A reader’s remarks concerning corporate behaviors and government which I’ve neglected:
I’ve always agreed that the good of the people is the remit of government. Where I’ve changed my view over the past decades of railing against various kinds of malfeasance and misfeasance by groups is I think the corporate form of business with its near personhood is now antithetical to civilized society and any kind form of democracy. The ultimate end of that kind of lack of personal responsibility is that it will grow and grow to the point of becoming powerful enough to change laws to allow itself more freedom to behave horribly while claiming larger profits in a self-reinforcing cycle.
To my mind, it’s the misfeasance of government. The government is responsible for ensuring the health of the marketplace, and part of that is the breakup, or exceptional regulation, of monopolies, which are definitionally a malevolent entity in a system dependent on competition in order to provide choices and progress in products and services. By avoiding partition, monopolies, can utilize their outsized products to produce leverage on the government, usually through undue influence on individuals elected representatives and appointed officials, although the messaging element over the long-term has, I think, also had results unappreciated by most folks.
As we are more productive when working in teams, there’ll always be organizations, and I have no desire to outlaw corporations. I simply want to limit them, as we have done so in the past through anti-monopoly efforts, and move further into the realm of understanding the limits of corporate entities so that we no longer have to puzzle over rulings that seem to indicate that corporations have personhood.
