[lit-ideas] Re: Further to Economics Not
- From: Andy <mimi.erva@xxxxxxxxx>
- To: "lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx" <lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Thu, 29 Sep 2011 10:35:36 -0700 (PDT)
True, they can be disbanded and die, but they can't sit on death row waiting
for their last meal. And they can do unimaginable damage to life and limb with
virtual impunity, even absolute impunity. Donal is correct generalizations are
always wrong. Maybe we need to qualify that Little Joe Average Incorporated
can be punished and often is. The big boys rarely are, and often are
rewarded. They crash economies and get huge bonuses for their efforts. When
bricks and mortar are considered persons, there's something upside down in that
equation.
Andy
________________________________
From: John Wager <jwager@xxxxxxxxxx>
To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Sent: Thursday, September 29, 2011 12:22 PM
Subject: [lit-ideas] Re: Further to Economics Not
Andy wrote:
An example popped into my head about how mythical the economic system is, the
very fact that corporations are treated as people under the law. A corporation
is a person, isn't that unbelievable? They have all the protections, none of
the liabilities. They don't have all of the protections of a real person.
Corporations are not "emancipated." They have to be owned by people; they can't
own themselves. (Not yet, anyway.) Although I must admit that I don't
understand economics either, especially when companies start buying up their
own stock. It would seem to me that there is no legal reason why a company
could not buy up ALL of its own stock, and thereby be emancipated, owning
itself, a TRUE Frankenstein.
As it is, nobody really knows what they own anyway, so "ownership" is no longer
a real idea.
For example: I have a retirement plan that I paid into for 30 years. That money
goes to a state retirement fund that invested it somewhere, but I don't really
know the details. Some of was probably in a mutual fund, that bought stock in
individual companies. So technically I probably "own" part of McDonald's or
General Motors, but I have absolutely ZERO sense of ownership, zero sense of
responsibility. It's quite possible for some companies to be majority owned by
such third parties, which means the "stockholders" have no idea they are
stockholders, and have no responsibility whatsoever to the public or to the
company.
A corporation will never sit on death row, will never pay child support.
Corporations can "die;" in fact, they almost always do. That's the only thing
I took away from reading a very old computer magazine called BOARD TALK, about
Bulletin Boards. The owner/editor pointed out that ALL companies die at some
time; the only thing a company can do is to extend its lifespan by a few years
by being subsumed under a larger company ("eaten," as it were, and thus dying
as an individual entity) or by splitting into smaller units, which then can
continue on until they die. Mitosis of companies does not produce huge colonies
of the same individual company, though; at best, the split entities last for a
while longer until they are eaten.
And bankruptcy is really a corporate death; the estate sale disposes of all the
assets of the dead "person." That's one reason going to Border's last month of
increasingly discounted sales was so depressing; it was like going to the
estate sale of a good friend.
On the rare occasion it is prosecuted, its CEO's die in prison of natural
causes, that's about it. We need to redefine success to something in keeping
with the laws of gravity.
>
>On VERY rare occasions, companies can be "executed" by the state. They can be
>"dis-banded" by non-natural causes when they behave so badly towards the
>public that they lose all rights to continue as a corporate entity.
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