Replies to post #4827 on Distributed Digital Property Board

[aleajactaest]

Hi goin,
Governments certainly should legislate to protect people from corporate harms. They do so, extensively. Especially in the West. I'm not sure they always do so well. But they certainly try!

Here, you are using an example that appears to make an extreme claim about corporate conduct. That companies will do almost anything, including supporting murder, massacre and genocide, in support of a profit.

I don't find this argument wholly convincing. It isn't a coincidence that, in this case, the allegations are from a country unrenowned for its regulatory environment. And I have no idea if the charges are substantial, or if the plaintiffs are on a fishing expedition. So my initial reaction is to raise my eyebrows somewhat: if the charge that companies are sociopathic holds, then there should be some better examples in which they have been shown (rather than alleged) to be so.

The veil of incorporation is not so impenetrable that a person found to have been involved in the solicitation of murder would escape unpunished. And I don't think someone like Moody-Stuart is plausibly guilty of such a crime. You don't become a murderer because you put on your bowler hat and shiny shoes. So to some extent, a company actually has a human face.

Having said that, I agree that in the way they operate, companies have a tendency to unitise and dehumanise people (employees, customer sand suppliers). That's sort of the end-game of the industrial revolution. And it makes life in a densely populated modern country, in some ways, rather unpleasant.

I'm all for a major bit of work to be done on the constitution of corporations. I don't see that the voting system for public companies really works. I don't see that current remuneration methodologies result in better corporate results than the old salary models, but they do provide incentives for managements like those at Enron and Worldcom and Citigroup and Merrill to go out of control. I don't see that many corporate boards perform their fiduciary responsibilities with much enthusiasm.

So you can fix them to operate better. But you can't make them the beauty of the world or the paragon of animals. That description belongs to man!