Corporations ARE evil!

[ProudDad]

"Today the agents perpetuating these violations of our inalienable rights are no longer monarchs, they are large corporations. These legal fictions, in principle granted existence only to benefit the public good, have taken over our public institutions, our environment, our government, even our daily thoughts and worldview.

The key to propping up this corporate machinery is the collection of constitutional rights that the Framers never meant corporations to have. Such rights were illegitimately interpreted into the U.S. Constitution by a century of corporate-driven court decisions."

"The key fallacies in all of this, of course, are that corporations can collect far more wealth than individuals, they have unlimited lifespan, their liability is limited, they possess no conscience nor morals, they have no need to eat or drink or breathe clean and safe food, water or air. They have only one driving force: profit. All consequences to humans and future generations are irrelevant."

http://www.constitution411.org/index.php

[cassiepriam]

1. It is called an oligarchy. Rule by the wealthy corps. nt

[Jayhawk Lib]

9. Corporations are evil????

I made a good living and retired with a good retirement package from a corporation. I hope I was as good for it as it was good for me.

[LittleClarkie]

27. Thank you Evita Peron.

Heh. For some reason I associate that word "olgarchy" with her.

A populist fascist. Who'da thunk it.

[marmar]

2. I never quite got it until I watched the movie "The Corporation"

The whole history, how they came to be what they are today: Disturbing. :scared:

[ProudDad]

3. Great Movie

and it really hits the nail on the head.

For those of you who haven't seen it it equates the characteristics of a well run corporations with the DSM-IV official characteristics of a Psychopath...and does it VERY well.

[Agony]

4. Yup! SCOTUS sucks...

After the Supreme Court in 1886 declared the corporate form equivalent to a natural person under the law (in Santa Clara v. Southern Pacific Railroad Co.), people's already limited sovereignty was further subordinated to the large corporation.

POCLAD is another activist organization worth working with on this issue. -->http://www.poclad.org/

[ProudDad]

14. Cool Site, Thanks

[HysteryDiagnosis]

5. Corporations are people. n/t

[Sarah Ibarruri]

6. Corporations need to be highly regulated....

... and accordingly taxed. Right now, neither of those is being done. Corporations are the masks the rich nowadays hide behind.

[Jayhawk Lib]

11. Corporations do not pay taxes....

they collect taxes from their customers.

[Sarah Ibarruri]

12. Exactly right!! nt

[ProudDad]

16. All corporations should be time limited

As they used to be.

Actually, SCOTUS didn't rule that corporations were "persons". The oft-cited "personhood" conferred by the Supreme Court in Santa Clara v. Southern Pacific was inserted later and was NOT part of the decision:

"The court decision, written by Justice Harlan in favor of the Southern Pacific Railroad Company, consists of a lengthy discussion of various technical factors and does not rely upon or include the determination that corporations can be classified as "persons" according to the Fourteenth Amendment of the United States Constitution. However, the court reporter, J. C. Bancroft Davis, inserted Chief Justice Waite's comments as "Statement of Facts", even though Chief Justice Waite stressed to Davis that the court did not rely on this information to reach its decision."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Santa_Clara_County_v._Southern_Pacific_Railroad

As Usual, the BIG LIE is the one that wins...

Personhood for corporations is the BASIC EVIL OF OUR TIME!!!!

[msongs]

7. SOME corporations are evil

some corporations are not

the concept of a coporation as a business model is only as evil as the people who run it.

Msongs
www.msongs.com/political-shirts.htm

[ProudDad]

13. All corporations are amoral

All corporations are unaccountable to any humane standard.

That's EVIL in my book...

[stillcool]

8. What a cool site!...

thanks for the link!

[Bad Penny]

10. Paddy Chayefsky

saw all this coming in 1976. Rent 'Network'.

It is the international system of currency which determines the vitality of life on this planet. THAT is the natural order of things today. THAT is the atomic and subatomic and galactic structure of things today. And YOU have meddled with the primal forces of nature. And YOU WILL ATONE. Am I getting through to you, Mr. Beale? You get up on your little 21-inch screen and howl about America, and democracy. There is no America; there is no democracy. There is only IBM, and ITT, and AT&T, and DuPont, Dow, Union Carbide, and Exxon. Those are the nations of the world today.

You have meddled with the primal forces of nature, Mr. Beale, and I won't have it. Is that clear? You think you've merely stopped a business deal? That is not the case. The Arabs have taken billions of dollars out of this country, and now they must put it back. It is ebb and flow, tidal gravity. It is ecological balance. You are an old man who thinks in terms of nations and peoples. There are no nations; there are no peoples. There are no Russians. There are no Arabs. There are no third worlds. There is no West. There is only one holistic system of systems; one vast, interwoven, interacting, multivaried, multinational dominion of dollars.

[AndyTiedye]

18. So Many People Miss the Point of that Movie

Outrage is a commodity, and gets manipulated at least as much as any other commodity.

[northofdenali]

19. Chayefsky did a brilliant job with that movie.

He also said, "Television is democracy at its ugliest."

Another of the same era (1975), "Rollerball" was also aimed at corporations; the world was controlled by them and replaced countries. It comes close to what I hope won't ever happen, but is feasible.

Scary.

But welcome to DU! :hi:

[0007]

15. Corporation sure did a number on the people.

The corporations are now the government. We, for, and by the people are a lost cause.

[ProudDad]

17. Not really

just withhold our dollars, withhold our support. Change the economy.

DON'T BUY THEIR CRAP!!! Buy used or do without. Buy from artisans and each other.

[AJH032]

20. Disagree

corporations CAN be bad if they cheat and commit fraud, but let's not forget that they provide thousands of jobs for Americans. Do you think in a campaign, voters are going to want to hear that their employers are evil and should be shut down? Yeah, that'll really get their votes.

Of course, I'm not saying there should be no regulation. Taxing international trade and massive profits can serve as positive mechanisms to generate government revenue, prevent inflation, and protect domestic jobs.

[ProudDad]

22. Sorry, you're mistaken

"The Sole Proprietor. Most businesses are sole proprietorships -- that is, they are owned and operated by a single person. In a sole proprietorship, the owner is entirely responsible for the business's success or failure. He or she collects any profits, but if the venture loses money and the business cannot cover the loss, the owner is responsible for paying the bills -- even if doing so depletes his or her personal assets."

I also remember that during the "roaring 80's", the heyday of ronnie raygun, the Fortune 500 corporations were responsible for 0% (that's ZERO PERCENT) of job growth in the period from '83 to '92.

Big Corporations are bullshit. They DON'T contribute to the economy in any proportion to the damage they do.

[AJH032]

23. I'm mistaken?

I'm not suggesting that corporations are angelic entities that do only good. I just disagree that all they do is harm. So are you telling me that corporations DON'T employ thousands of American citizens? If you read my post, I said that there should be certain regulations, which would limit, if not eliminate the damage they do to the economy. A corporation can be bad, but it is not inherently bad. By the way, a corporation needn't be big. Corporation is simply a legal designation, not a size indicator.

[Solon]

26. You are both right and wrong...

That goes for both you and the OP. Corporations are legally obligated to maximize their profits by any means necessary. That means they are simply amoral, versus immoral. Corporations will not go out of their way to commit evil, at least in the classical sense, instead they are the embodiment of greed institutionalized. Bear in mind that if corporations did NOT act this way, they could be, rightfully, sued by their shareholders.

See corporations do this thing called a Cost Benefit Analysis, its pretty simple really, if obeying a specific law costs more than breaking said law, corporations will break the law, 9 times out of 10. This goes both ways, obviously, many corporations donate money to charities all the time, but not for altruism, but for the good PR it brings, and increase in business as well. This is the reason why companies will sometimes refuse to obey the law, and get away with it too, especially nowadays, look up Chapter 11 of NAFTA.

[leftofthedial]

21. corporations are psychotic

if they were truly individuals, they'd be institutionalized

[skids]

24. Ahah I know what you've been watching :-)

http://www.thecorporation.com/

[Clarkie1]

25. I have a hard time thinking of Apple Computer as evil.

Microsoft, on the other hand...

Then again there are all those billions that Gates gives away.