Do you think that in a sane world, corporations would make all of the biggest, most important decisions regarding how our world should be ordered? (With corporate profits being the main decision-making criteria.) Do you understand that this is what has been happening in our world for a very long time? For instance, did insurance companies have our collective wellbeing in mind when they poured millions of dollars into our United States Congress in order to prevent health care legislation that would render them useless? Did the financial sector have our financial wellbeing in mind when they influenced that same Congress to repeal the legislation that was put in place after the Great Depression in order to prevent another great depression? Do you think the main goal of the pharmaceutical companies is for each of us to enjoy total and complete health? Do the military-industrial companies want a world free of conflict and war? Do you think the oil companies want us to make the transition to electric cars and renewable energy? Do the auto manufacturing companies want us to have cheap and reliable mass transit systems, and communities planned with bicycles and walking in mind?
The answer to each of these questions is…. “Of course not.” Despite what the public relations departments of these huge corporate entities might say, these corporations are interested only in their own bottom lines. They want to increase their profits and they want to get even bigger than they already are. Sustainability, environmental consciousness, and our collective wellbeing are simply not important considerations for any of them. And they have gotten so big and powerful that, with our very government itself working at their beck and call, they have taken over the decision-making process that pertains to all of the biggest issues facing our world of today.
Once we achieve a Critical Mass of people who understand that our present culture is insane and we make a collective decision to return to a culture based upon the reality that everything is connected, then of course, we will realize immediately that we must take our world back from the huge and powerful corporations that have stolen it from us. And fortunately, once enough of us understand the necessity of doing this, taking the power back is something that is within our grasp to be accomplished. All we have to do is to wake up enough of our fellow citizens to the fact that our government has been stolen, and then we can simply take it back. Here in the United States, the corporate powers are calling all of the shots. But they will continue to do so only for so long as “we, the people” allow them to. Once “we, the people” demand that our government be returned to us, then through our votes and the legislative process that has been in place since 1789, it will be.
Just like the larger issue of replacing our entire culture with one based upon the reality that everything is connected, this issue of taking the power back from corporate interests will be accomplished by achieving a Critical Mass of people who understand how things came to be this way and stand ready to make a positive change for the better.
Today, there are millions of people who are looking for answers because they can see that our glaciers are melting, our sea levels are rising, and our storms are getting stronger. Likewise, there are many millions of us who have seen the insanity of allowing these huge corporate interests to have so much influence in our government and our legislative process. Recently, we went through a huge financial crisis. To many of us, it was obvious that the crisis was caused by deregulation and the lack of governmental oversight and enforcement of safeguards that had been in place to prevent these types of abuses. And immediately after experiencing the financial crisis, we all watched as the legislative battle for a health care bill waged. Anybody who didn’t notice the influence exerted on the legislative process by the insurance industry and the pharmaceutical companies simply wasn’t paying proper attention.
Just as technology, by itself, is not evil or wrong, corporations, by themselves, are not evil or wrong. There are good reasons for allowing corporations to exist. Basically, corporations are one of a handful of vehicles people can utilize to conduct business in lieu of sole proprietorships or partnerships. The limitation of stockholder liability, which is afforded to corporations, allows individuals to invest in a corporation with the knowledge and understanding that their losses will be limited to the amount of money they choose to invest in purchasing the stock. Without this limitation of liability, it would be very difficult to get people to invest in an enterprise where they have so little personal control of the business itself. Also known as the corporate shield, this aspect of corporations allows stockholders to conduct business through their corporate vehicles with the assurance that any liability incurred will be limited to the assets of the corporation and cannot be transferred to them, personally. Again, without this shield, it would be much more difficult to attract investors.
There is nothing wrong with the basic concept of corporations. The problem is that we have allowed corporations to become too powerful. Little by little, over time, corporations have used their wealth to amass power. We should not have allowed it, but we did. And now, the time has come to rectify the situation.
Those of us who have already studied this issue understand that the fix is easy. Since we are currently prohibited from discriminating against corporations because of a legal concept called “corporate personhood”, all we need to do is to get rid of that insane concept… by abolishing corporate personhood. For those not familiar with this, abolishing corporate personhood means rescinding the case law we have in place telling us that these artificial entities called corporations should enjoy the same rights and privileges as individual, living and breathing people. The term “corporate personhood” refers to the legal fiction that the rights set out in the Bill of Rights and the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution apply not only to individual citizens, but also to corporations, which are called “artificial persons”. Once it again becomes clear to a majority of the voters in this country that the Bill of Rights and the Fourteenth Amendment were written with real people in mind, we will be able to abolish corporate personhood and resume the sane practice of discriminating against these artificial entities… something that we are currently prevented from doing.
Abolishing corporate personhood is something that doesn’t have to wait. Although this is a huge issue, it is a smaller, simpler problem than replacing our insane culture, and it can be dealt with now. All that is needed is the collective will of a majority of voters. Even within the framework of our present insane culture, it is easy to see that allowing huge corporations to make all of the most important decisions about how our world operates needs to be fixed. The corporations who make these decisions don’t care about human suffering. They don’t need breathable air or drinkable water. They don’t need health care because they can’t get sick, and they have no physical body to be injured or even incarcerated if they break the law. Consequently, corporations and living, breathing, people have different sets of criteria to analyze when making decisions.
When deciding whether or not to cut down an ancient forest or to pollute or not to pollute a body of water or our atmosphere, a corporation simply looks at how much risk is involved and how much it will cost versus how much profit they will receive. And since these artificial entities don’t care about our environment or drinkable water or breathable air, they usually decide to cut down the forest and to pollute as much as they can get away with. As previously mentioned, the term the MBA students learn in business school is the “externalizing of costs”. The corporations dump the pollutants because it costs them less, and the cost of cleaning up the mess is “externalized” by passing it along to the taxpayers.
If actual people were making these decisions based upon considerations other than profit, then of course, we would decide not to pollute. Why? Because the pollution harms our environment and it is difficult and very expensive to clean it up. Dirty air and foul water make us sick. And it also makes life tough for our fellow members of the Community of Life on this planet. Besides, the pollution eventually has to be cleaned up and it simply costs much less not to pollute in the first place than it does to clean it up. Foremost in our decision, of course, would be the fact that those of us who are not stockholders in a corporation which is deciding whether to pollute or not to pollute or even how much to pollute, don’t care whether the corporation makes a profit or not. We just want them to stop fouling our air and water and expecting the rest of us to either live with it or pay to clean it up.
Let’s take a look at how things came to be this way. Until the Declaration of Independence was signed in 1776, the thirteen colonies were subject to British rule. All serious students of early American history understand that, in a large part, our American Revolution was fought because of unfair taxes imposed on the colonists by England, as well as other issues. One of those issues was tea. American colonists were not only unhappy with the tax on tea imposed by the Townsend Acts, but by the high cost resulting from other laws concerning its importation from India through England, that also served to raise the price. In response, a thriving smuggling business of Danish tea had been established.
The stockholders of the British East India Tea Company were the King of England and other members of the royal family, together with other members of the British aristocracy, as well as many members of the British Parliament. In other words, the stockholders of the British East India Tea Company were men of considerable power and wealth who had no qualms about passing legislation designed to exploit the colonists in order to increase their corporate profits. The Tea Act, passed in 1773, was an effort by the British Parliament to undercut the smugglers and save the financially troubled British East India Tea Company. The bill eliminated the requirement that Indian tea be sold first in England, thereby cutting out the additional cost of the middleman, and it also eliminated the export tax that had previously been imposed. The very objectionable tax on tea, however, remained in force.
By 1776, the colonists had had enough of the exploitation and 56 brave men laid their lives and their fortunes on the line when they signed the Declaration of Independence. The rest… as they say… is history.
Here, in the United States, we have much to be thankful for in terms of our heritage and the legacy left to us by our founding fathers. Between the signing of the Declaration of Independence in 1776 and the ratifying of the Constitution in 1789, our founding fathers worked out a framework for the world’s first, modern democracy. Included in the Constitution was a brilliant system of checks and balances designed to ensure that none of the three branches of our government could usurp too much power without being thwarted by the other two branches.
In his book Unequal Protection: How Corporations Became “People” and How You Can Fight Back, Thom Hartmann reported it can be seen in the Federalist Papers that Jefferson and Hamilton argued and debated between themselves as to whether or not there were sufficient safeguards included within the Constitution regarding corporate abuses of power. In the end, Hamilton prevailed and the additional safeguards Jefferson wanted were not included. Part of the problem Jefferson faced in debating Hamilton about the necessity for additional safeguards from corporate abuses of power was that in the early days of our nation, corporate charters were granted for very limited purposes, and also for limited time periods. After all, the American Revolution had just been fought in part as a result of unfair trade advantages enjoyed by the British East Indian Tea Company. And consequently, everyone in the fledgling nation was very aware of the dangers of unchecked corporate power.
Accordingly, very few corporate charters were granted in the early days of our nation. And those that were granted were for very specific purposes and for limited times as well. As a part of their process in receiving a charter, they had to demonstrate a benefit to society for their very existence. In the event one of these corporations, after having received their charter, began acting outside of their original, stated purpose to the perceived detriment of the society at large, then the corporate charter was forfeited and the corporation was dissolved. Also, the granting of corporate charters has always been a function of state governments, and this is another reason the safeguards were not addressed in the Federal Constitution. Furthermore, corporations were prohibited from participating in political elections, and the fines and jail terms for any corporations who made campaign contributions were extremely harsh. It was understood by everyone that corporations had no business engaging in politics in any manner whatsoever.
But today, corporations are under no such mandate to demonstrate any benefit to society. On the contrary, eBay prevailed in a Delaware court in 2010 when they asserted that craigslist, Inc., was obligated to its shareholders to pursue corporate profits over community service. (eBay Domestic Holdings, Inc. versus Craig Newmark, James Buckmaster, and craigslist, Inc. Delaware Court of Chancery Cause No. 3705-CC) In the future, when the politicians call on the corporations to be more socially responsible, it is our individual responsibility to recognize that plan for what it truly is…. Complete bullshit. It might be appropriate for a politician to call for corporations to be more law abiding, but corporations actually have a legal duty to their shareholders to pursue profit over community service.
Not only can these immortal, artificial entities amass unlimited wealth by pooling the resources of thousands of investors, but also, because of the lobbying process and changes in campaign finance laws, these huge corporations have basically taken ownership of our government itself. The 2010 U. S. Supreme Court decision in Citizens United versus the Federal Election Commission, which asserted that corporations have a First Amendment right to spend money in elections, was without a doubt, one of the worst developments in our country’s entire history in terms of how it has undermined the ability of our government to represent “we the people”. Today, I think it is safe to say that no law gets passed in Washington, D. C. that the corporate interests do not approve.
During the 1800’s the big corporate powers were the banks, along with the manufacturing, mining, and railroad companies. All of these sectors grew tremendously as a result of increased government spending during the Civil War. And as they grew, these big corporations began to whittle away at the safeguards set up to keep them in check. I guess it is only natural that a big, powerful corporate entity, like these railroad companies, would endeavor to test the established boundaries like the constitution and the various statutes that were in place in order to keep these corporations from becoming too powerful. (And that is why Jefferson was correct when he argued with Hamilton over the need for additional safeguards.) In Unequal Protection, Hartmann showed how these railroad companies figured out that if corporations could be considered as “artificial people” in regard to the Constitution and the Bill of Rights, then many of the restrictions placed upon them in order to keep them in check could be circumvented.
After the Civil War, the Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and Fifteenth Amendments to the Constitution were passed in order to protect the rights of former slaves. The Fourteenth Amendment was especially attractive to the railroads… It prohibited discrimination.
Ironically, after the Amendments were passed in order to help integrate freed slaves into our culture, the railroad companies saw the broad language used to prevent discrimination and began asserting that the amendments were designed to protect them as well. Their strategy was to win a United States Supreme Court case asserting their rights as “persons” to be protected from discrimination under the Fourteenth Amendment. So, beginning with Paul versus Virginia in 1868, they began pushing cases all the way to the United States Supreme Court at every opportunity, asserting that corporate personhood should extend the protection of the Fourteenth Amendment to these artificial entities.
Many times, the cases themselves were not that important to them. But they knew, if they kept trying, there was an excellent chance that eventually, they would succeed with their assertion of corporate personhood. Time after time, they either lost the case or the case was decided in their favor but the decision was based upon other arguments. Then, in 1886, a case titled Santa Clara County versus Southern Pacific Railroad made it to the Supreme Court.
In the grand scheme of things, it was just another unimportant case concerning property taxes. But, as part of their arguments, Southern Pacific asserted the rights of corporations to “personhood” and the protection afforded to people under the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution and the Bill of Rights. The court ruled in favor of Southern Pacific, but specifically did not address the railroad’s assertion of corporate personhood. However, the clerk of the Supreme Court was an ex-railroad company executive, and he incorrectly (fraudulently?) put in the header for the case that the court had decided on the issue of corporate personhood and declared corporations to be artificial persons.
Despite the inaccuracy of this assertion, the case was relied upon subsequently, and corporations have used their “personhood” in order to assert their rights as people under the Constitution and the Bill of Rights ever since then. And, due to the many cases having been decided since that time which were based upon this incorrect or possibly fraudulent assertion, the concept of “corporate personhood” is so entrenched in case law, it has become a basic part of the law here in the United States.
Do you think the founding fathers had corporations in mind when they wrote the Constitution and the Bill of Rights? Maybe even more importantly… Did Abraham Lincoln pass the Fourteenth Amendment in order to help corporations? Do you think these artificial entities called corporations, which are designed to pool the wealth and resources of thousands of people, can live forever, do not require clean air to breathe, don’t care about clean water to drink, and make all of their decisions based solely upon considerations of profit and growth, should actually be afforded the same rights as people? What possible benefit to society could there be in giving these protections to corporations?
Clearly, Thomas Jefferson would not be happy to see the present state of our nation or, for that matter, the world… That is, of course, unless he enjoyed being right more than he enjoyed seeing his concept for a new nation manifested. Our situation of today is exactly what Jefferson feared… Corporate rule. For more than two hundred years now, corporations have been chipping away at the safeguards set up to protect “we the people” from the terrible power the founders knew they could wield if left unchecked. The key battle took place in the United States Supreme Court and was won by the corporations when they claimed “corporate personhood” and protection from discrimination under the Fourteenth Amendment. Little can be done to rectify this situation until “we the people” regain the ability to “discriminate” against these giants. Once we abolish the legal fiction of “corporate personhood” and again regain the ability to treat these artificial entities like artificial entities, then something can be done.
Until that time comes, we will all live in an insane world where not only is the culture itself insane, but that insane culture is ruled by corporate entities whose sole reasons for existence are to grow and to profit. If you think I am overstating the situation, then please consider this…. There is a series of annual studies ranking the top economic entities from largest to smallest utilizing revenue for corporations and GDP for countries. According to the study, the economy of the United States is far and away the largest economic entity in the world. However, a 2011 study has the European Union, slightly ahead of the U. S. Of course, the EU is comprised of 28 countries, so that is not a fair comparison. But, more pertinent to our discussion of corporations, in the year 2000, according to a study conducted by the Institute for Policy Studies, only 49 of the world’s 100 largest economic entities were still countries.
In that study, the top 22 entities were countries, but coming in just behind Turkey at number 23, was General Motors. Four of the next five spots were held by corporate entities, namely Wal-Mart, ExxonMobil, Ford, and Daimler/Chrysler, resulting in five corporate entities occupying the top 28 spots. Since then, several groups have updated this list including Forbes Magazine who reported that 95 of the world’s 150 largest economic entities were corporations in the year 2005. That list had three of the world’s largest oil companies plus Wal-Mart in the top 25 and ranked above such countries as Indonesia, Saudi Arabia, Norway, Denmark, Poland, South Africa, and Greece.
The 2011 study by Fortune Magazine has the top three corporate entities coming in at 26th through 28th, right behind Norway. Corporations held 43 of the top 100 spots in 2011. My research wasn’t able to turn up any follow up studies after 2011, until Global Justice Now, a charity focusing on alleviating poverty, started putting out new rankings in 2014. However, rather than using GDP figures for countries, the Global Justice Now rankings utilized government revenue figures taken from the CIA World Factbook, and revenue figures for corporations came from Fortune Magazine’s Global 500 list. This change resulted in a large increase in the inclusion of corporations. The 2015 study included 69 corporations in the top 100, and a total of 153 corporations in the top 200 of the world’s largest economic entities.
If corporations are to be afforded the rights and protections of people under the Constitution of the United States of America, then how in the world are we supposed to protect ourselves from abuses by these huge artificial entities? Of course, most of the wealthy corporations on these lists, as well as thousands more, are operating here in the United States. Now that they have claimed the rights and protections of people under the Bill of Rights and the Fourteenth Amendment, how much influence on the workings of our federal, state, and local governments do you think these rich and powerful corporations have in relation to “we the people” and our measly votes?
But perhaps the biggest question we should be asking ourselves is, “What benefit to society does the existence of these humongous corporations represent?” And remember, these giants are artificial entities whose right to exist is predicated on our permission.
