http://en.wikipedia.org
Corporatocracy, in social theories that focus on conflicts and opposing interests within society, denotes a
system of government that serves the interest of, and may be run by,
corporations and involves ties between government and business. Where
corporations,
conglomerates, and/or government entities with private components, control the direction and
governance of a country, including carrying out economic planning notwithstanding the 'free market' label.
Concept
The concept of corporatocracy is that corporations, to a significant extent "own" or have massive power over governments, including those governments nominally elected by the people, and that they exercise such power not by back-room conspiracies but by their enormous, concentrated economic power, and by legal in-the-open mechanisms (lobbyists, campaign contributions to office holders and candidates, threats to leave the state or country for another with less oversight and more subsidies etc). Oliver Stone captured "Wall Street, you know, you could say..runs the world. Wall Street, the pharmaceutical lobbies, the oil lobbies, they run our government.
Usage
- The concept of a government run by corporations or instances where governments are actually weaker (politically, financially, and militarily) than corporations is a theme often used in both political fiction and science fiction. In these instances the dominant corporate entity is usually dubbed a megacorporation'.
In a Slate column prompted by Citizens United v. FEC, entitled The Pinocchio Project: Watching as the Supreme Court turns a corporation into a real live boy, Dahlia Lithwick complains that the Supreme Court struck "down century-old restrictions on corporate spending in federal elections." She then cites approvingly to Justice Steven's wheezing complaints:
Stevens hammers, more than once this morning from the bench on the principle that corporations "are not human beings" and "corporations have no consciences, no beliefs, no feelings, no thoughts, no desires." He insists that "they are not themselves members of 'We the People' by whom and for whom our Constitution was established."
Of course, as we saw in my earlier post Citizens United v FEC: The First Amendment Rights of Corporate "Persons", the proposition that the corporation is a legal person with (most of) the same rights as natural persons has been settled as a matter of constitutional law since at least 1885 and, as a matter of common law, for centuries before that.
The nature of the corporation continues to evolve in response to new situations as existing corporations promote new ideas and structures, the courts respond, and governments issue new regulations. A question of long standing is that of diffused responsibility. For example, if a corporation is found liable for a death, how should culpability and punishment for it be allocated among shareholders, directors, management and staff, and the corporation itself? See
corporate liability, and specifically,
corporate manslaughter.
The law differs among jurisdictions, and is in a state of flux. Some argue that shareholders should be ultimately responsible in such circumstances, forcing them to consider issues other than profit when investing, but a corporation may have millions of small shareholders who know nothing about its business activities. Moreover, traders — especially hedge funds — may turn over shares in corporations many times a day.[30] The issue of corporate repeat offenders (see H. Glasbeak, "Wealth by Stealth: Corporate Crime, Corporate Law, and the Perversion of Democracy" (Between the Lines Press: Toronto 2002) raises the question of the so-called "death penalty for corporations."[31]
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