ATDTDA (5): The American Corporation

[mikebailey at speakeasy.net]

I remember being in Philosophy class, discussing
"identity" and mentioning that the corporation
is considered a person.  Nobody, including myself,
had any thoughts on where to go with that.
However, Chomsky et al, took off with it -
"what kind of a person is a corporation?"

The company I work at, among many companies, I think,
had a philosophical sort of interregnum back in
the 90s - anyway, each department had meetings, 
and was required to come up with both a "vision" 
and a "mission" statement - corporations don't 
have to be solely focussed on maximizing profit...
their actions are the result of human decisions 
which are in turn derived from human values...
there is an old distinction between "maximizing" 
and "optimizing" that when followed can liberate 
a person or a company from coprophiliac maximization 
of money...at times companies actually encourage 
people to think about what they are doing, 
and use terms like "stakeholders"

-----------------------------

a wonderful trove of Gustavus Myers
is available at 
http://www.geocities.com/doswind/myers/myers_index.html
Myers put together the facts on how the great 
fortunes were built. 

There is a review quoted on the index page:

"Mr. Myers? books are recommended only 
to admirers of the muck-raking school, 
because only they believe that the masses are poor 
because of unwillingness to imitate the vices 
attributed to the rich.... 
His facts are not denied, but his inferences from them 
will not be admitted generally.  
All he says may be true, and yet there are other 
offsetting facts which compensate for the 
blemishes disclosed."

New York Times, 5 July 1914.

-- and those are?  
Looking at what the robber barons left us:
for instance, railroads? - but without the
railroad magnates, prices would have been lower,
wages higher, service better...

Myers's "History of the Great American Fortunes" is a
gem, but perhaps his history of the Supreme Court
is even better.  It reveals the systematic venality
of the decisions.  dred scott and bushvgore are
actually more the norm than deviations...

Myers's own preface to the 1936 edition extrapolated
hopefully "If we may accept President Franklin D. 
Roosevelt as the spokesman of dominant American 
sentiment, we at least have arrived at the point 
of not approving the hereditary 
transmission of wealth. ...in successive stages the 
American people at large had abolished one kind of 
inequality after another, and it pointed out that the 
next logical step indicated was the establishment of 
some practicable measure of economic equality." 

of course, the revanchist Right was even then
meeting at Yale, watching "Triumph of the Will"
and plotting a comeback...
but their stolen treasure will turn into a
liability rather than an asset (ie B Traven)