Ask500

RE: Hillary Clinton,

She was the only major candidate in the presidential election last year to define herself as a Progressive. So she can't be a Progressive and be on a corporate board of directors?

Clinton served on Wal-Mart's board of directors for six years when her husband was governor of Arkansas. And the Rose Law Firm, where she was a partner, handled many of the Arkansas-based company's legal affairs. That was 1990---not today and her re-election committee last campaign returned a 5000$ contribution to Wallyworld.

Strangely enough, I agree with you in principle about corporations.

Free market ideology was that corporations were kept responsible to customers, shareholders, workers and society by customer and investor behavior, seen in share price. Millions of individual “voters” in the market place ensured they behaved. “Bad” corporations were punished by selling.“Good” corporations” were rewarded by buying.

Many times that didn't happen. As a society, where did we go astray? For balance, a little history is in order.

According to Richard Robbins, Global Problems and the Culture of Capitalism, (Allyn and Bacon, 1999), p.100

"Supreme Court ruling in 1886 ... arguably set the stage for the full-scale development of the culture of capitalism, by handing to corporations the right to use their economic power in a way they never had before. Relying on the Fourteenth Amendment, added to the Constitution in 1868 to protect the rights of freed slaves, the Court ruled that a private corporation is a natural person under the U.S. Constitution, and consequently has the same rights and protection extended to persons by the Bill of Rights, including the right to free speech. Thus corporations were given the same “rights” to influence the government in their own interests as were extended to individual citizens, paving the way for corporations to use their wealth to dominate public thought and discourse. The debates in the United States in the 1990s over campaign finance reform, in which corporate bodies can “donate” millions of dollars to political candidates stem from this ruling although rarely if ever is that mentioned. Thus, corporations, as “persons,” were free to lobby legislatures, use the mass media, establish educational institutions such as many business schools founded by corporate leaders in the early twentieth century, found charitable organizations to convince the public of their lofty intent, and in general construct an image that they believed would be in their best interests. All of this in the interest of “free speech.”"

This has resulted in today, of the 100 largest economies in the world, 51 are corporations; only 49 are countries (based on a comparison of corporate sales and country GDPs).

We have been told countless times that The purpose of a corporation is to maximize shareholder value. That is a lie. Our society is coming to recognize that trying to build "shareholder value" without strong ethical values is a complete nonsense.

Socialists generally assume that corporations can not be reformed to bring them to serve their original purposes. This results in diatribes against corporations in particular and capitalism in general. They believe that government takeover is the only rational approach.

Capitalists generally assumes that corporations can be reformed to bring them to serve their original purposes. Modern Capitalists (including me) say that fundamental ethical values will drive every successful business over the next 20 years. We can show that corporations with fundamental ethical values are coming to be the only healthy, successful business model.

Your point about making a profit being fine is more problematic than it appears. For years, we have heard, "The sole purpose of corporations is profit." That is another lie. Profit is the physical mechanism keeping a corporation alive. It is not an end unto itself. It is the one thing necessary to stay in existence. It is necessary for humans to have functioning bodies to exist on the planet Earth, but having bodies does not define our purpose. It is our mechanism for existence. Profit is only the mechanism for corporate existence.

There is just as much to write on where government gets it wrong too. I believe that Big Government (Republicans, Democrats, Socialists and Fascists) cause just as many problems as Big Business (Corporations or public/private partnerships) I also believe that they are intertwined so that destroying one would destroy the other. That only leaves reform so that BOTH institutions are healthy as the only viable option. That eliminates Libertarian (Free Market) Capitalism and Progressiveness, which advocates corporations be heavily taxed and heavily regulated.

Yes, but when Reagan abolished the 90% income tax on the top 10% income earners as determined for him by the corporate CEOs he had in his cabinet... well, that just threw the entire economy into a bubble society. While most corporations should have bonuses based on INDIVIDUAL PERFORMANCE instead of whether or not they feel the need to throw money at the top executives because the company made a profit, the deregulation of corporate incomes and de-taxation of the most wealthy has harmed our society economically more than any other act in the history of the USA.

Better yet, here is the video that explains how a Corporation is "A Legal Person"

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wkygXc9IM5U