SB: Last long O-T message for a while, promise...

[Strawnet@aol.com]

In response to David Neeley's questions:

Thanks for your thoughtful response to my rant.  I agree that I didn't 
cover in depth any of the things that I was writing about. That is why I 
gave a list of books that cover in much greater depth the various things 
that I was mentioning.  It's always a challenge to do any of this briefly 
enough to have anyone read it, and be clear or comprehensible, much less 
give proper attention to any of the details. I really hesitated in even 
sending that message because I knew it would end up requiring more follow 
up than I have time to devote.  A little while ago I spoke with Tony at 
DCAT about creating a page on our website where we can post some of these 
articles and other longer pieces that elaborate more clearly and 
completely these ideas.  Hopefully soon we'll manage that.  I'll let you 
know. 

As for my references about the founding fathers and corporations, they 
come from some things that I read many years ago that I cannot cite 
(swiss cheese memory), but which were more recently triggered by some of 
Jim Hightower's writing among others, on that subject. His sources are a 
range of writers on the subject of corporate charters, corporate power, 
etc. ranging from David Korten to Jane Anne Morris.  And there are lots 
more sources because this has been the subject of a lot of research by 
people trying to understand and get a handle on the power of huge 
national and multinational corporations.  A web search will reveal a lot 
information on this subject.

Here is one of the things that Thomas Jefferson wrote: "I hope we shall 
take warning from the example of England and crush in its birth the 
aristocracy of our moneyed corporations which dare already to challenge 
our Government to trial and bid defiance to the laws of our country."  
And as background about why he felt this way - from an interesting 
website: http://www.ratical.org/corporations/Call2Lawyers.html  -  The 
National Lawyers Guild Practitioner -  Taking Back the Corporation and 
Ending Corporate Welfare.  "After the American Revolution, both law and 
tradition defined corporations as creatures of the state, subordinate to 
the sovereign people. The people who came -- or were forcibly brought -- 
to these shores knew first-hand that unconstitutionalized business 
extensions of the state -- such as the East India Company, the Hudson's 
Bay Company, the Royal Africa Company, and the crown corporations which 
ran colonies in Carolina, Virginia, Pennsylvania and elsewhere -- were 
tyrannical and dictatorial by design. For example, the Royal Africa 
Company played a major role in the transatlantic slave trade. The 
directors of the crown corporations in North America exercised total 
authority over the colonists -- conscripting them into corporate militia, 
instructing them on what to grow, what work to do, where to buy goods, 
where to market their products, what to think." 

Jim Hightower writes that the British devised a scheme called "joint 
stock companies" during their colonial phase. "The corporate entity was 
(and is) a legal fiction, first invented by the crown to assist the 
barons, merchant traders, and bankers of the day in plundering the wealth 
of the Empire's colonies, including those in our fair land. It was a way 
to amass the large sums of capital they needed to plunder far away 
places, collecting money from investors to finance the plundering, then 
distributing the booty back to those investors. The corporate construct 
is dangerous not only because it can agglomerate an absolutely 
domineering amount of financial power but also because it allows the 
owners of the corporation (the shareholders) to profit from its business 
activities, yet accept no responsibility for any harm done by their 
company's business activities.  All gain no pain."

And Jane Anne Morris whose work you can also find on the web said in a 
speech a few years ago: 
"I think it's useful at this point to go to the founding parents of this 
nation and, without excusing any of their major oversights, I think they 
understood one thing very well, and that is that they were being 
oppressed by a very well-working combination of the monarchy and the 
corporations. 
And they no more wanted a socially responsible king than they wanted 
corporations. So when they set up the new government in this nation, they 
didn't have kings and they didn't have corporations. They didn't plan on 
again allowing themselves to be subservient to corporations like the 
colonies themselves or the British East India Company or the Hudson Bay 
Company or others. And they left to the states the chartering of 
corporations. 
Since I'm from Wisconsin ... I want to give you the example of 10 
provisions that Wisconsin used to have in place that reflects how a 
sovereign people deals with corporations that it has created, remember, 
for a public need and a public purpose. ... 
1.  Corporations had a specific purpose. You're here to do this. It was 
often something like "to build and operate a railroad between two points" 
or "to build a mill dam," something like that. Corporations were expected 
to fulfill, but not exceed, that purpose.
2.  If they didn't fulfill that purpose, the state legislature revoked 
their charter and this happened dozens and dozens of times. It was a very 
common occurrence; they just revoked that charter
3.  These corporations had a limited life span -- five years, 10 years, 20 
years, 30 years. They were not set up in perpetuity, as is now the 
practice.
4.  A corporation was prohibited from owning stock in other corporations. 
...
5.  Other holdings of the corporation [such as real estate not connected 
with its purpose] were prohibited.
6.  What we tend to identify with stockholders, that their liability was 
limited, was not necessarily the case. In many cases stockholders were 
liable for anything the corporation did while they owned the stock, not 
just to the amount of their stock, but to however much else was owed, and 
this was true even if they later sold their stock. They were responsible 
for whatever happened while they held it.
7.  The legislature set rates and conditions under which corporations 
operated.
8.  Corporations were prohibited from giving to charity and other civic 
pursuits. Why? It was regarded as a waste of stockholder resources and it 
was regarded as a way of preventing them from extending their influence 
in undue ways.
9.  All political contributions from corporations were prohibited.
10. They had a really ambitious open records law. A committee of the 
legislature could inspect the vaults, documents and records papers and on 
and on of that corporation in order to determine what it was doing and 
they also could examine under oath any officer, director, employee or 
stockholder of the corporation, because they understood that if the state 
set up the corporation to serve the public interest and the public need 
they would need to know what on earth that corporation was doing. And the 
only way to do this was to see the records -- all the records ...
Of course the corporations had a response to this ... Every time the 
people succeeded in doing something or some part of democracy worked for 
the people the corporations didn't go in there with even more lawyers and 
more experts and so on; they changed the rules of the game so that it 
wouldn't work next time...."

Virtually all of the states had similar limitations on corporations 
because they knew the potential power and abuse inherent in such 
entities.  Over the years these controls and limitations have been 
stripped away to the point that the public benefit part of the equation 
is virtually missing as a requirement and the system now actually serves 
to strengthen not limit the rights and powers of corporations, extending 
them well beyond those of other forms of business or any living, 
breathing citizen.  

This does not mean that there are not many corporations that do very good 
work with great public benefit.  But it's not just that it's not a 
requirement anymore, there are now laws that require those running 
publicly held corporations to maximize return to shareholders as their 
first and most sacrosanct obligation.  It is extremely difficult and rare 
for anyone managing a publicly held corporation to do anything that 
doesn't fit the quarterly demand for maximum return on shareholder 
investment.  But the best corporate citizens are almost always privately 
held corporations, not publicly traded ones. 

I run a corporation, albeit a non-profit one (DCAT).  I had my own 
theoretically for-profit corporation years ago too - New Paradigm 
Builders - my construction company.  I had no qualms about that company - 
its intentions, its potential for doing good.  But it was privately held 
and so in most ways was like an ordinary small business.  We decided what 
we did and how we did it and we didn't have outside investors or 
shareholders to be accountable to for our profitability.  If we wanted to 
take a job that we thought was important but unprofitable or do something 
in a way that we knew wouldn't make money, there was no one to stop us.  
But there is a big difference between that little corporation and 
Monsanto, TimeWarnerAOL, General Electric, ADM, Texaco, or General Motors 
or RJRNabiscoKraftCocaColaUniversalStudiosCNNChevronMattel or whatever 
the latest merger might have wrought.  

And there is a real difference between small companies and the people in 
them that are accountable to the community in which they operate and 
those that are accountable only to their shareholders - thousands or tens 
of thousands of seemingly faceless people or other corporations, funds, 
or financial brokers who seem to live anywhere but where the direct 
effects of the management of their financial interests are actually 
played out.  

The problem is that the corporate power system that is now in place, 
believes in the idea of unlimited and perpetual growth - growth primarily 
of their own wealth, power, size, market share, and political influence.  
I have many misgivings about the power of government, but they are almost 
all centered on the shifts that take control of government away from all 
of us - the people - and put it in the hands of special interests, which 
are often as not, moneyed and business interests.  I am constantly amazed 
by the number of people who think we are safer with our welfare in the 
hands of businesses and corporations than governments.  Even if you are a 
large shareholder in a publicly traded corporation, even if you are on 
the board or an officer of the corporation, your power to control or 
manage is extremely limited.  We still have the power to use grassroots 
campaigns to change government and in fact that is currently the most 
powerful tool we have to influence businesses as well, given the 
emasculation of government controls over corporations and corporate 
charters.  I personally like the effort to get three strikes and your out 
legislation for coroprations - three serious violations of the law and 
the corporation loses its charter.  If they are going to pretend to be a 
person, why not treat them the same as a person.  The cries about the 
loss of jobs that would ensue if these huge corporations were to fold, 
should be given the same serious consideration that these same corporate 
giants give when they move a large hundred year old factory that is the 
only game in town to Korea or Mexico, or when they casually lay of 10,000 
or 20,000 workers in a downsizing that shows up as a sharp rise in the 
value of their stock.

All of the laws we have against monopolies, child labor, worker safety, 
overtime, minimum wages, all the environmental laws, laws governing the 
safety of appliances, automobiles, airplanes, drugs, food, water, and so 
forth have come about because of the abuses of commerce and in particular 
what happened when the restrictions on corporate power were undone - 
giving us the age of the robber barons.  No one who knows this history 
can believe that left to their own devices, corporations or the pursuit 
of profit will automatically benefit the general populace.  The same is 
true for free trade.  The "protectionist" policies that exist around the 
world in the global marketplace are there because they are protecting 
something real - national, regional and local economies, the viability of 
communities, jobs, cultures.  Why should we believe that the basic 
principle of free trade is good: that commodities should be produced 
wherever they can be made for the lowest cost and consumed wherever they 
will bring the highest price? How is this a social good? It is not and 
never has been.

John Gray writes in False Dawn: "Global laissez-faire is a moment in the 
history of the emerging world economy, not its end point...A regime of 
global governance is needed in which world markets are managed so as to 
promote the cohesion of societies and the integrity of states. Only a 
framework of global regulation - of currencies, capital movements, trade 
and environmental conservation - can enable the creativity of the world 
economy to be harnessed in the service of human needs.

The specific policies that should be implemented by such institutions are 
less important...than the recognition of the need for a new global 
regime. A global tax on currency speculation, as proposed by the 
economist James Tobin, may be an example of the kind of regulation that 
could render world markets more stable and productive.

Whether or not such policies are workable is uncertain.  What is beyond 
serious doubt is that organizing the world economy as a single global 
free market promotes instability.  It forces workers to bear the costs of 
new technologies and unrestricted free trade.  It contains no means 
whereby activities that endanger the global ecological balance can be 
curbed.  If - as seems clear - global warming is a real threat, the 
global free market contains no institutions to deal with it. Organizing 
the world economy as a universal free market is, in effect, staking the 
planet's future on the supposition that these vast dangers will be 
resolved as an unintended consequence of the unfettered pursuit of 
profits. It is hard to think of a more reckless wager."

The question of how this becomes practical and what actions people can 
actually take is a good one.  And the answer lies in much of what is 
being done by people on this list.  In part, from disengaging wherever 
possible from this dependence on corporations and distant systems and 
sources.  We need to be creating the means of community self-sufficiency 
or regional self-sufficiency.  This is critical -  the solutions to these 
huge problems are not going to come from somewhere on high - a new set of 
stone tablets from the mountains.  We have to create them and it's not 
going to be easy.

But it starts with not giving your power to the system that destroys 
locally owned businesses, that destroys family owned farms or woodlots.  
That destroys the basis for local economics, here or in the developing 
world.  I am not demonizing people, but I am pointing out that we have 
the most dangerous system we could have created and the reality is that 
even though communism has been just as destructive to the environment as 
capitalism, capitalism, because it engages the creativity and good 
intentions of people so well, is actually a much more powerful engine - 
for both good and bad.  That is why people put into place all those laws 
and regulations to try to minimize the abuses.  

The great trick of politicians over the last few decades has been to 
uncouple people from any need to feel shame or guilt about greed or being 
partisans in a culture that has dissatisfaction with what one currently 
has as its central theme and the engine of its economy.  We have made 
"enought" an obsolete concept.  

More critical has been the success of the business interests in 
convincing people that government is bad, big government worse, and the 
best we can hope for is minimal damage from the public sector. Utter 
nonsense.  No one can read a word on this listserve without the service 
that government has provided - few if any of us do not benefit in very 
real and tangible ways from local, county, state and federal goverment 
every day. Is government to be trusted to be good automatically?  Of 
course not. But I do not trust entities that are designed to take 
whatever advantage they can for private benefit to do a better job of 
looking after my interests.  Why would anyone assume that business is the 
source of all that is good and more trustworthy than government in 
helping us achieve our hopes and dreams?

What I and many others are saying is that we have created a poisonous and 
suicidal economic system that now is control of the political processes 
and in fact influences almost everything that goes on everywhere.  This 
system is so pervasive that it is hard for most people to imagine 
something different, but there are many people creating alternative 
systems everywhere, from co-ops to local currencies, to community 
supported agriculture, to fair trade systems, to helping people detach 
from the materialistic world view that is blasted at us from everywhere 
everyday, and on and on.  That is the stuff.  If we don't like the 
government, we are obligated to change it. And if we don't like what the 
corporate world is doing to the natural world, to communities, to 
farmers, to forests, to our health, to our schools, to our children, and 
to our governments we need to change that too.

David Eisenberg - I promise I won't be writing any more of these long 
messages - I have way too much work to do...

-------------------------------------------------------------------------
To unsubscribe from the list, send a message to:
   <strawbale-unsubscribe@crest.org>

or for the digest to:
   <strawbale-digest-unsubscribe@crest.org>

Please send any list administration questions to
strawbale-owner@crest.org