We All Live in a Corporatocracy

WE ALL LIVE IN A CORPORATOCRACY

We all live in a corporatocracy, corporatocracy, corporatocracy.

We live the life of ease

In our corporate machine.

(sung to the tune of the Beatles "Yellow Submarine")

No longer do we live in a democracy, it's a corporatocracy, a kind of oligarchy led by big business. Corporate leaders have become American nobility and aristocratic courts. Business concerns direct our economy and all social policy for the benefit of corporations. Corporations have tremendous political power not granted to them by the Constitution. Although corporations aren't citizens, they have been given rights, they have enormous influence through lobbying that trumps the power of voters, controls Congress and the judicial system, influences the President, lobbies the people through advertising and owns or controls the media so that some news stories are promoted, others squashed. We, the people, the vast majority, are manipulated to live as corporations want us to live.

"I hope we shall crush ... in its birth the aristocracy of our moneyed corporations, which dare already to challenge our government to a trial of strength and bid defiance to the laws of our country." Do you know who said that? Thomas Jefferson. This demonstrates that the problem is not new and was recognized shortly after the founding of our country.

Large corporations and their major stockholders have an inordinate influence on society and the economy. The decisions of one or a few persons can strongly influence society outside of government/political processes, thus businesses make socioeconomic policy that influences millions of workers and consumers lives in positive or negative ways without their consent. Therefore, government policy is dictated by business, read profit-making concerns, not with the larger question of social welfare. Their only reason for existence is to make money for private shareholders, not to serve the needs of society. This narrow focus causes many unintended social consequences. Business should serve society, or at least stay out of its way.

It appears that global corporations want to take over the world. World corporate culture acts like a rogue nation. They want a docile, stable, manipulated, consuming population that maximizes profit. Because they are international in scope there is little global control over them. Many corporations are economically larger than many small nations and so can't be controlled by those nations. Corporations have overthrown and manipulated governments to do their bidding. United Fruit Company created "Banana Republics" in Central America in the 19^th century. It's still going on. The U.S. Government allied with oil companies and other large contractors in the takeover of Iraq.

By nature of organization and philosophy, businesses aren't democratic, they're authoritarian hierarchies. Employees have few rights. Because many of us must work for corporations and spend at least a third of our time working for them, it represents a large area of unfreedom in our lives.

The conservative and business mindsets are reducing the public sphere by encouraging privatization. Their fear of socialism and the public process and other irrationalisms are causing a disregard for the social glue. Now, politically we are considered "consumers", not citizens, and that reduces our social and political power.

Businesses and businesspersons are often political cowards in that they try to conform to political pressures, not only from the marketplace, but from the government or special interest groups. Foremost, they don't want bad publicity. Other times they seem to ignore the political/social consequences of their marketing decisions. Rarely is real social concern demonstrated, only profit motive.

There are movements to take away corporate rights. In the U.S., corporations were granted rights in a Supreme Court decision, Santa Clara Co. Vs. Southern Pacific Railroad Co., 118 U.S. 394 (1886): "A business is a person." This may be the most immoral decision ever made by the Supreme Court. An incorporated business is a fictitious entity that has almost all the rights of a real person, except the right of the vote, but they do that illegitimately, through lobbying, and they have far more power than an individual citizen. It's time to challenge this so-called right. Only individual humans should have rights. Fictitious entities belong only in novels, stories, movies, TV.

Corporations are licensed by the states in the U.S., by national governments in other countries. Those licenses can be revoked, but have you ever heard of that happening? We need to toughen the licensing requirements so that corporate violations of certain laws would automatically revoke a corporate license. Corporate lawbreakers could have all their assets seized and transferred to the public funds. This sword held over their heads would make corporations more responsible and responsive to society and reduce many of the abuses we suffer under their influence.

The most vexing problem of corporate licensing is Limited Liability, a legal state that reduces risk for the corporation by preventing those shareholders with deep pockets from losing all their assets should the corporation be sued. It is fair that shareholders shouldn't be obligated for more than they own of a company, but they might lose some or all of their shares in the case of a judgment against the corporation. But this law also reduces the responsibility of corporations to society. This legal immunity may be one of the most immoral laws ever conceived. It gives to potentially large powers a privilege that individual citizens don't have.

Hopefully, the communications revolution will break the corporate state, but it will be a fight whose outcome isn't guaranteed.