Corporate Citizens

Remember Mitt Romney saying that corporations are people? If they have the legal rights of individuals, they should at least have the same responsibilities.

But no. The law views corporations as profit machines without personal liability. They are encouraged, if not required, to subsume any concern for their employees or customers, or the environment, to the insatiable need for shareholder profit. Not only must each year be more profitable than the previous year, but it must be more profitable by a larger margin than the difference between the two previous years.

These are not sustainable goals. There are only so many customers who are willing and able to pay ever-increasing prices for anything. And when companies try to make the same products more cheaply, the quality drops, or automation robs people of jobs, or off-shoring moves the jobs overseas and the quality may drop, or the environmental damage caused by the company worsens. And corporations cause much poverty and mental and physical illness by demanding ever more work from people who are given fewer resources to do it with, or less control over how to do it, or fewer benefits like health insurance or pensions for doing it, or no job at all.

I think that the laws governing corporations need to require them to bear the same responsibilities they now have to their shareholders also to their employees and customers, and the environment. And these laws should be enforceable by anyone affected by corporations, and egregious violators should face criminal penalties including prison and corporate dissolution for violent corporate side-effects such as mine disasters, poisoned rivers, and huge explosions.

Nowadays, corporations are like toddlers running around with guns. They kill people all the time, but they’re not expected to do any better, and they’re not punished or rehabilitated. This must not continue.