Are we witnessing the death of the corporation

[bronxiteforever]

Pacific Standard by way of The Week
January 12, 2018

Now, no one expects to work anywhere for more than six months," Gerald Davis says. "Why should we put up with the ability of corporations to amass power and use money to corrupt our politics if they're no longer giving us what they used to?" Davis says the future of the economy can go in two directions, depending on how quickly and powerfully masses organize. The first is the nightmare scenario: A few chief executive officers from a handful of companies (Davis suggests technology giants Google, Facebook, and Amazon as the likely trio) wielding unchecked power. "If Mark Zuckerberg wanted to sell Facebook to Vladimir Putin for one trillion dollars, he has the power to do so," Davis says. "It's a concentration of control we haven't seen in American history before."

...moving more in the direction — of democratically controlled associations and co-ops, of shifting health-care or retirement benefits from private businesses to public programs — would almost certainly have a positive effect on the long-held American belief in the value of entrepreneurism. "Start-ups have been in a death spiral for 40 years," Davis says. "The biggest reason is, if you start a business in the U.S., you have to pay for everyone's health care and retirement. We make it undesirable to start businesses. It's so risky, no sane person wants to do it." What's particularly concerning for the U.S. is how ill-equipped the country is for an economy no longer led by corporations. "We're the only semi-civilized society that would imagine you should get health care from your employer rather than your government. Or that retirement should depend on employers," Davis says. "We face hazards that are not true of other parts of the world."

But, Davis says, whatever change is coming is happening soon."We're at the turning point," he says. "If we let these forces run free, we get corporate fascism. But the tools are there to create something really great if we choose to do that."

http://theweek.com/articles/739019/are-witnessing-death-corporation

[HAB911]

1. Could Vlad seize control of Facebook with $2 trillion?

[genxlib]

2. Why would he want to

When he can harness all of its persuasive powers for a few million in advertising expenditures. And have the benefit of doing it without the people knowing the source of the money to boot.

[HAB911]

3. I don't think his powers using advertising equates to what he could do

with ownership

[CrispyQ]

4. "Slavery is the fiction that people are objects. Corporate personhood is the fiction

that corporations are people."

http://reclaimdemocracy.org/corporate-personhood/

snip...

Introduction to Corporate Personhood

Our Bill of Rights was the result of tremendous efforts to institutionalize and protect the rights of human beings. It strengthened the premise of our Constitution: that the people are the root of all power and authority for government. This vision has made our Constitution and government a model emulated in many nations.

But corporate lawyers (acting as both attorneys and judges) subverted our Bill of Rights in the late 1800’s by establishing the doctrine of “corporate personhood” — the claim that corporations were intended to fully enjoy the legal status and protections created for human beings.

We believe that corporations are not persons and possess only the privileges we willfully grant them. Granting corporations the status of legal “persons” effectively rewrites the Constitution to serve corporate interests as though they were human interests. Ultimately, the doctrine of granting constitutional rights to corporations gives a thing illegitimate privilege and power that undermines our freedom and authority as citizens. While corporations are setting the agenda on issues in our Congress and courts, We the People are not; for we can never speak as loudly with our own voices as corporations can with the unlimited amplification of money.

Read our draft constitutional amendment to revoke corporate constitutional “rights,” (published nearly a decade before the Citizens United v FEC ruling). See also Move to Amend’s proposed language.

Lots of great links on this page.

[bronxiteforever]

5. Thanks Crispy! Worthwhile cause.