What the Founding Fathers Thought About Corporations

Originally Posted by bedspirit

I think you summed up everything wrong with a corporation right there. If nobody would want to risk legal liability for what they do, maybe they shouldn't be doing it.

I think your statistics are backward when it comes to innovation and employment. More people in this country work for small businesses than they do for large corporations. 64% of new jobs in the last few years were created by small business. You can certainly argue that corporations have moved more jobs to other countries than small businesses have. It's difficult to quantify innovation statistically, but just the other day, there was a story on NPR that claimed small businesses were responsible for most of the innovation in this country.



I've done a lot of reading on this subject and I've never heard that particular spin. I suspect you pulled it directly from your ass. Here is a passage from "Gangs of America":

Besides pioneering the use of joint-stock capital and limited liabil-
ity, the East India Company is historically significant because it was
quite simply the most powerful corporation that has ever existed. Imag-
ine a private company so unaccountable it conducts its own criminal
trials and runs its own jails, so dominant it possesses an army larger
than any other organized force in the world, and so predatory that for
more than two centuries it squeezes the economy of the richest country
in the world until observers report that some regions have been “bled
white.” The King is dependent on periodic “loans” from the company.
A third of Parliament owns stock in it, and a tax on its tea constitutes
ten percent of the government’s revenues. A 250,000-man army (twice
the size of Britain’s) fights the company’s wars, and the four out of five
soldiers in that army who are “sepoys,” i.e. Indians, are kept in line by
punishments such as “blowing away” strapping an offending soldier
across the mouth of a cannon and firing the weapon.

Does this sound like a company that was fearful of the king? It's more often argued that corporations had a powerful influence over the crown not the other way around as you have imagined it. But even corporations less powerful than the East India Trading Company were not tools of the crown. They complied with taxation and various laws but the crown didn't direct their business affairs. Where in the hell did you come up with corporations being agents of the empire? Which ones and in what ways? Did they single out corporations for this or was it the same with all businesses?

dude, it's revisionist history... a staple of conservative 'mis-understanding' of reality.

just like how black kids had a better chance of being raised in a stable home during slavery.... and how blacks willingly fought for the south to keep their right to own slaves..... or how corporations are what create jobs, nothing to do with demand.... how unionized labor is a problem for society, not one of the solutions to poverty....

Originally Posted by bedspirit

I think you summed up everything wrong with a corporation right there. If nobody would want to risk legal liability for what they do, maybe they shouldn't be doing it.

I think your statistics are backward when it comes to innovation and employment. More people in this country work for small businesses than they do for large corporations. 64% of new jobs in the last few years were created by small business. You can certainly argue that corporations have moved more jobs to other countries than small businesses have. It's difficult to quantify innovation statistically, but just the other day, there was a story on NPR that claimed small businesses were responsible for most of the innovation in this country.



I've done a lot of reading on this subject and I've never heard that particular spin. I suspect you pulled it directly from your ass. Here is a passage from "Gangs of America":

Besides pioneering the use of joint-stock capital and limited liabil-
ity, the East India Company is historically significant because it was
quite simply the most powerful corporation that has ever existed. Imag-
ine a private company so unaccountable it conducts its own criminal
trials and runs its own jails, so dominant it possesses an army larger
than any other organized force in the world, and so predatory that for
more than two centuries it squeezes the economy of the richest country
in the world until observers report that some regions have been “bled
white.” The King is dependent on periodic “loans” from the company.
A third of Parliament owns stock in it, and a tax on its tea constitutes
ten percent of the government’s revenues. A 250,000-man army (twice
the size of Britain’s) fights the company’s wars, and the four out of five
soldiers in that army who are “sepoys,” i.e. Indians, are kept in line by
punishments such as “blowing away” strapping an offending soldier
across the mouth of a cannon and firing the weapon.

Does this sound like a company that was fearful of the king? It's more often argued that corporations had a powerful influence over the crown not the other way around as you have imagined it. But even corporations less powerful than the East India Trading Company were not tools of the crown. They complied with taxation and various laws but the crown didn't direct their business affairs. Where in the hell did you come up with corporations being agents of the empire? Which ones and in what ways? Did they single out corporations for this or was it the same with all businesses?

upon further review, and some council from UTI (calling someone uti, never gets old) you are on the money. please accept my humble apology.

sincerely,

the sometimes confused, stoned, limp dicked, tax evading and drunk jeff gets confused. but i see the light....despite all the sativa i smoke