fearlesshistory

Well, I feel compelled to expound upon my ideas about regulation of corporations, particularly in light of the recent developments in the world’s economy. First off, let’s look at a corporation in its legal state.

According to U.S. law, a corporation is considered an entity in and of itself akin to a citizen of the country; it has the same rights and is theoretically held to the same laws. Unfortunately, corporations get away with a lot more than any individual could; if an individual causes an event (wildfire, oil leak, etc.) that damages the environment, they face fines and jail time. If a corporation does the same (Exxon Valdez, etc.) they face a fine and no jail time. Why? Diffusion of responsability. The CEO, CFO, COO, and other corporate heads are not technically on the hook for any abuse or accident that  the corporation caused; the reason is they can shift the blame to faceless bean counters who misled them with erroneous data. While this may be true, more often than not it is a case of wilfull ignorance - if they don’t know about it, they can’t be held liable for it. Even cases where malfeasance and outright falsification occur - Enron, for example - that was tied to the CEO (Ken Lay), then the chances are their jail time will never materialized. [for those of you keeping score, Ken Lay died before his conviction could be appealed and so the appeals court OVERTURNED his conviction because, the family argued, his crime was causing harm to his family’s reputation]

Now, individuals are regulated by the state whether they want to be or not - they usually have no say in it whatsoever, with the exception of protesting the rule or changing the rule via the voting process. For example, if a person embezzles some money or swindles an elderly couple out of their life savings, then the individual will go to jail because such crimes are against the law. Corporations, on the other hand, usually don’t have jail time appended to their violations [more score keeping: corporations which have caused this financial meltdown got almost $1 trillion of your dollars instead of having to pay fines or go to jail]

Why? Well corporations have several advantages; First, they have much more money than 98% of the individuals in the country, meaning they can use that money to lobby Congress to repeal, modify, or even look the other way when laws prove to be inconvenient. Second, they have that pesky diffusion of responsability. Third, they can use their employees (individuals) to vote for changes that benefit the company - this means that for every vote a flesh-and-blood person gets, the corporation gets thousands. Now while the last point elides the possibility of individual dissenters voting against the grain, the average corporate employee wants to help his company accrue more profit so their job can continue and/or they can get a share fo the profit.

Now, as for the soul part. All major religions have something akin to the Ten Commandments and other proscriptions upon behavior. These “commandments”are, in effect, laws handed down by ‘God’ to regulate the behavior of human beings. Rules like don’t kill, don’t steal, be nice to each other, etc. True, these rules are often conveniently ignored when an “infidel,” “heathen,” or “heretic” is the object of someone’s ire, but nonetheless, the rules are there.

Very, very few Christians, for example, would argue that the Ten Commandments restricts their livlihood or that they should be repealed so that they could live life to the fullest and realize ‘God’s’ bounty on earth. Why then do good “Christians” want to de-regulate and continue de-regulation of corporate Americans? Are not corporations composed of HUMANS? Are not humans, by definition, fallable? Do they not cheat, steal, lie, covet, murder, and do all sorts of heinous crimes against their fellow man, against nature, and against God if there are no rules? Then why should corporations not have rules?

To all those anti-regulation McCain/Palin voters out there, I pose two, simple questions; Would you live in a city, state, or country that had no laws to restrict the activity of humans? Why would you vote to repeal regulations by government (which is a manifestation of your will, by the way) over corporations that do not act in any way in accordance to the laws of the land, your faith, or of common human decency in the regular course of their business dealings?

Trackback URI | Comments RSS