Geezus, Thousands of people find themselves out of a job, their 401K’s gone, and the top dogs get off with a slap on the wrist and mega-millions of dollars. Downstream, it also took out several accounting firms which, in turn, cost a few thousand jobs and retirement plans. That’s what about Enron.
Your comment that employees are also responsible for the sins of the top managers. WRONG! There isn’t a corporate set up that doesn’t exclude the average wage earner from any decision making about how or what the corporation does or doesn’t do. You want responsibilty from the bottom to the top? Then corporate structure would have to be completely overhauled - both legally and socially.
Is everyone able to be self sufficient? If you have to have money you will take the job. Not everyone is capable of owning or running a business, nor would they want to once they discover just how many headaches you get from being self sufficient. Its a crap load of work and pain. It would for most be worth the risk. And farming requires you to depend upon others you can’t just easily walk out to the ground and start farming. Tools, fertilizer seeds water etc… we always need others. Do you think many folks can make a plow, a hoe, a shovel, a rake? Or make a tractor? No given the option of being held responsible to actually being responsible, most folks would rather take the risk of only being held responsible. At least thats what I have observed.
Tent, Who allowed the CEOs to get away with that? the employees did. In the long run if we turn a blind eye just to get a paycheck then we too are accomplices.
That’s a hard attitude, Kris. Life sucks so let’s make it worse by making the janitor responsible when the plane crashes. I can’t really understand why you would propose such a thing.
How can you turn a blind eye to what you are unaware of and have no control over?
That’s waaaaay too simplistic, Kris. In an ideal world, you may be right. But we aren’t living in an ideal world. Had any employee, or group of employees complained about the lack of transparency in decision making, they would have been fired on the spot. Corporations stack the deck AGAINST their employees and their stockholders. I know you know this, you stubborn redhead…
Who allowed them to get away with that? If it’s a publicly held company, then the shareholders and Board of Directors did. Certainly not the employees, most of whom have no idea what goes on in the upper echelons of management. The shareholders and Board are the ones who control whether or not the CEO gets a bonus, and whether or not the CEO keeps his/her job for another year.
The CEO is often paid HUGE money specifically to be held accountable for what goes on inside that company, your Joe/Jane worker does not.
The day “regular employees” and CEOs make the same salary (including bonuses) is the day you can hold the “regular employees” equally responsible for what the company does.
People’s estates can survive them as well. You could have a poor corporation fighting against a wealthy person…
In practice, legal disputes come to an end. Corporations cannot defend themselves indefinitely. If that were the case, there wouldn’t be legal judgements against corporations. That some legal disputes can be unreasonably prolonged is a problem with our legal system, having nothing to do with corporate personhood.
The fact that corporations can live indefinitely is a great advantage. For example, they retain their legal liability beyond the life (or ownership) of any specific person. If XYZ corporations polluted your land 70 years ago, you may still have somebody to sue. If a person did that, that’s much less likely…
I’ll try to state my position again
Corporations have as much property rights as natural persons. If a corporation bought some property X, it has as much right to it as when a natural person does. Conversely, corporations also have the same liabilities as a natural person. If a corporation caused you damage, you should have as much ability to recover your damage from the corporation as you would have from a natural person.
As a matter of legal convenience, corporations can be treated as persons. That is essentially a short-hand for addressing all owners in a legal action. Thus it is much easier to draft a contract with a corporation than to draft one with a large (and changing) group of individuals.
Having now read the Wikipedia article, it appears like the most controversial part of Corporate personhood involves first amendment rights. I have a problem here. I believe the first amendment is unjustly narrow in its contraction (not to mention interpretation). I would have liked Congress not to be allowed to stop any person (natural or corporate) from making any use of their property which does not harm other people’s just property rights. With that formulation (which incorporates the first amendment, as will as others), freedom of speech becomes an aspect of property rights which, as I mentioned above, be extended to corporation as a collection of individuals.
Thus, I would like to see the First Amendment interpreted in the broadest sense consistent with property rights. Specifically, I would like to see it applied to corporations.
I knew I would be slammed for my stance. I hold that it is the correct one , not one born of sympathy nor emotions. The stockholders are a part of the corporation they too would be held responsible. And if the employees are part of a union then they have big brother behind them , if they do not well when the corporation goes under due to criminal behavior they lose their jobs anyway, they can make the choice follow the law or lose it all. The law provides some security for whistleblowers, not as much as there should be but, it is not a perfect world. If such a person were to stand trial how hard do you think it would be to get them proven innocent if they truly were? Not very hard at all. All of this of course does not occur now but hinges upon corporations getting certain rights. Now do you all think if this were to be a part of it that Corporations would even get the rights or try to get rights equal to citizens? Hell, no. the whole thing would come to a screeching halt. People do not want to have responsibility.
I hold that if corporations have equal status as a single citizen entity then all within must be held accountable as a single citizen would be in all ways, you can’t just pick on the wealthy or hold those in charge soley responsible, that is classist and just as wrong as things are now. You all may think I am wrong, Ok fine, I think I am right. People do not bear reasponsibility very well and sometimes we need it forced upon us.
How long is “unreasonably” long? Ten years? Ten years is nothing to many corporations.
This is true. However, the legal liability of corporations is often erased when “our” politicians vote to bail them out with taxpayer funds. Admittedly this may be a separate issue, but these related issues can be difficult to untangle. The invention of corporate personhood is obviously one tool among many that ennabled the rise of the modern corporation.
Is this your idea of how it ought to be? Or of how it is?
Makes sense to me.
Can you clarify this? I’m not quite sure what you’re saying.
If you’ve ever worked for a large corporation, or even a medium sized one, you’ll know that there is generally a very distinct separation of duties, specifically to safeguard against fraud and mismanagement. Are you familiar with the Sarbanes–Oxley act? That legislation was enacted specifically so that those who are in charge - the top executives - are responsible for the validity of the corporation’s finanacial reporting. It’s introduced several levels of audit to just about every process in the company I work for. And if the CEO or any of the executive VPs abscond with company funds, you think every one in the company, from those upper managers to the folks in the mail room, should share the blame? Seriously?
Not sure what law you are referring to here? How is this relevant?
“Pick on the wealthy”? Come on, Kris, in what way are the wealthy being “picked on”? Is it picking on them to expect them to be accountable for their own actions? What about that personal responsibility you just touted? If the wealthy commit white collar crimes, then they are the ones who should accept full responsibility for their own actions. Except that you’re right, they don’t want to have to take it.
One thing about Corporate Personhood that many people don’t realize is that a Corporation cannot represent itself, pro se, in legal matters in many states. In Ohio, for example, a Corporation may only be represented by one of its officers in small-claims court. Whereas, an actual individual can represent themselves, pro se, in any matter, although I wouldn’t recommend that course of action.
Anita, I am only refering to the proposed issue of giving corporations full citizenship rights. If corporations want those rights then all with in must be held equally responsible. Yes I work for a corporation, it has offices in several states. It is a family owned Corporation. I work directly for the woman and man that owns and runs it all. I am a peon in the company though. It goes down my family goes down with it since all of us work for it. I have been around the block with huge corporations, I am not ignorant of the amount of people that are employed or just how many are underlings compared to the bosses. I know all of what you said but, I still stand by what I said. People need to be held responsible if they are going to be part of an entity that has citizen’s rights. Just because you are low man on the totem pole does not give you a walking ticket.If you are innocent then prove it. When do people have to be responsible? Is it OK to turn a blind eye because you need to feed your family? In the case of corporations is holding a job with them more important then doing the right thing? All of this only refers to corps. getting full citizen rights. I doubt it will occur.
Does anybody advocate giving corporations “full citizenship rights”? Like the right to vote?
Maybe you didn’t mean it that way. But surely, a person shouldn’t have to prove her innocence? I could understand the proposal that any employee, at any level, could be held liable if they are found guilty. Is that what you meant?
Yes I did but unfortunately even though the law is supposed to be innocent until proven guilty, it does not truly work that way anymore if ever. Just getting arrested now leaves a tainted shade of guilt. If you happen to be asscociated with someone guilty you bear that taint to a degree. so Yea, you really do have to prove your innocence, you can’t just kick back and say prove my guilt. Lawyers are too silvertongued. Many times its not the evidence that sways a jury, its how well the lawyer presents the case. Reality bites, and reality is our system is really very ill. It needs to be fixed.
This thread started with the issue that corporations can outlast natural persons. Much more relevant is the degree to which government can outspend any natural person and most corporations. That, together with government dictating the “rules of the game” in court, result in huge distortions in our legal system.
Kris, no one is talking about turning a blind eye.(?) I’m talking about situations in which an employee has no knowledge, and can’t be expected to have knowledge, of the criminal activity of someone over which they have no authority. Which is why I specifically reference larger corporations. I’m aware that your employer is a family-owned business and you work directly for the owners. Imagine if there were several layers of management between you and those owners, you never saw those owners, and had no idea if illicit activities were occurring or not - your job is far removed from the financial wheelings and dealings of the executive team. Under your reasoning, if they commit fraud, you feel you should be held equally as culpable as those owners. That makes no sense to me.
I fail to understand how you can so easily label such an employee a shirker of responsibility, make a blanket accusation that they’re valuing their job over “doing the right thing,” and yet you’re more than willing to let those true criminals share blame with innocent individuals.
Sorry, I don’t think you’d ever be able to convince me that that is a reasonable position.
Alright Anita, I will back off. I know where you are coming from and agree to a point but, I can’t seem to get across my position clearly. So since I can’t form it right ,I am wrong and done here. Buuuuut , I do not give up on where I stand on this. OK, Damn where is that handshaking emoticon???
Nowhere in the Constitution is there a mention of corporations. It deals only with individuals and government. So they get designated by the courts as individuals through strained interpretations of the Constitution, perhaps because nobody really can classify them as the alternative, government. Except corporations are strikingly different from people. Corporations exist for one reason: to earn profits. They are wealth building entities, that’s all. They’re born not from people (just as the construct of ‘corporation’ has nothing to do with people who run it or work for it) but from government decree and the ejaculation of capital from exising wealth holders. They die (or are regenerated elsewhere) only when they can’t produce wealth. They don’t suffer, get educated, get married, give birth, get banned from lunch counters, contemplate the meaning of their lives, none of it. Wealth is their lifeblood, regardless of any philanthropic things they might elect to do. If there’s no profit, there’s no corporation, at least not over the long term. And the owners of corporations (meaning those who are significant owners, not us peons who hold a few shares or have mutual funds) use the wealth of corporations – via the mechanism that it’s the corporation that has the rights of personhood to do what’s in its best interest, not the owners who already ARE individuals – to assure that their corporate interests (to get and keep wealth) are preserved. As a result, what’s happened over the last couple of decades is that corporations have actually become the system. Which means individuals no longer get access to their representatives in any meaningful way.
Kris, if a corporation functioned like a cooperative where everyone with a stake in the business were part of all business decisions, then you could claim responsibility from the janitor to the top job. BUT… when only the board of directors and the several presidents and vice presidents are making the decisions (good and bad), you have the equivalent of a feudal lord/serf arrangement. Stick to your story, but you are looking up a dead horse’s you-know-what.
I knew I would be slammed for my stance. I hold that it is the correct one , not one born of sympathy nor emotions. The stockholders are a part of the corporation they too would be held responsible. And if the employees are part of a union then they have big brother behind them , if they do not well when the corporation goes under due to criminal behavior they lose their jobs anyway, they can make the choice follow the law or lose it all. The law provides some security for whistleblowers, not as much as there should be but, it is not a perfect world. If such a person were to stand trial how hard do you think it would be to get them proven innocent if they truly were? Not very hard at all. All of this of course does not occur now but hinges upon corporations getting certain rights. Now do you all think if this were to be a part of it that Corporations would even get the rights or try to get rights equal to citizens? Hell, no. the whole thing would come to a screeching halt. People do not want to have responsibility.
