From: Charlie Stross (charlie@antipope.org)
Date: Wed Aug 29 2001 - 14:18:46 MDT
On Wed, Aug 29, 2001 at 03:28:28PM -0400, Mike Lorrey wrote:
> >
> > (Some -- like me -- draw the conclusion from this that corporations,
> > being legal entities established to promote the common good of humans,
> > should be wound up/shut down/fixed whenever their activities contradict
> > the common good. But just where to draw the line in the sand is an,
> > um, interesting question.)
>
> Well, they obviously have human interests (those of their stockholders)
> at heart. They just don't have much of all humans' interests at heart.
They don't even have the interests of their stockholders at heart;
what they have is a set of rules that are *assumed* to benefit the
stockholders and which they are required to follow.
For example, corporations are required to file accounts on a quarterly
or annual basis. Their performance is then evaluated entirely in
terms of profitability on those time scales. It is possible for a
company to really badly compromise the long-term interests of its
shareholders (e.g. by pissing in the commons the shareholders live
in) while remaining consistent with the strict interpretation of their
rules.
> If you don't like the interests expressed by a particular company, buy
> out its stockholders... thats how everybody else does it.
When was the last time you brought out a corporation you didn't get
on with?
(And when was the last time you took an arbitrary law as holy writ?)
Corporations exist to serve the common good. End of story. Of course,
arbitrarily shutting them down or overruling their self-interest is
a great way to undermine private enterprise, which is broadly speaking
a Bad Thing. However, companies only operate within the framework
of the market -- human beings operate in a broader context, and we
need a way to deliver signals to companies when their actions have
serious adverse consequences outside the market.
Saying that the only way to deal with a company that (for instance)
emits lethal pollution or bribes politicians to pass laws that encroach
on the commons is to buy out the shareholders strikes me as the height
of irresponsibility. And don't tell me that corporate manslaughter
laws work -- if they did, the entire board of every tobacco company
would be serving a life stretch right now.
> > > >> Was the WSPQ (World's Shortest Political Quiz) this loaded, and I
> > > >> simply couldn't recognize it because I'm a libertarian? This is scary!
> > > >
> > > > To my (non-American) eyes the answer is "yes, it was". Be scared!
> > >
> > > Why didn't you point out that it was loaded at the time? No one
> > > said anything of the kind. Weren't we left thinking that the
> > > test was non-biased?
> >
> > When?
> >
> > [ more later -- being dragged out for dinner ]
>
> The definition of a liberal is one who is so fair minded that he/she
> won't even defend their own opinion. In this respect, the test you
> pointed us to seemed more like an entrance exam to the Consolidated
> Communist/Green/Black Panther/Feminazi Party.
Naah. It reflects the British mainstream, more or less accurately. I
figure it's biased a little to the left on the economic/social issues,
and a little to the libertarian on the control/anarchism axis -- although
this might be my own bias showing.
-- Charlie
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