...to revisit an age-old argument of corporatists, i.e. those die-hard laissez-fair pro-corporation thinkers who are deluded enough to claim that corporate America is the solution to America's problems, and not the source!
Their argument states: A corporation is a person! Of course, this is a legal determination, that places the corporation as a legal entity...
But we - the people - are not interested in defining a legal entity, as it would befit corporate lawyers...
We - the people - are concerned with the effect of corporations on us, our country...and the world!
O.k., let's just, for a moment, humor this corporatist delusion.
Let's contemplate, that if in fact a corporation is a person, exactly what kind of person would it be? I think this an appropriate question to ask...because philosophers throughout the centuries have contemplated the essence of being...some with religious inclination, others with logical concepts.
So, if a corporation does in fact exist as a "person", what kind of character would "it" have.
Hmmm....
Well, a corporation would certainly be a very mechanical being...whose sole role of existence would be to fill the pockets of its owners: the Shareholders, who become owners by buying shares from - you guessed it - Wall St. stockbrokers. A corporation is a mechanical device to insure that shareholders that invest their money in it, are repaid with excess earnings - usually in the form of dividends. For this to occur, the earnings of a corporation has to be in excess of expenses! I.e. a corporations, to fulfill its sole purpose of being, has to make more money in whatever it does, than the money it spends while doing whatever it does! And to achieve that function, a corporation is supposedly allowed to rip off customers, to underpay its employees, to lay off its employees without abandon, and occasionally, even if it is making large excess earnings, to retain that money by not hiring new employees!
So, a corporation is basically a cash cow for investors and Wall Street that sells to those investors!
But, the problem with this paradigm is: a corporation is not too much of a "person", then, is it?!
It doesn't have feelings... it doesn't care... a very cold "being", then!
All it has is a legal charter that establishes its "birth" in the world!
O.k., all subliminal sarcasm aside!
A corporation is not a being, it's a monetary entity protected as a legal entity, because, in our country, money rules everything!
Fullstop!
That's it... nothing more!
This is not something, that corporatists would ever speak out loud...you see, corporatists revel in the ignorance of us - the people.
The less we know about what corporations are really about...the better it is for them! The less we know, the better it enables Wall St. Hedgefund managers and Wall St. investment bankers to dream up financial devices that can (and have) ruin(ed) an entire country or the world as a whole, just for the sake of short term large returns for themselves at a monstrous risk! The less we know, the better it enables them to argue that the control of the financial markets is not necessary! The less we know, the better it enables them to morally justify themselves as corporatists!
As you see, we are going full circle, here. The corporatists argument is propelled by that ignorance of us!
And because of that, the Occupy Wall St. movement is just so important. Because this movement is not ignoring Wall St. mechanisms anymore, instead this movement is questioning them! This movement is helping the country understand, that you can live your life by not questioning corporate mechanisms that are driven by Wall St., but only if you are willing to live with the consequences of that ignorance: poverty, disenfranchisment, a country in ruins etc.
Corporate Social Responsibility is a myth! It does not exist. Mind you, it is an ideal in which a corporation paints itself as a caring harbiter of its surroundings! It's a corporate marketing tool, but at the end of day, a corporation is still only a cash cow for investors and Wall Street that sells to those investors!
This is really why... my hats, if I were ever to wear any, would go off to all those union members, students, and unemployed that are protesting right now as part of the Occupy Wall St. movement. They are questioning something that should have been questioned ever since Dubya was forced onto the country as its president by the courts!