New Beginning

GOOD FAITH DIVISION OF LABOR:  A society increases its wealth as its members divide their labor, wishing to do important work well, and to love doing it, enhancing their self esteem and building wealth, good will, and charity among all. Detailed regulation and oversight by rote and force does not enhance the pursuit of happiness. That sort of counterproductive oversight can occur in numerous ways: by lords forcing serfs; by monopolists killing opportunities for laborers to compete in selling their labor; by governments erecting quagmires of restraints against new competitors; by oligopolists bribing and buying up government and its favors and muscle; by dissimilation and dissolution of assimilating mores, to such a point that no one believes the social system will any longer avail good faith in individual initiative; by science and technology becoming so big and intrusive that no small company can access it to compete; by putting systems of corruption in concrete; by spreading fear of all unwatched and unregulated persons.

ECONOMIES OF SCALE:  America has ventured far from a society of arms length, small business, free enterprisers. America is now filled to overflowing with government, regulations, fat and uncompetitive corporations, competition for the buying and selling of politicians, disbelief in assimilating mores, and general "use and be used" corruption and visionless hedonism. America will not easily be restored to a system that promotes self esteem and the individual pursuit of fulfillment. Not by by governmental spreading of wealth. Not by replacing government with fat, uncompetitive corporations, that preserve their positions by replacing American workers with cheap foreign labor. Not by busting businesses down to sizes that cannot meet modern standards and needs. Not by destroying jobs and means of disseminating money by replacing workers with machines. Not by mocking spiritual empathy and notions of charity and running them out of all institutions of education. Not by replacing notions of charity with notions of entitlement. Not by quick-fix tinkering with laws or printing of money. Not by opening borders to be swamped by cheap labor from entitlement-minded cultures. The spirit that had resided with America is departing. Unless leaders arise, with inspiring and right vision, America is lost.


CORPORATE CHECKS:  While Montesquieu and Madison were thinking about how to design systems of checks and balances that could protect ordinary citizens, they apparently failed to foresee the need to check and balance against “corporate citizens.” Lacking checks, international corporations simply eat out America from within, and then deposit the waste and remnants amongst other nations. Thus, our infrastructure comes eventually to be owned by foreign or disloyal corporatists, as our industry and jobs go to foreign labor markets. Thus, “Citizen Corporation,” being unchecked and without loyalty apart from profit to the most power lusting, simply buys governments and reduces people to serfs, worldwide. So long as our law facilitates the corporate form as it now operates, it is insane to believe the people will find relief — either in more governmental regulation of corporations, or less. When there is less governmental regulation, corporations simply take over the role of our governors. When there is more, corporations simply invest in buying the government that regulates us. Corporate interests have now come to run all our institutions of significance and to own our Rinos and Dinos. These interests will not quietly pull in their horns. The solution, if any, will require a pincer attack: (1) educate and inspire the people at large to a reasoned, spiritual system of counter mores; (2) formalize that system in law by redefining limits for how citizen-corporations are allowed to do business. Tariffs and penalties, not internal taxes on corporations, are part of the solution. To tax American corporations internally, like taxing our government, tends simply to pass such taxes on to consumers or citizens. If not already too late, America needs to fundamentally check and change the way it allows corporations to organize and operate within our boundaries and through our banking system. Otherwise, there is simply too much temptation for the lowest denizens among us to use the corporate form as cover for selling America into debt slavery in exchange for fast bucks. At the center of the black hole that is destroying the American economy is the corporate form, as it now stands.

SUGGESTION TO PRESERVE A DECENT DISTRIBUTION OF POLITICAL AND ECONOMIC POWER FOR AMERICANS: Provide safety net and spread opportunity to make wealth, not by printing or redistributing more money, but by making American corporations American. Have the federal government require that all corporations doing business in America must participate in a public securities fund comprised of voting stocks. Require that this public fund consist of 5 percent of all the corporate stock of each and every corporation. Twice a year, the government should distribute, per capita, a portion of such public stock to each and every citizen (or guardian of a citizen).  Allow such stock to be freely traded one time, among Americans, for other voting stock in American corporations.  Penalties or tariffs should be extracted upon the exchange of stock of any American or American corporation with non-citizens. In this way, incentive every American corporation to see to general charitable purposes, welfare, and productivity of American citizens. As corporations increasingly transition to robotics to replace human workers, a mechanism will be needed to avail Americans with opportunities to preserve their voices regarding the political and economic direction of the country. Otherwise, corporatists and machines will create an upper class of Morlochs to rule Eloi.  Place to start: Inspire new mores and redefine old legalities for functioning in the corporate form.

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EVOLUTION:  Yes, a corporation would be better at running its business than the government. But what is a corporation's business? When the niche proximately shaping evolution becomes a world without trade barriers or effective national boundaries, how much will conditions render most fit those corporatons that are least scrupulous of common decency and most zealous of quick predation, reducing all others to a lowest common denominator, as prey? In those conditions, would not the business that rises to the top of the food chain tend to become the business of buying and selling politicians and governmental influence, worldwide?

One should guard against being distracted by smooth hoods, as they take turns picking one’s pockets. One ought not swallow or become apologist for the line of the corporatist juggernaut that, in fact, has come to own our government — whether directly by Dinos, or indirectly by Rinos. Did not the most monied of corporatists contribute primarily to the election of Obama over McCain? Ought we trust them, then, when they now say we should move from more direct regulation by government to more freedom for international corporations, beholden to no principle higher than the easiest buck and the greatest accumulation of influence and power over all others? Before America drowns under free trade and open borders, ought Americans not at least pause and consider whether the fundamental form of incorporation needs itself to be reformed? Ought we not cease turning first one cheek to more governmental regulation and then the other cheek to more freedom for corporate marauders? Before growing another day older and deeper in debt, ought we not notice whether the left fist and the right fist are connected to the same straw boss punching for the same company store?

As near as I can tell, most Conservatives and Libertarians bounce back and forth within strait jacketed walls, inside a cube, never dreaming they could reform and wear the cube, instead of bouncing off the walls of the cube. The walls of the cube consist of inventions of adherents of religions of secular particles versus religions of spiritual math, adherents of national boundaries versus adherents of free trade, and adherents of governmental regulation versus adherents of corporatists who own the government. To move beyond knocking our heads against walls, all we have to do is to redefine the inside of the cube — so that we wear it, instead of it wearing us. Instead of boxing Americans inside a trap, reshape the box so Americans can return to pursuing their happiness.  Redefine the form of the American corporation so it serves the American vision of individual freedom and dignity.  Avail decent civilization by apprehending a better definition for the form of the corporate suit. That’s all.

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Re: "Take away the regulatory corruptors, and corporate power is diminished."
Problem is, one man's corruptor is another man's saint. I think the problem is more one of structure than one of finding ways to distinguish corruptors from saints. When American corporations do business in America, no tax. When they wire or send money or resources outside America, tax the hell out of it. Let corporations contribute to political campaigns, but impute that money as wages paid to whomever on the corporation authorized it, and tax it to them. Etc.

@Thus spake Dlanorrenrag.