Draft by Richard Stimson

 

We start with solutions to world problems involving corporations that are most likely to meet with the approval of all members of the FixGov group and continuing with ones that may be more debatable. These ideas have been distilled from postings to the FixGov forum. Each proposed solution is numbered for convenience in referring to it when members offer comments.

PROPOSALS ON WHICH WE ALL ARE THOUGHT TO AGREE

1. Corporations, especially the multinationals (also called transnationals), must be brought under control. They have extended their size and power to the point that they are a threat to the planet and its inhabitants. Some corporations are actually bigger than many national governments in the world. They are able to get free of environmental regulation by threatening governments that they will move to a more permissive jurisdiction. They undermine and destroy labor unions by similar threats or actual movement of factories to areas of low or non-existent standards for wages, health, and safety.

2. Remove the legal fiction that a corporation is a person. Here are 10 differences between corporations and real people: (1) Corporations have perpetual life, (2) Corporations can be in two or more places at the same time, (3) Corporations cannot be jailed, (4) Corporations have no conscience or sense of shame, (5) Corporations have no sense of altruism, nor willingness to adjust their behavior to protect future generations, (6) Corporations pursue a single-minded goal, profit, and typically are legally prohibited from seeking other ends, (7) There are no limits, natural or otherwise, to corporations' potential size, (8) Because of their political power, they are able to define or at very least substantially affect, the civil and criminal regulations that define the boundaries of permissible behavior. Virtually no individual criminal has such abilities, (9) Corporations can combine with each other, into bigger and more powerful entities, and (10) Corporations can divide themselves, shedding subsidiaries or affiliates that are controversial, have brought them negative publicity or pose liability threats.

3. Improper influence on government officials must be prevented. Outright bribery is used in some countries. Elsewhere, large corporations and their wealthy controlling stockholders influence public officials by campaign contributions and by favors such as expense-paid trips to luxury resorts, interest-free loans, and free use of corporate jet planes. They also underwrite propaganda campaigns to help political parties and candidates. To circumvent election laws in the US they stop short of saying “vote for X” or “vote against Y” but come as close to that as possible. Although it is illegal for corporations to contribute to political campaigns, they seem to have done so by various loopholes and subterfuges.

4. Newspapers and broadcasters need to be freed from the control of corporate cartels. Since the Telecommunications Act of 1996 there has been a parade of media mergers and over 4,000 radio stations have been bought up in the United States, while television networks are now in the hands of huge corporations like General Electric, Viacom, Disney, and Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation. Murdoch also controls large portions of the television and newspaper media in Great Britain, Australia, and elsewhere. Corporate media have done their best to hide corporate scandals and to downplay or distort any protests against corporations.

5. Corporate efforts to undermine pure food laws, to raise livestock under factory conditions with dangerous use of antibiotics and hormones, to treat food with hazardous radiation, to modify crops genetically without adequate testing, to patent life forms and traditional remedies, and to promote “killer” seeds that make farmers forever dependent on corporate suppliers must be brought under control. This should be done by national laws to the extent possible and by new international controls under the UN or similar body.

6. Agencies of the United Nations need to be prevented from operating in secrecy in behalf of multinational corporations. On the world scene, global corporationsError! Bookmark not defined. (including global bankers and financial companies) dominate international agencies unrestrained by democratic safeguards. At the World Bank, IMF, and WTO the walls of secrecy should be removed, independent outside experts should be used, and the policy-makers and advisory groups should include balanced representation of the interests involved, not dominated by the global corporations. The World Bank should include experts not beholden to the financial community; e.g., economists from labor organizations, consumer groups, and the academic world, as well as environmental organizations and experts from the countries involved in their development programs, and the same should apply to the IMF. The WTO should include balanced representation of consumers as well as producers, and judges on its tribunals should be independent scientific experts who can distinguish legitimate environmental concerns from mere pretexts, especially in the matter of food safety.

7. Reform of the IMF must include keeping it out of politics. The enormous leverage of the IMF over democratic institutions in borrowing countries was made plain in South Korea’s presidential elections, as the Fund insisted that all presidential candidates endorse the IMF bailout agreement.

8. Every available influence should be brought to bear by the UN, World Bank, IMF, etc., to prevent multinational corporations (in league with repressive governments) from driving local inhabitants off their land by pollution from poisons such as cyanide used in mining, by oil spills into water supplies, and by using violence against those who protest. There have been many instances, including Shell in Nigeria, BHP (Australia's largest company) in Papua New Guinea, Gemala Industries of Indonesia in occupied East Timor, DuPont in Goa, mining companies in the Philippines, and many others.

9. Regional trade agreements such as NAFTA and global agreements such as GATT should not be ratified without enforceable protections of the environment and workers rights. Prime examples of this need are the corporations that set up polluting factories in Mexico near the US border and get away with firing any employee who joins a union. Often police and armed forces of the host nation are used to coerce employees.

10. Steps should be taken by national and international authorities to stop the bidding war in which corporations extract subsidies, tax abatements, and exemption from environmental and human rights requirements in a competition among localities for the placement of corporate activities.

11. The “revolving door” for individuals who shuttle back and forth between government positions and corporate lobbying needs to be abolished. In the US former government administrators and congressmen become lobbyists and many make as much as a million dollars annually. Some, like Henry Kissinger, form consulting firms that lobby without disclosing the names of corporations for whom they work.

12. Corporations should be prohibited from financing front organizations such as“think tanks” and purported grassroots organizations to advocate corporate interests, or at least their role should be publicly revealed.

13. Corporations should not be allowed to sponsor US presidential debates as Anheuser-Busch, U.S. Airways and 3Com did in 2000. After the original organizer, the League of Women Voters opened the debates to a third party candidate in 1980, the two major parties set up a Commission on Presidential Debates (run out of a political consulting firm's office in Washington, D.C.) that has set rules effectively excluding third party candidates.

14. People should be provided information on how to organize to deal with local issues--how to deal with Walmart moving into a small town, or a corporate polluter nearby, cleaning up a polluted neighborhood, or how to oppose large developments that destroy a community's lifestyle.

15. People who wish to do so should be encouraged to develop and put into practice local economies, beginning with local food economies, to shorten the distance between producers and consumers, to make the connections between the two more direct, and to make this local economic activity a benefit to the local community.

PROPOSALS ON WHICH WE MAY ALL AGREE

16.There should be a democratically chosen body on a global level to act as an umpire to enforce rules of the economic game.

17. Restore the "mixed system" in which private businesses, producer cooperatives, consumer cooperatives, and government agencies all played their part. This has largely been destroyed in the US and other countries where it used to flourish. Preserve it wherever it survives.

18. Corporations should be prohibited from donating to political parties or campaigns.

19. Political campaigns should be publicly financed to replace bribery by means of campaign finance.

20. Lobbying should be strictly limited by forbidding anything of value being offered to public officials.

21. Make corporate officers personally responsible for violating laws.

22. Make corporations report to the public, as well as shareholders, on their undertakings and plans that affect workers, consumers, and the environment.

23. In regard to the terms and length of copyrights on “intellectual property” the right balance needs to be achieved to provide inducement for creative work without locking it out of the public domain for an unreasonably long period. The same applies to patented inventions. In the US entertainment companies like Disney were successful in lobbying to extend the duration of copyright far beyond the lifetimes of the creators.

24. There should be a body such as the “Environmental Council” proposed by Earth Action to make binding decisions to protect the planet, perhaps by transforming an already existing UN institution, with its actions subject to approval by the General Assembly, combined with an expanded environmental role for the World Court.

25. All nations need to agree to implement simultaneously a range of measures to re-regulate global markets and corporations in order to restore genuine democracy, environmental protection, and peace around the world. This is because no nation nor group of nations alone can control global capital nor implement vital economic, social or environmental policies that might incur market or corporate displeasure. A method for breaking this impasse is proposed by the International Simultaneous Policy Organization (ISPO), whose website is www.simpol.org.

PROPOSALS WORTH CONSIDERING FOR POSSIBLE AGREEMENT

26. If there is no other way to overcome the favored status US courts have given to corporations, it would have to be accomplished by constitutional amendment, making the limitations and responsibilities of corporations so clear the courts could not interpret them away.

27. Public officials should be prevented from holding secret meetings with heads of corporations and financial institutions, as at the Council on Foreign Relations, the Bilderberg, and the Trilateral Commission.

28. Businesses should be encouraged to use energy and resources efficiently without paying subsidies. In the efficient energy use chapter of Jim Bell’s book he cites numerous large corporation who have invested in energy and resource use efficiency measures “and in every case their return on investment was better than their investments in their product lines.”

29. As proposed by Jim Bell, governments should use experts from economics and accounting to determine the true cost of various goods, and then pass laws to include externalities, such as environmental damage, normally neglected in retail prices. Possible questions: Does this method create a huge bureaucracy of accountants to figure the true costs and lawyers to dispute them? Who gets the price increase? Does it become excess profit for the corporations? Does the government tax it away and use the proceeds to offset pollution and hazardous waste? If so, how do we prevent it being frittered away in litigation as is being done regarding the SuperFund taxes that were supposed to clean up toxic waste? What about the effect of these higher prices on GDP? National production is conventionally measured by market prices, so wouldn’t the damage to environment and humans now be counted as an increase in GDP?

30. The obverse of true cost pricing is “The Neuman Proposal,” which would have the government pay individuals to reduce their travel by car or plane in order to decrease emission of greenhouse gasses that contribute to global climate change. This raises questions of the possibility of enactment, the accuracy and administrative cost of determining these subsidies, and the possibility of fraud or misuse.

31. Limit the size that corporations can attain or their ability to merge to reduce competition. Of the world's 100 largest economic entities, 51 are now corporations and 49 are countries according to the Institute for Policy Studies. The world's top 200 corporations account for over a quarter of economic activity on the globe while employing less than one percent of its workforce.

32. Remove the "limited liability" of corporations (Inc., LLC, Ltd., SA, NV, GmbH), making the liability of corporations real and full, so it will have an impact on the shareholders and will guide them to more responsible actions. Limited liability without responsibility has caused much of the trouble we see today.

33. Make corporations report to the public, as well as shareholders, on their undertakings and plans that affect workers, consumers, and the environment.

34. Some people propose that capitalism be abolished. Richard Moore opined “that if we put the necessary democratic and environmental constraints on market economics, then we will have abolished capitalism.” Others would go further to replace markets and private investment entirely.

35. Localized economic control should replace multinational corporate control. If there is local economic control, then democracy may continue as a healthy form of government. Locally elected leaders may come together as the democratic representatives in a confederation.

36. There should be a large international peace-keeping force under the control of the U.N. or some other agency that ensures equitable distribution of natural resources and peace, after all weapons of mass destruction have been destroyed.

37. Large numbers of people should reduce using energy sufficiently to let the power brokers know who really is in control.

38. People could stop eating beef. Just in Central America alone 35 million people are now either landless or own too little land to support themselves while the transnational corporations have continued to drive the locals away and clear forest to raise beef cattle (1992 figures).

 

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"I see in the near future a crisis approaching that unnerves me and causes me to tremble for the safety of my country. ... corporations have been enthroned and an era of corruption in high places will follow, and the money power of the country will endeavor to prolong its reign by working upon the prejudices of the people until all wealth is aggregated in a few hands and the Republic is destroyed."

Abraham Lincoln, Nov. 21, 1864

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