:

the Pythagorean theorem
Newton's Laws of motion
the findings of Copernicus
the observations of Galileo

Some human work stands like the pyramids for millennia.
Paper is still perfectly useful 2000 years after T'sai Lun of China invented it.

[Aetius Romulous]

Re: The Supreme Court Corporation of America

I don't think it's foolish to wonder about anything. It's the drawing conclusions bit that too often ends up foolish.

Regardless, your point is well taken.

I wonder what Pythagoras would have done with a lap top?

[Serge_Tomiko]

Re: The Supreme Court Corporation of America

There were no corporations or free markets...or democracy for that matter when the constitution was written. Certainly no sense of a nation with all three and technology, world markets, highly advanced finance as well as virtually every other thing we know.

I wonder if they were alive today, would those old dudes pen that parchment exactly the same? What changes would they make? Would they find it silly that we today are still clinging to letter of their words when all common sense suggests that they are woefully out of date?

Hmmmm.....

I actually oppose democracy, mostly for the reasons elucidated by one Oswald Spengler in his fine work Decline of the West. Certainly, his prediction that democracy always devolves into plutocracy has proven quite true.

But, when I am engaging people who have not read that seminal work on Western Civilization, I often try to introduce the notion of historical cycles and legacy with just the very question you pose. More directly, would the colonial inhabitants of what is now the United States have volunteered to fight a revolution if they knew in a mere 200 years - perhaps 10-12 generations away - the world would be what it is today? We often ignore human motivation and behavior in economic discussions, tending to believe that utilitarian hedonism rules the day. Of one thing I can be certain, simply by reading not only the works of the big names of the Revolution, but surviving letters of the common men: hedonism most certainly was not the future they envisioned.

Plutocrats, liberals, libertarian types, and others who give little thought to how their present society was formed or where it is headed. Most political discourse, nay most human thought, is "in the moment".

This provides a fair amount of room to exploit this weakness, and depending on ones aims - it could result in much change. Certainly, the major criticism that can be made of the modern hedonists and those who wish to make them slaves is that they know not why men fight. Try having a discussion with a an academic economist about why the Taliban fights, why the Unabomber went on his dastardly rampage, or why any war has ever been fought in history. They either dismiss such events as madness that is exceptionally rare in this modern era of enlightenment, or they envision such persons as little more than mercenaries or bandits - they were fighting for the bone they could not have.

Truly in the purest Faustian sense, the West has sold its soul to the devil to bring us material prosperity, and now the devil is coming for his due. Rather than ask how the Founders would have behaved, why not start asking ourselves what new kind of society we wish to have in the future?

[bobola]

Re: The Supreme Court Corporation of America

"The corporation is an externalizing machine (moving its operating costs to external organizations and people), in the same way that a shark is a killing machine. ”

— Robert Monks, corporate governance advisor and former Republican candidate for Senate from Maine

[tsetsefly]

Re: The Supreme Court Corporation of America

I wonder if they were alive today, would those old dudes pen that parchment exactly the same? What changes would they make? Would they find it silly that we today are still clinging to letter of their words when all common sense suggests that they are woefully out of date?

Hmmmm.....

Common sense, really? like what? Individual rights? Right to life, liberty and property?

[Aetius Romulous]

Re: The Supreme Court Corporation of America

I was really referring to issues of commerce in keeping with the theme of the thread.

Some of the rights you mentioned are or have become universal - basic human rights and a right to life. But even then, the right to life is not settled yet in the US where life itself is not fully defined, nor is the right to it.

Liberty suffers from extreme problems of definition; it has been stretched to cover too many jars. Right to property is an interesting one, and is under some debate in certain economic circles.

Rethinking stuff is good.(and kinda fun too)