Re: The Corporation (was Re: CG: Ligatures etc)
John Sowa wrote:
<snip/>
> > Where is the paper you mentioned that compared the modern
> > corporation to sociopathic behavior? I red flagged the e-mail
> > it was in, but I have red flagged too many and have forgotten
> > where the reference is located.
>
> I don't remember what I cited earlier, but you might be
> interested in the book and subsequent movie on that subject:
>
> _The Corporation : The Pathological Pursuit of Profit and
> Power_ by Joel Bakan. Available in paperback for $11.20.
>
> For the movie, _The Corporation_, see the following collection
> of reviews, most of which give it very high praise. If it's
> not at any nearby theaters, you can try renting it:
>
> http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/corporation/
>
> Following is a book review:
>
> http://www.thecorporation.com/index.php?page_id=47
>
> Excerpts below.
>
> John Sowa
Take a look at the reviewers listed in these two URLs; all of them
are academics or journalists. Their points of view are amazingly
naive wrt corporations since none of the reviewers run any.
The fact is, money makes corporations run. From the first investor
to the last customer, every person dealing with a corporation
puts their own interests absolutely first. Its the nature of man
that seems so corrupt to these reviewers, instead of understanding
the elegance and economic balancing act a corporation has to
perform just to keep the doors open.
Where public good, social value, and ecological benefits are
foremost, the corporations are NGOs, nonprofits, and funded by
governments or by very wealthy individuals. But the nonprofits
are mere shadows of the real corporations. Society couldn't
exist in its present form without for-profit corporations making
up the vast majority of organizations.
To pick an example, look at how the post office or the dmv or
the city planning departments operate. The soviets tried to use
central planning and the profitless organization of work to benefit
society, and they got incredibly inefficient organizations like
those examples.
Its a sad fact that the vast majority of people put themselves
first, but its a necessary one, as Darwin showed, and as the more
modern mathematical models explaining evolution show. Even
in the womb, there is a competition between the sperm DNA
and the egg DNA over how large male babies will be at birth.
Corporations are shadows of human nature, and naturally
they reflect these kinds of competition. Competition doesn't
stop in the womb, it continues throughout life in limited forms,
along with cooperative behavior when that kind of behavior
is in the self interest of the cooperating partners.
In most economic niches where geography isn't a major factor,
a few corporations dominate most of the market. That was
explained very well in the book "Bionomics", which traced the
success of the few corporations to the learning curve which
ultimately makes a few corporations the most efficient producers
of their market's goods and services. Only this competition
makes the for-profit corporations much more efficent than the
DMV, PO and planning departments. And without it, we
wouldn't have the wealth that the average American enjoys
today.
To limit the corporations from pure laissez-faire policies, we
have democratic governments to legislate and enforce limits
to the natural competitiveness of corporations. Those limits
apply to all players, corporate or personal, except for the
government itself. If the reviewers were less naive, they would
understand that its the government, not the corporations, that
has insufficient checks and balances. The government can take
whatever it wants between now and the next few elections.
Only when the pain is so great that the electorate rebels are
the players changed, and even then its usually more of the
same kind of players that replace them.
I think limiting government's access to tax money, controlling
their access to personal and corporate information, and generally
making the government much more accountable to citizens
would be far more beneficial than finding more ways to limit
corporations. Corporations never fight bloody wars, never
jail people, never execute people, at least not legally.
Rich