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Newsjock

(11,733 posts) Tue Dec 9, 2014, 01:59 AM Dec 2014

Taming corporate power: the key political issue of our age

Source: The Guardian
By George Monbiot

Does this sometimes feel like a country under enemy occupation? Do you wonder why the demands of so much of the electorate seldom translate into policy? Why parties of the left seem incapable of offering effective opposition to market fundamentalism, let alone proposing coherent alternatives? Do you wonder why those who want a kind and decent and just world, in which both human beings and other living creatures are protected, so often appear to be opposed by the entire political establishment?

If so, you have encountered corporate power – the corrupting influence that prevents parties from connecting with the public, distorts spending and tax decisions, and limits the scope of democracy. It helps explain the otherwise inexplicable: the creeping privatisation of health and education, hated by the vast majority of voters; the private finance initiative, which has left public services with unpayable debts; the replacement of the civil service with companies distinguished only by incompetence; the failure to re-regulate the banks and collect tax; the war on the natural world; the scrapping of the safeguards that protect us from exploitation; above all, the severe limitation of political choice in a nation crying out for alternatives.

There are many ways in which it operates, but perhaps the most obvious is through our unreformed political funding system, which permits big business and multimillionaires in effect to buy political parties. Once a party is obliged to them, it needs little reminder of where its interests lie. Fear and favour rule.

... The key political question of our age, by which you can judge the intent of all political parties, is what to do about corporate power. This is the question, perennially neglected within both politics and the media, that this week’s series of articles will attempt to address. I think there are some obvious first steps.

Read more: http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/dec/08/taming-corporate-power-key-political-issue-alternative

2 replies

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Taming corporate power: the key political issue of our age (Original Post) Newsjock Dec 2014 OP

Excellent articles with suggestions for really good solutions to a lot of our problems. Thanks for JDPriestly Dec 2014 #1

Our age? The 1% have been in control since they were the 10-20% merrily Dec 2014 #2

JDPriestly

(57,936 posts)

1. Excellent articles with suggestions for really good solutions to a lot of our problems. Thanks for

Reply to Newsjock (Original post)

Tue Dec 9, 2014, 02:44 AM

Dec 2014

posting.

I liked this, but there is much more that is good in this article. Be sure to read all of it.

But we should also think of digging deeper. Is it not time we reviewed the remarkable gift we have granted to companies in the form of limited liability? It socialises the risks that would otherwise be carried by a company’s owners and directors, exempting them from the costs of the debts they incur or the disasters they cause, and encouraging them to engage in the kind of reckless behaviour that caused the financial crisis. Should the wealthy authors of the crisis, such as RBS chief Fred Goodwin or Northern Rock’s Matt Ridley, not have incurred a financial penalty of their own?

We should look at how we might democratise the undemocratic institutions of global governance, as I suggested in my book The Age of Consent. This could involve dismantling the World Bank and the IMF, which are governed without a semblance of democracy, and cause more crises than they solve, and replacing them with a body rather like the international clearing union designed by John Maynard Keynes in the 1940s – whose purpose was to prevent excessive trade surpluses and deficits from forming, and therefore international debt from accumulating.

Instead of treaties brokered in opaque meetings (of the kind now working towards a transatlantic trade and investment partnership) between diplomats and transnational capital – which threaten democracy, the sovereignty of parliaments and the principle of equality before the law – we should demand a set of global fair trade rules. Multinational companies should lose their licence to trade if they break them.

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/dec/08/taming-corporate-power-key-political-issue-alternative

Corporations are basically sociopathic institutions. Never mind. The Supreme Court loves them and has given them "equal" rights in many respects with us humans who are capable of suffering, of having compassion, of caring about others and making sacrifices for those we love.

We should think about whether we can afford to continue to offer to corporations the corporate form, the freedom from liability for the investors in corporations, without demanding some social responsibility in return. I don't think we can.

merrily

(45,251 posts)

2. Our age? The 1% have been in control since they were the 10-20%

Reply to Newsjock (Original post)

Tue Dec 9, 2014, 05:19 AM

Dec 2014

We started with the East India Company in control. John Hancock, still a famous name in business. Plantation owners, slaves being one of the most valuable kinds of "property" anyone of that day could "own." (Geez, I hate even using those terms, but can't think of another way to word the concept. If anyone can, please pm me and I will edit.) I have no idea why people seem to think this is something new. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Founding_Fathers_of_the_United_States

Also, it's not about corporations. It's about those who misuse wealth. Say it loud and say it proud. It's the greedy, evil rich people.

There are mom and pop corporations--though more and more of them get bought out as soon as they have any success-- who are not hurting anyone; and there are people with inherited wealth, like the Koch brothers and Mitt Romney, who are hurting many people, whether or not they happen to be running a corporation at the moment.

The legal duty of a board of directors is to maximize the value of the corporation for the benefit of stockholders, but that does not prevent them from doing good things or force them to do evil things.

You may have noticed a recent commercial about the Dodge brothers leaving Ford. They were stockholders of Ford who had sued Ford for making a charitable donation from corporate funds. Ford won and the Dodge brother left Ford to start their own company. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dodge_v._Ford_Motor_Company

Hence, I was surprised to see a commercial featuring them and predict it will be pulled as soon as someone wakes up the genius in the ad company who decided this was the way to go. Anyway, nothing, even the law, prevents corporations from behaving themselves.

It's about misuse of wealth by members of the 1% (or the 10%, if you prefer). And their enablers, whom we elect and pay in our cities and towns and in Congress. Evil, greedy rich people.

BTW, I heard recently that 53% of those in Congress are millionaires, not counting any real estate they may own. And that is by the standards of reporting that Congress itself sets down for itself, so count on fudge factors. By your standards and mine, it's probably a lot closer to 100%, even if you don't add in the value of their real estate, and 100% if you do, at least anyone who has been there for more than, say four years.

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