On the anthropomorphisation of corporations

Well I think [i]not[/i] bashing corporations wouldn't do a whole lot to influence the way they do things. I still think, as some famous lefty described, that most MNC's are miniatures of command-style slow moving, inefficient entities, and really only accountable to only a few blue chip shareholders. They are structured top-down, and as some studies have shown, CEO remuneration isn't necessarily tied to overall corporate performance. Some corporate shares are widely-held but not for very long if its energy sector or banking, or something of vital national interest. No citizens groups are as influential at lobbying governments. Essentially, a dollar democracy favours corporate rights over people's rights.

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Originally posted by Stephen Gordon:
[b] Too often, CEOs and other management officials are able to arrange things such that they cash in at the expense of investors.[/b]

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Exactly. CEO's and CFO's, top end managers' motivation driven by self-interest has sometimes tended to supercede even the interests of shareholders and most certainly overshadows the interests of the company's workforce in general when it does happen. The U.S. and other countries have moved on legislating regulations to deal with malfeasance and insider trading. I think they did a job on Eliot Spitzer, and it's questionable how serious they are in the U.S. about regulations. FBI has threatened not to include our guys with investigations if feds here aren't interested. Canada has done very little by comparison. We need a federal securities commission says the NDP.

They're not people. Corporations are artificial abstractions which enjoy even [i]more[/i] rights and privileges than ordinary people. Generally when people avoid paying taxes, we either go to jail or they come after us with full force of the law. Deferment of municipal and federal taxes is not an option for mere mortals.

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Originally posted by Stephen Gordon:
This may seem like splitting hairs, but think about (for example) corporate income taxes. Many progressives instinctively favour them, and cite a lengthy list of bad things done by corporations as justification for raising corporate taxes, or for at least not cutting them. [b]But this idea of corporate taxes as punishment for corporate misdeeds makes about as much sense as administering a beating to a car that won't start.[/b] It might make you feel better, but it won't actually make it work the way you'd like it to.

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Do try to keep up with the conversation, old bean.

[ 09 July 2008: Message edited by: M. Spector ]

If the feds refuse to train and hire more competent tax auditors to investigate shady tax shelters and eliminate transfer pricing - or actually use technology to stop corporate profits hemorrhaging - then in a lazy-faire way it's giving the high-sign approval for tax avoidance. Corporations don't have to worry about the law when it's bought and paid for beforehand.

My point, if I have to spell it out, is that using taxes as a way to control corporate behaviour is nothing like administering a beating to a car that won't start. If corporations can be made to comply with the law through the imposition of fines for criminal misconduct (and they can), then there is no reason in principle why the imposition of taxes cannot have a salutary effect on corporate behaviour as well.

After all, to a corporation, a tax and a fine are the same thing - money.

Oh I see, so regular ordinary folks thought the film was awesome, and you decided to ignore it for five years, rather than find out what those people who are supposed to benefit from your sage wisdom want, think and believe. Even slightly elitist?

You started it. I am amazed. Truly.

This film is a cult classic, verging on a mainstream documentary smash, at the level of "Roger and Me," focussed specifically on your major area of interest, and in fact your job, and you are so out of touch with anything that you don't get it up to go see it, or rent it, until many years later, after the fact.

I think it says a whole lot, about your theoretical approach, your methodolgy and its social value.

[ 09 July 2008: Message edited by: Cueball ]

[url=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pin8fbdGV9Y]Start here[/url]

Ordinary people with ordinary access to the law and political influence can exercise only so much protest as individuals through free market mechanisms, like our right to just not buy their stuff.

Most of us can't open up a new car industry and start competing with GM or Ford because we lack access to capital and industry expertise. So GM pours money into insurance and divests into financial sector over the years to hide profits from taxation and avoid actually being a car company responsive to free market forces.

Similarly, we could all compete with Canada's big banks for extending microloans at the local level and become financially well off while stimulating our municipal economies. But Canada's big six are protected from individual entrepreneurs like us with a stack of oppressive rules and regulations governing banks and finance. It's good to be a Soviet-in-size corporation or bank, like islands of top-down command style entities in a sea of free market dogma littered with baloney, throwaway people and styrofoam cups.

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It's important to remember that corporations aren't people and don't have interests on their own.

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Again with this wrong-headed argument? I see you are serious. I thought you were joking. This is truly a little disturbing.

Would you argue states don't have interests? You could argue that, but you would be quickly dismissed by any serious thinker.

The very fact that corporations spend billions in lobbying, supporting election campaigns, and in marketing image and opinion is, alone, enough to lay bare the extent of your naivetй on this matter, at least.

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Are your interests represented by the Canadian State?

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Not always. Are yours? If not, why is it your interests and Canada's interests can diverge? How is that possible?

As an example, the Government of Canada, representing the nation, not you or I, has decided it is in the nation's interests to engage in war in Afghanistan. I would argue the decision serves neither your interest nor my interest, or the interests of Canadians broadly, but it does serve the national interest of maintaining a positive national relationship, that includes military cooperation, with the United States and its empire to which Canada is a junior partner.

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evidence that there are people willing to sign off on the expenses.

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Yes, signed off on expenditures to promote corporate interests.

You are being, I think, purposely obtuse Stephen.

I think we both know that while, ultimately, corporations are serving the interests of specific humans or groups of humans, I think we both also know that in pursuing those interests corporations act independently. And in so doing, often pursue interests ultimately at odds with even those individuals whose interests they are supposedly created to serve.

A good example is Exxon which has spent vast sums of money in the corporate, rather than shareholder interest, of funding climate change deniers.

The shareholders of Exxon will not be immune from climate change and the effects of greater environmental decline resulting from activities undertaken by Exxon, and other corporations, in the pursuit of profits.

Stock will have no value in a world of global environmental collapse. Even a few of the Rockefellers are awakening to that reality.

Since corporations do not have interests, and only the interests of the people that staff them, than why don't newly-hired labourers, managers and executives continue to uphold the interests of the old companies where they used to work? Say I work for Pepsi and I get hired by Coke, why wouldn't I continue to help Pepsi? If my personal interests changed at the moment when I changed companies, then can we not agree, for the sake of the thread, that companies have interests that persist even after its human workforce turns over?

Right on DL.

And that's why Canada's now famous MD of doctors without borders,James Orbinski, author of An Imperfect Offering, says market solutions are all about "humanity's capacity for evil".

Let the corporation do it. And the effect on distant, out of sight, out of mind people is quite real.

[ 13 July 2008: Message edited by: George Victor ]

That's what I was going to say, but you beat me to it.