Corporations are a legal fiction that allows a group of people to externalize costs and internalize profits. This is just handed out willy-nilly, when it should come with the strictest of guidelines and making sure that it supports the community it is in.
But, what we have now is a sociopaths dream. Where, they are not responsible for the things they do, and there is always something else to point the blame at.
The banksters came up with this to get out from under a trading voyage where too many sailors were lost. So, they talked the king into letting them start a corporation. So, if things went bad, they could just file bankruptcy, and all the families who lost sons were SOL. (this was a time when if you got someone killed for your business, you owed the survivors for the life taken)
So, now you can start a company that deals with dangerous chemicals, and neglect to clean them up, or sell experimental drugs, and have several layers of immunity from having to pay when you mess people up. The system is ripe for abuse, and there is little actual oversight. (The laws that do govern them where written by the corporation themselves, so, of course, it is following "the law")
If you have two corporations, one tries to be good, and the other is evil, the evil one wins because it makes more profit. Doing more unscrupulous things to get you to buy from them. More sugar + gluten in foods. Giving initial deals, that will cost more in the end. Pay retailers to only stock their brand…
And once a corporation is bigger, because it got more profits, then it can throw its weight around even more. Most of the big corporation have written the laws the rest of the industry has to follow. Pay some politicians to make your already internal policy into law, and now everyone else has to change or die.
The barrier to entry is raised through the roof. Now, any potential competitors will have to have massive funding to even get started. And even if they do, the market is not free. The big corporations has already bought it all up.
The "economics" books say that a monopoly will only exist for a short time, and that might be true if the govern-cement wasn't deciding the winners and the losers. … it might be true if the barrier to entry wasn't so high. …it might be true if the large corporations weren't unscrupulous in getting rid of competition.
Corporations are given life and rights by the law. However, the individual person can be kept in line with things such as the death penalty. Corporations cannot die, and even if they do, it is just a piece of paper being sent to the shredder.
Basically, the people cannot do anything to the corporation in a legal and civil sense. Even suing the corporation for millions of dollars does not hurt the corporation, it hurts the buyers of the corporations' products. All the money a corporation gets is through sales, and so any fine is paid by the consumers.
Wells Fargone took lots of money from its customers by their employees moving money around into new accounts (without the customers awareness) and so fines were created by not having enough money in the original account. Wells Fargone was fined… which just cost the customers even more. So, the regulating agency cost the customers twice, nothing was fixed.
And the govern-cement cannot threaten the corporation with death for making bad financial decisions. So, it carries on, doing the evil it can get away with.
In the future, people will mob up and destroy corporations. The CEOs and board member will be hung in a "public" mob trial. But that is not now, the govern-cements have no control over what they allowed to be created. And, the govern-cement encouraged the no-control.
A corporations stock price, market cap, should be fairly close to the corporations value. But it is almost never even close. There are so many people looking for an investment that stocks P/E ratio is longer than most people will live. And it has to be that way in a world where money can just be printed.
So, the banksters take their free money and buy up stocks, owning the corporations for free. And let the people of the world fight for the remaining scraps.
The corporations sell their stocks to print money of their own, and then use that money to make more money and buy back their own stocks with the money they got. And, the populace thinks they made money, but really, it was all inflation. Take someone's money, and then pay them back with less value.
Tesla is valued higher than all the other car companies. It will never earn enough money to pay back the higher stock price. People are only speculating on Tesla stock price movement. The real people get screwed, the gamblers make it or go bust. And the market takes its cut.
Stocks, at one time meant an amount of investment in the corporation, but today the corporation can just borrow what they need from banks at low, low interest rates. The stock sales today are just to pay off the original investors/board members.
So, we have giant entities that can crush many nations and there is nothing can be done to them legally. The Upper management of the corporation should be responsible for the evil that they do, but they are not, and cannot be held responsible. The corporations can do evil, and get away with it. (legally speaking)
If a corporation steals a lot of money from customers, and then pays their management a big bonus, and takes out a big loan, just before going bankrupt, the customers are completely screwed.
This happened in 2008 with the collapse of Leman Brothers. People who had segregated (supposed to stay separate) accounts found themselves having to pay for a loan that Leman Brothers got the day before it collapsed. None of the upper management was held responsible, and many of them got fat parachutes. This was a true case where you see an externalization of the costs, and an internalization of the profits.
Another case is a mining company, who had a BIG pit mine, and then the ore ran out. They were supposed to fill in the big hole, but the corporation went bankrupt. The money for filling in the hole was gone. This is a big example of externalizing costs.
Things that a person would be fined all of their money, and imprisoned for doing evil, and maybe face the death penalty.
The corporation just laughs at this. They are legally a person, but factually not, and so avoid all punishment.
