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Comment by jbotz | Hacker News Reader

In "The Corporation: the Pathological Pursuit of Profit and Power" Joel Bakan asks "if a corporation is a legal person, what kind of person is it?". His answer is: a psychopath. A person without any moral sense who will pursue their goals single mindedly and with no scruples whatsoever. How in the world did we hand over complete power over our economic affairs to such monsters? There is no such thing as a corporation that's not evil... like the scorpion in the fable of the fox and the scorpion, "don't be evil" is contrary to their nature.

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Amoral is the word you're looking for and Joel Bakan is clearly mistaken -- corporations are tabula rasa with a single directive, "grow" they then go on to embody the qualities of the leadership and the regulatory climate under which they exist.

It's up to the government and the people to limit their scope, or not if they choose. The mistake America made was legalizing corporate lobbying of the government which enabled regulatory capture, but that is an old mistake and there is no real will to change that other than the normal handwaving and guffawing.

Corporate lobbying is not the only means by which regulators are captured. The revolving door between industry and regulatory agency is another and removal of that suggests a problem: do you want the regulations governing an industry to be made by people with no relevant experience? No, then they will hire people from the industry they are expected to regulate and those regulations will benefit established companies.

> corporations are tabula rasa with a single directive, "grow" they then go on to embody the qualities of the leadership and the regulatory climate under which they exist.

Compare with:

"viruses are tabula rasa with a single directive, "grow" they then go on to embody the qualities of the climate under which they exist."

Is the coronavirus a psychopath? It seems pretty obvious to me that it too, is amoral rather than immoral.

I think that there's a reasonable argument to be made that we can place an expectation of agency and intent upon corporate executives that we can't place on a virus. So the coronavirus might not be expected to be a psychopath, just inconvenient.

Note that I was capitalizing on the amorality for the purpose of the comparison.

> corporations are tabula rasa with a single directive, "grow"

Perpetual growth without moral bounds is a recipe for paperclip maximization, and effective net evil. See: climate change.

An amoral entity optimising for growth is a cancer. You may view this differently, but I see that as strictly evil.

Well, there was will to change that and a bipartisan piece of legislation did -- McCain Feingold. What happened is that the undemocratic supreme court struck down with bullshit justification.

But if they are people they can also lobby in their interests. I have 24 hours a day to do everything in my life. How many hours does Exxon have a day to lobby the government with?

>It's up to the government and the people to limit their scope, or not if they choose.

That sounds a lot like victim blaming, tbh, particularly given the influence corporations have on eg pollution.

> if a corporation is a legal person, what kind of person is it?

One idea is: corporations are real people.

In the case of Disney, all criticism should be directed to the heads of the company.

So whenever we refer to Disney we should say something like "Disney CEO Bob Chapek[1] and Executive Chairman Bob Iger[2]".

They are real people, and they are wholly responsibly for the actions of Disney and it's staff and legal team.

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bob_Chapek

2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bob_Iger

A corporation is the instrument of its shareholders. The shareholders are the ones pursuing unlimited profits. Joel Bakan's argument makes it seem like humans -- people -- who own the corporation are blameless.

According to WSJ* index funds currently hold about 5% of the US stock market, and it seems likely that share will grow. How in the hell do you hold shareholders accountable under a system like that? This seems like a big problem already, and only likely to get worse as direct ownership gets more and more convoluted and obscured by various investment systems. I don't have any suggestions for a fix unfortunately :(

*https://www.wsj.com/articles/index-funds-are-the-new-kings-o...

Alternatively people just want to be very fucking good at their job and there is an exec or a contract lawyer doing this as a way of being better than other execs or contract lawyers at the company. Add to that the fact that the main purpose of any large organization (and organism) is to survive and perpetuate itself and you get this. The shareholders and heck even the CEO don't need to be in on this or even care.

It's attempting to shift blame around in exactly the same way as shifting half a contract. The profits but not the consequences.

Power accumulates like water flows downhill. You need other systems to complete the cycle.

What is regarded as capitalism in theory should be a fantastic machine for optimization and creating more good by creating more jobs, growth, prosperity, but goals should be govern by dream of future society something unobtainable, utopia. So, in theory most of the profit should be reinvested into future ideas and prosperity of other companies and people (science, exploration, universities, hospitals, salaries...). But, along the line, things got broken, and growth become the only important thing, only goal to strive - in a similar way as a car driver, after losing his head, would keep a foot on the throttle.

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