|
Edited on Wed Feb-22-06 07:45 PM by kgfnally
It needs to go a great deal farther than what you outlined.
For one thing, corporations need to be stripped of rights. They deserve none. They are not human; they do not in any way contribute to society even what the homeless "street bum" does. They exist solely and inarguably for the purpose of making money for themselves, first and foremost. ANY "public responsibility" is secondary and treated, usually, as a distasteful cost of doing business. Note, corporations' own employees are placed in the same category.
Corporate profits should exist only after corporate employees get paid a living wage for their area, full health, dental, and optical care, retirement plan, sick leave, AND vacation time. Anything less should be grounds for a revocation of the corporate charter. FURTHERMORE, each and every board member should be personally, jointly, and severally responsible for the corporation's misdeed; a criminal violation, for example, on the part of the CEO should be treated as if it were a criminal violation of the entire board.
Yes, this will keep people from serving as CEOs and on boards of directors. THAT'S THE POINT. We need to make these no more, forever, golden jobs. We need to abolish the enticement of such jobs, and the only way possible to do that is NOT by removing the pay and the perks but by INCREASING the responsibility involved to the point that ONLY a sane, ethical, moral businessman will take the job. Nothing less is acceptable, and the path to it is (by today's standards) absolutely insane levels of regulation.
Even further: no corporation should be legally allowed to spend more on a civil suit against a noncorporate defendant than that defendant has in his or her possession- meaning, if you are sued by a corporation, they cannot spend more on their lawyers than you can on yours. FURTHER, no officer of a corporation should be allowed to PRIVATELY sue an individual who is OR COULD BE construed to be a target of a civil suit by the corporation to which that board member or corporate officer provides service.
All "rights" of corporations should be revoked and replaced with strictly conditional privileges. Violations of these privileges should result in AT LEAST a suspension of the corporate charter (which, logically, would mean a suspension of operations for the term of the suspension). And FINALLY, ANY death resulting from negligence, intent, or financial motive (As defined by a jury at trial) should result in death to the corporate CEO and/or the board as a whole. Yes, EVERY SINGLE ONE OF THEM should be held to be at fault.
I am extreme on this issue. The problem is, ONLY an extreme solution will solve this problem, and the ONLY acceptable solution in our civil society is EXTREME RESPONSIBILITY.
In short, I want corporate officers to be responsible for their corporations' activities in the most extreme and literal way possible. I want to erase the legal corporate shield that this mechanism provides for the very very very very very rich, and thereby level the playing field so that THEIR lives are in danger for their misdeeds, AS OURS ARE.
edited to add: in a recent situation, SONY was found to have been installing spyware on users' PCs when they played those CDs on their PCs. Declining the license agreement apparently scrambles all songs in the itunes library; Sony's application also installs as a rootkit, meaning the PC user doesn't know it's there. This would be an example of what I would, under MY scheme of reality, a "litigatory annullment", meaning, Sony wouldn't be able to sue for copyright infringement for x days or months.
Ya play the game, ya pay the piper. Sony needs to pay, pay well, and pay for a long, long time for what they did. Abolishing corporate personhood would at least make this a possibility.
|
Printer-friendly format
Email this thread to a friend
Bookmark this thread
(1000+ posts)
Send PM |
Profile |
Ignore
