Social Security letter-to-editor

[Barbara Fitzpatrick]

Au contraire - the "state" - i.e., the government - is what defines the corporation - a business or company may or may not be official and legally defined to the extent of being able to exist outside of government, but a corporation cannot. A supposed judicial (again, governmental) Robber Baron era ruling that legally defined a corporation as a person under law (the court didn't actually rule that, the law clerk misunderstood the case and wrote that on the coversheet/abstract of the majority opinion, but it has been affirmed so many times in later cases that the original ruling is moot), is what led to greater and greater power, combined with less and less responsibility in the hands of modern corporate CEOs - including the current situation of incorporating over the net and corporations domiciled in cyberspace. A later court "revoking" the original ruling (like Brown v BOE, which revoked the "separate but equal" education ruling) could just as easily bring corporations back to their original definition, which required that they prove how being granted corporation status was for the "common good" and also required that approximately every 5 years they prove why the actions of the corporation warrant keeping that status. The Brits have a more descriptive term for this - limited liability company - and limiting liability is a governmental determination - unless, of course, you are defining government to mean something else entirely - a sophist ploy that does nothing to further understanding and whose sole purpose seems to be to extend argument.

[Dardedar]

The Brits have a more descriptive term for this - limited liability company -...

DAR
Hey, we have that too. I just formed one of those last week!

Henschell's Scooters LLC

Which reminds me, Tamara tells me I need to get to work and stop playing in the forum so much.

D.

[Hogeye]

Au contraire - the "state" - i.e., the government - is what defines the corporation...

Right, in the same way that governments try to define "marriage" and other quite natural social arrangements. But we're getting into a mere verbal argument here - over the word "corporation."

You want to define it as a State ordained limited liability company. Being, by definition, State ordained, it cannot exist apart from the State which ordained it. Thus, e.g. Volkswagon wasn't the same corporation before and after WWII, being blessed by different States.

I want to define it as a joint stock company. People can join together in a joint stock arrangement without any permission or association with governments. Thus, a corporation can outlive many governments, and in modern times can even be "domiciled" in cyberspace, meaning it's a virtual business with no government control whatsoever. Laissez Faire City pioneered free-market accreditation of such entities, and even had a stock market. This, I believe, is the wave of the future.

Limited liability is really a separate issue. As Darrel notes, one can get government approved license for various types of limited liability entities, not all of them involving joint stock arrangements. Note that there are ways to have limited liability without going to the State, e.g. in cyberspace pseudonymity can do the job.

Vocab list for Darrel: solipotence, accreditation, pseudonymity

[Hogeye]

The letter came out in the NWA Times today (Sunday).

[Barbara Fitzpatrick]

Any accrediting organization is only as good as the "full faith" in it - I prefer governments (at least democratic republics) because I have at least some input regarding behavior of the entity via my representative, even if I don't have enough money to invest in the "joint stock company".

[Hogeye]

Hmmm. I trust Consumers Union and Underwriters Lab a lot more than I trust the FDA or FCC.

[Barbara Fitzpatrick]

I'm sure you do, but what input do you have as to their behavior? With the FDA or FCC, I can not only write, phone, or email my complaint to the head of the agency, I can copy my Senators and Congressman about that behavior - and continued funding of such behavior. If I have a problem with them, I could (try to) contact the head of Consumers Union, but I have no other recourse if they say, "Blow it out your ear." However, it's not an accrediting organization - although it does a stellar job of information compilation, to aid decision-making. UL is an accrediting organization, but I don't know enough about its history or organization to comment, except to say that it is an official organization in that governmental notices and information booklets on anything electrical recommend getting UL certified equipment - so part of the average person's faith in UL comes from the fact that the government recommends it.

[Hogeye]

Hogeye> I trust Consumers Union and Underwriters Lab a lot more than I trust the FDA or FCC.

Barbara> I'm sure you do, but what input do you have as to their behavior?

Boycott. I can stop buying Consumer Reports, or the recommended products. But more importantly, I don't need imput, since I can always ignore their advice and even switch accreditors. I'd rather have my freedom and control my own decisions than have imposed licensure with input. (Not that my input to a govt regulatory agency would amount to anything.)

With the FDA or FCC, I can not only write, phone, or email my complaint to the head of the agency, I can copy my Senators and Congressman about that behavior - and continued funding of such behavior.

LOL! And you think you'll outbid the megacorporations??? You know, the ones that supply most members of regulatory boards. This is an example of extreme naivity IMO. Why don't you analyze regulatory board people the same way you would corporate people? Why don't you, like you do for corporate types, recognize that people tend to do what's in their interest. Why do you assume that the regulatory guys are angels seeking the public interest rather than men with personal agendas, like you do with corporate types? This is that double standard I was talking about.

[Barbara Fitzpatrick]

I see Hogeye hasn't paid attention to my oft-repeated quote about power corrupts. I do "analyze regulatory board people" and I don't assume they are angels - if I did, I wouldn't care whether or not I had input (and yes, I know I personally cannot outweigh corporate dollars - which is why I sign on with organizations like moveon.org or Natural Resources Defense Fund - my email/letter/phone call combined with 49,999 others has been know to make a difference - especially when sent to both the agency head and my various Congersmen/women), since the "angels" would naturally take care of everything for the best. And I've been know to ignore their advice and check out other accreditors. However, having one official accreditor means you have a standard to judge others against. Without a standard you may or may not be doing apples to apples and won't really know until you try to implement - at which point it may be very expensive to go back and remeasure.

[Hogeye]

Barbara, you give lip service to Lord Acton's "power corrupts...", but you don't seem to apply it. The way I understand it, you believe in the immaculate election of wise politicians, who before they are corrupted, appoint wise members of regulatory boards, who before they are corrupted, make wise regulations which promote the holy grail of public interest - a notion proved by mathematicians to be incoherant. (Cf: Arrow's Paradox.)

Apparently, you must think that somehow the corrupt guys are replaced by the not yet corrupted fast enough to outvote the corrupt in the legislatures and regulatory boards. IMO these bodies are sinks for corruption, i.e. corrupt incumbents tend to collect in these bodies.

Stepping outside the process, I think we have different models about predicting government decisions and actions. You seem to hold a pluralist view, that the "grass roots" has significant influence on decision-making. OTOH I hold the elitist model and public choice theory, which hold that decisions are made by political elites and they tend to do what is in their own interest (just as you and I and corporate CEOs do). IMO the pluralist model is equivalent to the belief that God provides - an article of faith and democratic dogma.

I can't make it to the FayFreethinkers meeting tomorrow - I'm playing in the North American Open (chess tnmt) this weekend.

[Barbara Fitzpatrick]

No, I just think elected officials are more accountable than corporate CEOs, who have the "corporation as person" shielding that politicians don't. That doesn't make them very accountable, just more. CEOs can get away with giving themselves $30 million bonuses when the corporation itself is losing money. Pols get the hairy eyeball for giving themselves COLA increases, even when the budget is balanced. Guys like Ken Lay only get nailed when they've done something so obviously fraudulent that it can't be ignored, to the tune of billions of dollars in damages that tax payers had to pick up (if then - Neal Bush didn't get nailed for the Savings & Loan stuff, they were too busy trying to find a link between the Clintons and Whitewater) and that's not until they've been doing it for years, if not decades. Pols get caught sooner - they may or may not get prison, but they get chucked out of office (if they didn't have to resign first). Basically, 50,000 phone calls or emails mean diddly to a CEO - the secretaries screen them or they just shut down the email server - but they mean one heck of a lot to a Congressman or Senator, who may only have a few hundred thousand constituents. You can't do the lobbyist bidding no matter how much money they gave you, if you can't get elected. And I don't believe in immaculate anything - I do believe some people can see a few years down the pike and base their self-interest on longer range consequences than others (i.e., the correct answer to "where to put this toxic stuff?" is "not in the river, we're going to need that water - how about making less of it and seeing if the residue can be a component of something else") - and those under the current tax-break/subsidy etc. "pro-bidness" climate are more likely to be pols than CEOs - the latter don't have to explain anything to anybody (they are even starting to "watch" the shareholders), the former do.