Forget More Regulation: Make Corporations Serve the Public Interest
The purely private-purpose corporation is an illegitimate entity. This is the elephant in the room that no politician dare mention.
My previous column called for a major restructuring of both governmental and corporate institutions to strengthen democracy and subordinate corporate power and the pursuit of corporate profits to the power and interests of living people and communities.
I was a youth during the brief historical anomaly that occurred after World War II. Most major corporations that conducted business in the United States were still headquartered here, paid their taxes here, and provided secure long-term employment with good pay and benefits. Unions were strong and there was a recognized social contract between corporations and workers.
As described in my previous column, I witnessed the process of corporations walking away from this contract to advance a systematic process of colonizing the world's peoples and resources under corporate rule. For more than 20 years, I have been pointing out that to have a world that works for living people, the interests of living communities must take priority over maximizing corporate profits. That means corporations must be accountable to governments and governments must be accountable to people -- real people.
The purely private-purpose corporation is an illegitimate entity. This is the Elephant in the Room that no politician dare mention.
As a private person, I am free to do business as a sole proprietorship or partnership in pursuit of purely private interests and free to engage in politics for so long as I observe the law. A corporation, however, is different. It is a creation of government.
Government is a public entity bound to serve the public interest. It seems logical that any entity created by government is properly considered a public entity accountable for serving a public purpose, obeying the law -- and obliged as a public entity to stay out of electoral politics.
As was the case in the early United States, every corporation should have a public purpose stated in its charter and be accountable to the government authority that issued its charter for being true to that purpose.
The lack of corporate accountability is amplified when a corporation sheds its allegiance to any place, person, or public interest.
The lack of corporate accountability is amplified when a corporation sheds its allegiance to any place, person, or public interest. It may be chartered in the United States, park its profits in Bermuda to avoid taxes, contract with sweatshops in Bangladesh, sell its products in France, and be a subsidiary of a parent corporation headquartered in Brazil. In effect, it is stateless and operates as a power unto itself, and has no concern for the interests of any people or place.
The idea that a corporation chartered in one country has an automatic right to do business in another is odd indeed. As a private citizen, I don't have a right to visit another country without its express permission, much less to locate a business facility there. I'm also obligated to pay taxes and obey the law wherever I am. A corporation, as an artificial legal entity, is surely entitled to no greater rights or lesser obligations than a flesh and blood person.
Every corporation needs both a public purpose and a national identity. This need is obscured by the common practice of referring to transnational corporations as multinationals -- implying they are national everywhere. Similarly, referring to any corporation that sells its share in a public exchange as a "public" corporation implies it has a public purpose even though we may recognize on reflection that it is purely profit-driven.
By the fundamental premise of democracy, it is the sovereign right -- and obligation -- of We the People to demand that stateless corporations be broken up and the pieces restructured as national public-purpose legal entities prohibited from engaging in electoral politics and each owned by and accountable to living people who are citizens of the country in which it is chartered to do business.
We might then have a global economy organized by and for living communities rather than by and for incorporated pools of financial assets. Freed from subservience to corporate interests, these communities would be free to cooperate for the common good rather than forced to compete for corporate favor.
In my next column, I will look at what this would mean for relationships among national economies in a living Earth global economy.
Urgent. It's never been this bad.
Dear Common Dreams reader, It’s been nearly 30 years since I co-founded Common Dreams with my late wife, Lina Newhouser. We had the radical notion that journalism should serve the public good, not corporate profits. It was clear to us from the outset what it would take to build such a project. No paid advertisements. No corporate sponsors. No millionaire publisher telling us what to think or do. Many people said we wouldn't last a year, but we proved those doubters wrong. Together with a tremendous team of journalists and dedicated staff, we built an independent media outlet free from the constraints of profits and corporate control. Our mission from the outset was simple. To inform. To inspire. To ignite change for the common good. Building Common Dreams was not easy. Our survival was never guaranteed. When you take on the most powerful forces—Wall Street greed, fossil fuel industry destruction, Big Tech lobbyists, and uber-rich oligarchs who have spent billions upon billions rigging the economy and democracy in their favor—the only bulwark you have is supporters who believe in your work. But here’s the urgent message from me today. It’s never been this bad out there. And it’s never been this hard to keep us going. At the very moment Common Dreams is most needed and doing some of its best and most important work, the threats we face are intensifying. Right now, with just three days to go in our Spring Campaign, we're falling short of our make-or-break goal. When everyone does the little they can afford, we are strong. But if that support retreats or dries up, so do we. Can you make a gift right now to make sure Common Dreams not only survives but thrives? There is no backup plan or rainy day fund. There is only you. —Craig Brown, Co-founder |
My previous column called for a major restructuring of both governmental and corporate institutions to strengthen democracy and subordinate corporate power and the pursuit of corporate profits to the power and interests of living people and communities.
I was a youth during the brief historical anomaly that occurred after World War II. Most major corporations that conducted business in the United States were still headquartered here, paid their taxes here, and provided secure long-term employment with good pay and benefits. Unions were strong and there was a recognized social contract between corporations and workers.
As described in my previous column, I witnessed the process of corporations walking away from this contract to advance a systematic process of colonizing the world's peoples and resources under corporate rule. For more than 20 years, I have been pointing out that to have a world that works for living people, the interests of living communities must take priority over maximizing corporate profits. That means corporations must be accountable to governments and governments must be accountable to people -- real people.
The purely private-purpose corporation is an illegitimate entity. This is the Elephant in the Room that no politician dare mention.
As a private person, I am free to do business as a sole proprietorship or partnership in pursuit of purely private interests and free to engage in politics for so long as I observe the law. A corporation, however, is different. It is a creation of government.
Government is a public entity bound to serve the public interest. It seems logical that any entity created by government is properly considered a public entity accountable for serving a public purpose, obeying the law -- and obliged as a public entity to stay out of electoral politics.
As was the case in the early United States, every corporation should have a public purpose stated in its charter and be accountable to the government authority that issued its charter for being true to that purpose.
The lack of corporate accountability is amplified when a corporation sheds its allegiance to any place, person, or public interest.
The lack of corporate accountability is amplified when a corporation sheds its allegiance to any place, person, or public interest. It may be chartered in the United States, park its profits in Bermuda to avoid taxes, contract with sweatshops in Bangladesh, sell its products in France, and be a subsidiary of a parent corporation headquartered in Brazil. In effect, it is stateless and operates as a power unto itself, and has no concern for the interests of any people or place.
The idea that a corporation chartered in one country has an automatic right to do business in another is odd indeed. As a private citizen, I don't have a right to visit another country without its express permission, much less to locate a business facility there. I'm also obligated to pay taxes and obey the law wherever I am. A corporation, as an artificial legal entity, is surely entitled to no greater rights or lesser obligations than a flesh and blood person.
Every corporation needs both a public purpose and a national identity. This need is obscured by the common practice of referring to transnational corporations as multinationals -- implying they are national everywhere. Similarly, referring to any corporation that sells its share in a public exchange as a "public" corporation implies it has a public purpose even though we may recognize on reflection that it is purely profit-driven.
By the fundamental premise of democracy, it is the sovereign right -- and obligation -- of We the People to demand that stateless corporations be broken up and the pieces restructured as national public-purpose legal entities prohibited from engaging in electoral politics and each owned by and accountable to living people who are citizens of the country in which it is chartered to do business.
We might then have a global economy organized by and for living communities rather than by and for incorporated pools of financial assets. Freed from subservience to corporate interests, these communities would be free to cooperate for the common good rather than forced to compete for corporate favor.
In my next column, I will look at what this would mean for relationships among national economies in a living Earth global economy.
My previous column called for a major restructuring of both governmental and corporate institutions to strengthen democracy and subordinate corporate power and the pursuit of corporate profits to the power and interests of living people and communities.
I was a youth during the brief historical anomaly that occurred after World War II. Most major corporations that conducted business in the United States were still headquartered here, paid their taxes here, and provided secure long-term employment with good pay and benefits. Unions were strong and there was a recognized social contract between corporations and workers.
As described in my previous column, I witnessed the process of corporations walking away from this contract to advance a systematic process of colonizing the world's peoples and resources under corporate rule. For more than 20 years, I have been pointing out that to have a world that works for living people, the interests of living communities must take priority over maximizing corporate profits. That means corporations must be accountable to governments and governments must be accountable to people -- real people.
The purely private-purpose corporation is an illegitimate entity. This is the Elephant in the Room that no politician dare mention.
As a private person, I am free to do business as a sole proprietorship or partnership in pursuit of purely private interests and free to engage in politics for so long as I observe the law. A corporation, however, is different. It is a creation of government.
Government is a public entity bound to serve the public interest. It seems logical that any entity created by government is properly considered a public entity accountable for serving a public purpose, obeying the law -- and obliged as a public entity to stay out of electoral politics.
As was the case in the early United States, every corporation should have a public purpose stated in its charter and be accountable to the government authority that issued its charter for being true to that purpose.
The lack of corporate accountability is amplified when a corporation sheds its allegiance to any place, person, or public interest.
The lack of corporate accountability is amplified when a corporation sheds its allegiance to any place, person, or public interest. It may be chartered in the United States, park its profits in Bermuda to avoid taxes, contract with sweatshops in Bangladesh, sell its products in France, and be a subsidiary of a parent corporation headquartered in Brazil. In effect, it is stateless and operates as a power unto itself, and has no concern for the interests of any people or place.
The idea that a corporation chartered in one country has an automatic right to do business in another is odd indeed. As a private citizen, I don't have a right to visit another country without its express permission, much less to locate a business facility there. I'm also obligated to pay taxes and obey the law wherever I am. A corporation, as an artificial legal entity, is surely entitled to no greater rights or lesser obligations than a flesh and blood person.
Every corporation needs both a public purpose and a national identity. This need is obscured by the common practice of referring to transnational corporations as multinationals -- implying they are national everywhere. Similarly, referring to any corporation that sells its share in a public exchange as a "public" corporation implies it has a public purpose even though we may recognize on reflection that it is purely profit-driven.
By the fundamental premise of democracy, it is the sovereign right -- and obligation -- of We the People to demand that stateless corporations be broken up and the pieces restructured as national public-purpose legal entities prohibited from engaging in electoral politics and each owned by and accountable to living people who are citizens of the country in which it is chartered to do business.
We might then have a global economy organized by and for living communities rather than by and for incorporated pools of financial assets. Freed from subservience to corporate interests, these communities would be free to cooperate for the common good rather than forced to compete for corporate favor.
In my next column, I will look at what this would mean for relationships among national economies in a living Earth global economy.