From: Lizard <lizard@mrlizard.com>
Date: Thu, 12 Feb 1998 09:57:03 -0800 (PST)
To: "Michael Sims" <declan@pathfinder.com>
Subject: Re: "Corporations selling your ass down the road for a dollar"
In-Reply-To: <v03007807b106593348bc@[168.161.105.216]>
Message-ID: <3.0.1.32.19980212095051.00bec7b0@dnai.com>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain


At 07:10 AM 2/12/98 -0400, Michael Sims wrote:

>When I see a libertarian calling for an elimination of all forms of 
>corporations and a return to sole proprietorships and straight 
>partnerships as the only form of business, then I'll know he's 
>ideologically consistent.  Until then, pro-business is the only 
>reasonable way to describe the twisted rationale behind 
>libertarianism.

I've been saying that for a long time. I'm not 100% certain I wish to
eliminate entirely the corporation, but the idea of an 'artificial person'
as an entity to take the blame for crimes committed by real people is
highly dubious to me. If Monty Burns says, "Let's dump the toxic waste in
the school ground, who cares if some kids die!", then it should be he who
faces criminal charges -- not his corporation which gets fined.

A corporation, like any collective entity, is at best a convenience -- a
way to deal with large numbers of individuals by providing a central
identifying tag. This way, "Motorola Chips" can sell to "Apple Computer",
and the deal remains valid even if the chip-seller at Motorola and the
chip-buyer at Apple quit their jobs, because the contract was not between
those two individuals, but between the companies they represented. But just
as there is in truth no 'society', no 'race', no 'people', there is also,
in truth, no corporation -- it must all come down to individual acts and
individual responsibilities.

>Which brings me back to my original point - the AIM representation at 
>the aforementioned hearings.  In Libber-land, there's nothing 
>reprehensible there.  Corporations are lobbying for their "individual 
>rights", one of them being the right to make maximum profit by 
>eliminating/marginalizing competitors.  

Not with the power of government behind them. That's like saying there's
nothing wrong with Joe's Deli asking Vinnie The Torch to pay a little
'visit' to Max's Deli across the street.

You eliminate/marginalize competition by convincing consumers to purchase
your products over theirs. Not by having the government regulate them out
of business. What you're looking at is corporate socialism -- the current
perversion of the 'free market' that America is living under.