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Edited on Sun Nov-11-07 01:46 PM by haele
Same as free speech and religion. There is no right to slander, libel, or conspiracy to commit or promote a crime. There is no right for a religious litmus test to hold government-related office or job of any type, or to discriminate against others in cases where one is providing a basic, community, or otherwise general service or contract. The issue gets muddied when corporations claim person-hood, and put their rights to exist and do business above the rights of the employees and community around "it",not to mention the customers of it's product.
An individual who, through criminal neglect or malicious intent, harms or kills another individual or their property will go to trial and then to prison for a fairly long time, in effect, putting that person's life "on hold" until some form of restitution is made. A corporation doing the same thing will get punished - maybe - with a fine and "bad press" - but it continues doing business. In fact, most large corporations will weigh the cost of a fine and bad press against profits when they are deciding whether to "do the right thing" and fix a potentially fatal problem, or blow off fixing the problem and perhaps kill hundreds of people, destroying their families lives because they know all they'll have to do is pay the fine - those dead bodies, ruined lives or families struggling to stay out of poverty mean nothing, because they don't exist on the same level as the corporation.
It's a matter of how much money can be used to smooth things out; there's this assumption that lots of money means you're a good, smart person with a lot of power, so you deserve everything you get.
The problem is the 20th century view of Mensch and Ubermensch - the Straussian school of social economics. People who work for money are morally inferior, stupid or intellectually lazy. A worker is a tool, no more worth than say, a truck, lathe or cutter. People who buy products designed and made by others are just the final function of creating a the product; there is little more worth to being a consumer in a corporate process as there is to being a package. In the Straussian world, those who have others work for them and money handed to them are morally superior and obviously the ones Ghod meant to rule over any process in which they put themselves. It's actually counter-Constitutional, even though the Straussians hide behind the Constitution to claim their personal "rights" as Corporate beings above those of the People and the general welfare of the United States.
As a side, if you hear the political term "liberal" in almost every other country but the US, it means libertarian/corporatist rather than progressive or socially democratic. In fact, the current "Neo-Cons" were originally called "Neo-Liberals", but with the advent of Falwell's Moral Majority with it's "Compassionate Conservative" meme, they switched the name to foster a positive associate with the so-called Religious Right.
Haele
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