Sacrifices

I don’t know what went wrong with the original idea of the corporation. I thought the idea was that as an individual I could invest my money in somebody’s scheme with limited liability — if something went wrong, I didn’t have to worry about losing my house and everything I owned. Therefore, people were encouraged to invest their money and not just hide it under the mattress. The stockholders were supposed to run the corporation by voting at the stockholders meeting. Unfortunately, most people have no influence and it’s dominated by the few very large stockholders who conduct proxy fights etc. I think it will require a charismatic leader to gather enough proxy votes to finally fire the entire board of directors and appoint some common shlob to make changes, but that is unlikely

Originally the corporation was a company chartered by the state to undertake development too risky for ordinary businesses to take with ordinary backing. The business in question had to have some public service component, generally something like opening new territory to colonization, or driving a railroad through virgin territory. The tax break was received because of this public service component, and could be rescinded.

Boy, have things changed! David Korten’s When Corporations Rule the World is an excellent study of the growth, development, and perniciousness of corporate business.

Michael