With the arguments aired before the court last week over "Hillary the Movie" we are moving perilously closer to the fulmination of corporate person-hood. It appears that the Supreme Court is going to come down in favor of allowing corporations to spend unfettered millions shaping and changing political elections as early as next year.
Today, we're fighting off Microsoft for the power to control the content we create, fighting against Wal-Mart to keep a days wage enough to live on, and of course, the Insurance Industry who appear absolutely willing and able to allow our deaths in the name of profits.
The corporation has emerged as an enemy of progress, as a danger to the persistence of the Republic, and to human life itself. I think we need to start talking about how to fix corporations. We should start by talking about the race to the bottom.
Currently, corporations are incorporated under the state laws of any one of the 50 states. This promotes what's called a "race to the bottom," a search by corporations for the state which will allow the corporate organizers as much protection as they can get, with the lowest taxes, corporate oversight, and general bother that can be accomplished.
Delware loves this system.
California, does not.
Delaware is a leading winner in the race to the bottom, with massive annual dues coming in from all those publicly traded monopolies. California meanwhile struggles to find new legal tools to force foreign corporations (from one of the other states) to live up to the shareholder protection laws within California.
This is important because the state of incorporation, which is selected by the people who create the corporation (owners and executives), governs more than the form and function of the company. The laws of the state of incorporation set the ground rules for everything the corporation may or may not do, and who can be held accountable when the corporation breaks those rules.
Whomever writes the laws of incorporation under which a U.S. company is organized decides not only what meetings and positions are required to validate a corporation, but also when a CEO will be able to force the corporation to pay for legal defenses after he defrauds the company, when a corporation could or should make a charitable donation, and yes, whether or not a corporation may expend funds on political speech.
You could even, say, require that certain types of corporations (insurers and banks) be overcapitalized (must keep more money than their actuaries think they need to pay out on future debts), or that a corporation which presents itself as a health insurer may not rescind contracts or form pacts to exclude competing insurers from certain hospitals.
Taking control of the rules of incorporation at the federal level would allow the U.S. government to alter the balance of power between the consumer and the corporation forever.
For Example:
We could establish a Public Duty owed by the corporate officers to the public which makes the corporate officers personally liable for the actions the corporation knowingly takes that harm the public good (cigarette companies, I'm looking at you).
We could establish by statute the limitations on corporate spending "a corporation may not expend capital on efforts to alter public opinion about upcoming elections or judicial actions" not from outside the structure of the corporate "person" where free speech might intervene, but from within.
The law of incorporation is the set of blueprints on which the corporation will be built, it is too important and far too dangerous to leave in the hands of the several states.
This is what Congress should and must do to solve so much of what's wrong with the U.S. today, stop corporate donations to political movements, put an end to the concept of the corporate person, roll the corporation up to the federal level, and explicitly limit what a corporation is, and what it can do.
Source of Authority
Since I suspect this might come up -- this IS within the power of Congress to effect, under the Interstate Commerce Clause (a.k.a. the United States Constitution) granting congress the power to regulate commerce between the states.
Nothing in our society impacts interstate commerce so much as the behavior and insanity of corporations.
This should be our response to the Supreme Court. Corporations are not people, and we have the ready power to kill off that foolish and destructive concept once and for all.