The
Huffington Post had an interesting article about Corporations as persons a
couple days ago. It went into the history dealing with the French Revolution as
to this came about which I will not go into but leave a link at the end of this
article if you to read it.
Is
a corporation a person? At the beginning of the article they have a quote from
the Wall Street protesters that’s interesting: ,
"I refuse to believe that corporations are people until Texas executes
one." Corporations came
into being to protect individuals from going belly up if there business failed.
So the corporation came into being as a government entity to protect such
individuals. Thus these businesses are protected by the government for the
benefit of the investors.
Now the
irony in this is the ballyhoo we have about getting government out of messing
with corporations by regulating them. Good grief Charlie Brown, they are a
government creation, so why wouldn’t the government have the right to have some
say so about how they operate. However, some whacko Supreme Court judge in 1873
wrote that a corporation was a person with all the rights of a person in this
country. He wrote this for all the wrong reasons; read the article. So, we can
think of corporations as persons but with rights other persons, such as you or
me, don’t have. Weird.
I was
reading an interview with Greg (the Shark) Norman in a golf magazine this morning
(my daily devotional reading) where he complained that President was
anti-corporate. Greg Norman was a great golfer and an incredible businessman,
thus his bias. I think the viewpoint Norman espouses is shared by many but I
think it is also incorrect. Obama is not against corporations but I think he
sees the need to reestablish regulations that have disappeared over the last 35
years which has resulted in the incredible imbalance of wealth in the country.
Now, corporate American and those who benefit most from its wealth have far too
much influence over the government. They can give secretly to their
congressional pawns, they have maneuvered the courts to benefit themselves, their
lobbyists write our laws, and they have usurped the rights and voting power of
common people, these super people. It is not right.
We need
a strong corporate America but it should not come at the expense of those not
protected by corporate laws. As I mentioned in the previous article the
government primary responsibility is the promote the general welfare of the
country, not to cater the a select few.
We've recently started re-watching the documentary, "The Corporation" -- which goes into the history of this too. Corporations began as very specific-purpose entities with very limited charters and no rights of personhood. Once they were re-defined as persons with rights, the 14th Amendment, ironically created to protect the rights of freed slaves, became primarily a tool for protecting rights of corporations.
ReplyDeleteThe Corporation is the dominant institution exerting power over individuals across the world today - like Rome 2000 years ago, like the Church 1,000 years ago, like Fascism and Communism 70-80 years ago.