Corporations: Questioning the Legal Fiction

This is my first thread here at ATS, so I hope that this topic is of interest to some people.

Corporations bother me. Although I understand the creative and legal reasons behind their creation (and own part of one myself), I feel like the creation of these trans-national legal fictitious people is just asking for trouble.

I think this is especially true of the meta-national corporations that simply do business wherever it is to be done. When you look at who sells what items to which regime, it becomes difficult not to see these businesses as simply facilitating many of the more unfortunate situations in the world, with the tacit consent of the governments and shareholders back home. I'm not against free trade, but when you see the arrangements made between corporations and certain governments, I don't find myself inclined to trust the mercenary nature of business.

I'm the farthest thing from a communist or socialist; I'm actually a libertarian minded capitalist, but I believe in accountability and decentralization. I keep wondering what would be a better model than what we have now where we have corporations too big to fail, and a disturbing and still growing nexus between big government, big industry, and big banking.

I find that the idea of balancing institutions out plays a greater role in my thinking as power will naturally accumulate, but at least having bases keeping each other in check might limit the worst. Unless they work in collusion, which is what we get today.

I don't have any answers, but I was curious if anyone else shared these misgivings, and to hear any ideas anyone might have on how these powers could be curtailed (or in the alternative, why you believe they should not).

I hear you 100%

I am a fairy liberal person and can still identify with your whole post.

I think there are many things wrong with that kind of concentrated influence.

In fact I would go so far as to say; big business is the puppet master in the here and now,
not the government.

We wonder why Washington and World bodies seem to exacerbate every situation and knowingly create loopholes so fraudulent activities can still be dabbled in. Yet we do not seem to make the connection; we are no longer the focus of our politicians because of this accumulated, centralized power. It is the disconnect that is such a failure on the peoples behalf, the politicians do what they have always done, please those that fund their campaigns.

We are selling ourselves out to our consumerism and this world is slowly becoming solely for the corporate good. I am not a socialist, but that does not mean I decipher the the world in perpetual favor of capitalism. I refuse to adhere to any dogma or ideology as there is merit in both the right and left; as there is inherent disfunction in
both. Anyway you slice it we are becoming a machine, we gleefully assume the roles presented so that we may survive. The irony is we are our own captors, yet we are now syncopated and completely dependent upon this sick symbiosis, so what to do?

From our information to our food to our options to our interests. We are slowly being pacified, people wrapped up in endless choices against the backdrop of freedom.


[edit on 8-3-2010 by Janky Red]

[edit on 8-3-2010 by Janky Red]