Corporations=Collectivism.....

[buffalokid777]

name me a company that BECAME a monopoly and used it's capital to "infringe" on the free market and WAS NOT created or at least assisted by the government. the Monsato example does not qualify.

standard oil

 

[rockandrollsouls]

name me a company that BECAME a monopoly and used it's capital to "infringe" on the free market and WAS NOT created or at least assisted by the government. the Monsato example does not qualify.

Bingo.

And Buffalokid, where is your proof of your last claim? Again, you don't provide any evidence. Anyway, it's charming how you call me lost. I think you should reread your posts.

 

[buffalokid777]

If you think so .....I am sure its true....let's all listen to the gospel of rocknroollostsouls....

HEH....

I sure hope you have a HUGE stock portfolio.....

Because if you do. When you watch the OTC meltdown kill your portfolio (think 10 cents on the dollar best case)....I hope it is my smiling face you see....saying I warned you....the corporations went nuts.....People who thought ahead tried to reign them in.....but others thought we were nuts....

And if that comes to term.....don't say no one tried to stop it......Just remember this is what YOU wanted.....not me....u thought evrything was perfect.....when all that wealth you thought u had is gone....

DON'T SAY NO ONE WARNED YOU.....

 

[danberkeley]

standard oil

i know exactly where you're going.

Standard Oil pressured the railroads to give it discounts and rebates. However, i
call this negotiation. Also, the railwords wernt forced to serviced Standard Oil. i'm
sure the trucking industry would have been happy to service Standard Oil.
Standard Oil has lost most of its market share by the time it was broken up. the
price of kerosene and other oil-derived products dropped for decades and the
arguement that is was selling below cost for that long is implausible because it
would have gone bankrupt. what else? Standard Oil bought its competition and
employed many high-level managers from the companies it bought. many people
millions building refineries then selling them to Standard Oil.

UPDATE: Standard Oil was never a monopoly in the economic (and relevant)
sense. the government and Standard Oil's competition argued that it "acted"
like a monopoly.

 

[rockandrollsouls]

"Standard Oil was never a monopoly in the economic (and relevant)
sense. the government and Standard Oil's competition argued that it "acted"
like a monopoly." < I agree. Dan, I think you're trying to hard. I can guarantee you buffalokid isn't even familiar with the historical information in your post. To him, Oil companies=satan. He doesn't quite no why, but when mentioned sees red.


Anyway...I feel like I'm arguing with a 10 year old. First and foremost, I never said everything was fine and dandy. You took my defense of corporations and twisted it in to something completely different, and let me tell you I don't take kindly to that.
Secondly, I do have a portfolio, and what's in it is none of your business. However, you can rest assured it is diversified. I'm fairly careful with my money.
Finally, when we have a devastating market meltdown, it won't be because "corporations went nuts." In fact, I'd like you to describe to me, in detail, how corporations will cause a mass market meltdown. Now, I will let you in on a little secret. A disaster such as this will happen because of our gung-ho consumer economy,declining dollar, and notorious government intervention.
In conclusion, hot shot, I have invested for growth and preservation of my purchasing power. When we are in a financial crisis, you'll be the one squirming because this will hit everyone. Your standard of living will plummet and you'll wish you had MY portfolio. And, believe it or not, my investment in foreign corporations will be what helps save me in the end, while your hatred of these entities will be your downfall. Your wealth will disappear and mine will grow. Yea...continue to sing the same tune, smart-alec.

Post Script: My grammar is far from perfect, but if you want to be taken seriously you might want to consider removing yourself from Instant Messenger grammar.

 

[tmosley]

Check this out. This is how careful we used to be.

http://www.reclaimdemocracy.org/corporate_accountability/history_corporations_us.html

Where were you the last time we had this thread? This was exactly what I was talking about.

Corporations are NOT natural. They require state consent to incorporate, and they put an unnatural barrier to litigation between shareholders and the public.

I'm not sure, but it seems that unnatural protection now covers CEOs and other high-ups within the corporation. Could someone with more knowledge of corporate law enlighten us on this point?

 

[Kalifornia]

Where were you the last time we had this thread? This was exactly what I was talking about.

Corporations are NOT natural. They require state consent to incorporate, and they put an unnatural barrier to litigation between shareholders and the public.

I'm not sure, but it seems that unnatural protection now covers CEOs and other high-ups within the corporation. Could someone with more knowledge of corporate law enlighten us on this point?

I took corporate law in law school. Yes, in most instances executives are protected from suit, and from many forms of criminal liability unless their actions were CLEARLY not taken in the interest of the stockholders (a very high burden to meet). There are some instances where "principals" face liability, but even in these cases, the corporations usually indemnify the individuals either through private insurance or some other form of contract.

I had the advantage of being taught this class by a 'law and econ' guy who analyzes everything in terms of policy. Believe it or not, there IS a benefit to allowing limited liability (people take risks with their money that they wouldnt otherwise take, and society does benefit). The problem is that there isnt any mechanism by which society can be compensated for the externalities that the corporations impose on society at large.

One way to do this would be to remove the limited liability protection and force a system or reinsurance on corporations (think lloyds of london in the age of mercantilism), this would allow the market to assign a premium to risks, and force the investors to pay the costs of those risks, and relieve the random person that gets screwed through negligence, fraud, or malfeasance in excess of the paper value of the corporation.

As I said earlier, the even bigger problem is extending the "legal person" fiction necessary to sue a corporation into "natural person" rights and civil liberties. Imagine how powerful a person could be if he could live forever.... Thats what a corporation is when granted natural rights. An unkillable blood sucking zombie.

 

[tmosley]

I took corporate law in law school. Yes, in most instances executives are protected from suit, and from many forms of criminal liability unless their actions were CLEARLY not taken in the interest of the stockholders (a very high burden to meet). There are some instances where "principals" face liability, but even in these cases, the corporations usually indemnify the individuals either through private insurance or some other form of contract.

I had the advantage of being taught this class by a 'law and econ' guy who analyzes everything in terms of policy. Believe it or not, there IS a benefit to allowing limited liability (people take risks with their money that they wouldnt otherwise take, and society does benefit). The problem is that there isnt any mechanism by which society can be compensated for the externalities that the corporations impose on society at large.

One way to do this would be to remove the limited liability protection and force a system or reinsurance on corporations (think lloyds of london in the age of mercantilism), this would allow the market to assign a premium to risks, and force the investors to pay the costs of those risks, and relieve the random person that gets screwed through negligence, fraud, or malfeasance in excess of the paper value of the corporation.

As I said earlier, the even bigger problem is extending the "legal person" fiction necessary to sue a corporation into "natural person" rights and civil liberties. Imagine how powerful a person could be if he could live forever.... Thats what a corporation is when granted natural rights. An unkillable blood sucking zombie.

I couldn't agree with you more. Especially your last two sentences there. I had a similar line of thought.

 

[rockandrollsouls]

Mosley, you're missing something. Yes, there are conditions for becoming a corporation, but even if there weren't, an entity of this nature would arise out of the free market anyway. Your problem isn't the corporation itself; it's the twisted regulations, laws, and government involvement.

 

[Kalifornia]

Mosley, you're missing something. Yes, there are conditions for becoming a corporation, but even if there weren't, an entity of this nature would arise out of the free market anyway. Your problem isn't the corporation itself; it's the twisted regulations, laws, and government involvement.

Sure they would. In fact, corporate entities havent always been what they are today. In fact, you could consider guilds and trade associations with enforceable rules to be a sort of non government grant corporation.

I think the point you are missing is that the corporate entity would IN NO WAY resemble what it is today without government involvement. They would be more like extended partnerships. Investors would require that the corporations they invest in be insured and reinsured. This would raise the cost of doing business and weaken the corporate entity considerably.

Plus, if corporations had no right to speech (except commercial speech, which is really the right of the recipient of advertising to receive market information), since they would not have natural person protection, they wouldhave a much harder time perverting .gov policy.

business and government simply dont mix.

 

[Alex Libman]

Corporations == GOOD Collectivism

Governments == BAD Collectivism

 

[scotto2008]

Where were you the last time we had this thread? This was exactly what I was talking about.

Corporations are NOT natural. They require state consent to incorporate, and they put an unnatural barrier to litigation between shareholders and the public.

I'm not sure, but it seems that unnatural protection now covers CEOs and other high-ups within the corporation.

I think this is the key point.

Robert Reich pointed out that corporations are government-defined legal structures.

Is it really a free market when a corporation shields individuals from liability?

 

[ForTheRepublic]

Corporations == GOOD Collectivism

Governments == BAD Collectivism

I think it isn't so much that corporations are bad as is the incorporation or government contracted corporations(most/all corporations) that gives us collectivism. Because when the government incorporates a corporation legally the government becomes the ultimate head or owner of it. If the government doesn't like what their corporation is doing they put them out of business.

incorporation == collectivism

 

[Kalifornia]

Corporations == GOOD Collectivism

Governments == BAD Collectivism

That is the stupidest piece of neocon bullshit I have read all day. Modern corporations are CREATIONS of government!

.Gov = Bad Collectivist Dr. Frankenstein
.Corp = Frankenstein's collectivist market monster, who comes home on the weekends after a hard week of raping and pillaging to suckle at the teat of its creator.

 

[Acala]

Not collectivism

Corporations are not collectivist since they do not confiscate private property by force. UNLESS they are in cahoots with government to get special powers and benefits at taxpeyer expense.

However, I think corporations are still a problem because they separate ownership, management, and liability into three parts. As a consequence, corporations tend to be run for short-term profit rather than long term sustainable yield and tend to run at higher risks than other business forms. They tend to disregard the importance of customer and employee loyalty, which are long-term assets, in exchange for cost and quality cutting. They also tie up resources indefinitely, which causes stagnation. An ancient principle in British common law was that any contract or law that tended to keep property from coming onto the market after a generation or two was disfavored. This is the purpose of the famous Rule against Perpetuities - nobody should be able to tie up property forever with their will or deedrestrictions. But corporations do that by being immortal.

I think Ron Paul's policy of taxing corporate income but not individual income is a brilliant way of gently moving the market away from the corporate business form. It would create an incentive to form partnerships which don't have the same problems as corporations.

 

[Kalifornia]

Corporations are not collectivist since they do not confiscate private property by force. UNLESS they are in cahoots with government to get special powers and benefits at taxpeyer expense.

The point you dont seem to address is that modern Corporations DO confiscate private property by force of government charter. They ARE in cahoots with the government to get special powers and benefits at taxpayer expense. Even if they didnt have immortality or natural rights (which are horrible abominations of the common law), they are allowed limited liability, which allows them to transfer costs to society at large, without compensation. This is government sanctioned theft, plain and simple. Every time a corporation injures a person and that persons damages remain unsatisfied while the owners of the corporation have assets that are untouched, this is a taking of property by government sanction. This happens hundreds of thousands of times a year, and can run into millions of dollars per incident.

the modern corporation is welfare for investors. without it, they would be forced to insure against their liabilities on the open market. Someone pays those costs. We do.

 

[rockandrollsouls]

business and government simply dont mix.

You're right, and they shouldn't. However, not all corporations are in such cahoots with the government. I admit, there are some things that could and should be changed, but this doesn't make corporations evil....It makes the government evil for regulating the way they do. One can't put all corporations under the same umbrella..it's just too complex to discuss like this, but there are reforms that should be made, and I can sum it up in one sentence. Government separate from Business.

 

[hypnagogue]

I think one important fact hasn't quite saturated in this discussion. A Joint Stock Company is not a Corporation, and vice versa. Corporations are creations of government, Joint Stock Companies are produced by free market investment.

 

[tmosley]

Mosley, you're missing something. Yes, there are conditions for becoming a corporation, but even if there weren't, an entity of this nature would arise out of the free market anyway. Your problem isn't the corporation itself; it's the twisted regulations, laws, and government involvement.

Yes yes yes yes yes yes yes.

Corporations are evil because they are mandated by government to be so. Change the laws back to the way they were before the days of the robber barons (pre-1850's), when there were protections for stockholders, but no-one else, and the world would be a much better place.

I think one important fact hasn't quite saturated in this discussion. A Joint Stock Company is not a Corporation, and vice versa. Corporations are creations of government, Joint Stock Companies are produced by free market investment.

Could you illustrate the differences? I don't know much about Joint Stock Companies.

 

[rockandrollsouls]

A joint stock company is usually a type of corporation.