🚀 go-pugleaf

Terry Coatta (coatta@cs.ubc.ca) writes:
> > Certainly regulation should be used to prevent the abuse of human rights,
> > including the right not to suffer from pollution, but other regulations are
> > not needed.  And it is nobody's business to apply them.  Companies are
> > voluntary collections of consenting adults: workers and share holders.  One
> > should never tell consenting adults what to do (unless they are harming
> > people).
> 
> Companies are more than this, however.  Large companies possess fairly
> extensive resources, and operate within society as though they were
> an individual to a certain extent.  For example, it is not an particular
> individual in the company who purchases a tract of land, for example,
> but the company as a whole.
> 
> Suppose that some certain action of a given company affects a group
> of people.  They might like to engage in some sort of negotiations
> with the company in order to alter or curtail these effects.  As individuals
> they have no effective means of engaging in such negotiations.  
> Realistically, they must unite themselves into a group, select
> representatives, adopt some consistent posistion, and then have
> the representatives present that to the company.
> 
> I think it is unrealistic to assume that all interactions between
> a company and society at large can be carried out in this manner.
> There is too much overhead in establishing a cohesive group which can
> be effective in dealing with a company.  In such a society, companies
> effectively operate independent of the wishes of society soley as a
> result of ``organizational inertia''.
> 
> Ideally, one of the functions  of government is providing an established 
> mechanism through which people can interact with companies.  Despite
> the fact that government is, in practice, not particularly responsive
> I am more reasonably represented in the ``society of companies'' than
> I would be otherwise.

Your points are well taken.  I once read a socialist writer (name forgotten)
who argued that government forms a triad with business and the public, and
that it is important as a balance against business in particular.  He was
promoting a "mixed-economy", including (gulp) crown corporations.  In general
the balance idea seems compelling.

But when I think about this issue however, I have a hard time conceiving of
scenarios where government input would help.  Certainly government can do
little about faceless corporations, say banks over-charging for services, and
I don't think they should.  You can always go to another bank.  If the banks
have carteled and are all over-charging, then the government should step in
with anti-trust laws, but this is not the same as the negotiating role you
are describing.  They will be leveling criminal charges.  The same holds for
things like environmental degradation, criminal charges will be laid.  So all
that really leaves is "community standards" issues.  Preventing companies
from building big ugly factories in residential districts for example.  But
this is readily prevented by zoning laws, and such a system operates
effectively at present.  Can you present some examples of when negotiations
are even needed?  When (for analogy's sake) do two private citizens need to
negotiate?  During business deals certainly, but aside from that their
confrontations will always involve illegal acts, from neighborhood doggy 
doo problems to murder.

Your points caused me to think about one big problem of corporations.
When they break the law, there is no one who is made to feel the pain of
punishment.  Fines are as meaningless to them as they are to rich men, and
nobody can be incarcerated.

Ken Buckland
kenb@ee.ubc.ca