A corporation (or LLC, LLP, or sole-proprietorship) is not a democracy, and does not and should not pretend to be one. And, that's OK for a business.
What is not OK at all is a government pretending, acting, and striving to act more like a nondemocracy. What's worse, is citizens who naively and dangeously to their own health, support this awesomely misguided direction toward government being business. It is clearly not OK to strive to run a democratic government more like a nondemocracy.
A corporation (or LLC, LLP, or sole-proprietorship) is not a democracy, and does not and should not pretend to be one. And, that's OK for a business. The employees are not the masters and have no say in the business. Employees have no representation by design. The power of speech in corporate governance is limited to the shareholders and to the elite few officers whom the shareholders elect. That's OK because profit, not freedom, is the basic reason for the existence of a business. And nobody pretends otherwise.
In contrast, the reason for the existence of a democracy is freedom of the citizens, and not the profitability of its servants in government. The citizens are the shareholders of democratic government, and the officers are the temporary, invited servants of the shareholders.
What is not OK at all is a government pretending, acting, and striving to act more like a nondemocracy. What's worse, is citizens who naively and dangeously to their own health, support this awesomely misguided direction toward government being business. It is clearly not OK to strive to run a democratic government more like a nondemocracy.
James K. Galbraith in a recent essay in Mother Jones magazine has labeled this aggressive and select group of new age business-government leaders the 'predator class.'
The members of the predator class rotate freely between business and government. It related to the idea of the military industrial complex. Such rotation between public and private positions of power is no simple coincidence, because the rotation of the same people is essential to achieve the blurring of the distinctions between the two institutions and to increasing the power and effectiveness of these predators.
And in fact the rise of a class of predators is a key evidence that major distinctions between the two institutions have been lost already. The rise of predators is evidence that the government has already gone far astray, and has acted too much like a business. The citizens have already become less like shareholders and more like employees without rights, and the new owners and their top officers have already funnelled away the wealth and the rights from the original stakeholders. It is a new age, and unfortunately the rise of the predator class heralds the descendancy of an age of democracy. The predator class is the vanguard of a new government-business hybrid organization whose mission is not to serve citizens but to serve itself.
The predator class is not the whole Republican party and there are some predators in all of the most powerful political parties. Let me point out that most business owners do not also participate as government servants, and most business owners do not repeatedly bounce back and forth between the two institutions. Most business owners are therefore not members of, and are not even eligible to become members of, the predator class. The predator class stays small and keeps its power closely held. Concentration and accumulation of power is not achieved through sharing it or giving you some. Similarly, simply being a Republican is not going to win you entrance to the predator class. The legions of small shrimp who simply swarm to follow power are deluding themselves by thinking they are predators and not prey. The predator class is not all businessmen, and it is not all Republicans. The predator class thrives on every smaller fish and shrimp that it can fit in its mouth.
Excerpt from Galbrath's essay at http://www.motherjones.com/...
"These middle-class institutions survive in America today, but they are frayed and tattered from constant attack. And the division between those included and those excluded is large and obvious to all.
Today, the signature of modern American capitalism is neither benign competition, nor class struggle, nor an inclusive middle-class utopia. Instead, predation has become the dominant feature--a system wherein the rich have come to feast on decaying systems built for the middle class. The predatory class is not the whole of the wealthy; it may be opposed by many others of similar wealth. But it is the defining feature, the leading force. And its agents are in full control of the government under which we live."
In a business, the shareholders and just a small group of elite employees rightfully govern the organization. The majority of employees have no voice and thus no power. This is clearly not a democracy.
In a democratic government, the situation is correctly inverted. The mass of free citizens, the majority, not an elite few, are the real owners, and must call the shots. The rest, the public officials, are employee-servants. The citizens rightfully govern the whole organization. The citizens use their power to invite representatives to serve at their pleasure, and then only temporarily. The jobs of government servants are not supposed to be safe. Frequent layoffs via elections (and de-election) of these servants occur by design, and must occur, to reinforce the subservience of the representatives.
Power stays in the hands of those who have it, crucially by exerting that power over those without it. By the same token, power leaves a person's hands to the extent that they fail to exert their powers. By not exerting power and not protecting it, the power of the citizens has become available for the taking, and so it is being taken. Power always finds a place to live; power never disappears. Science and mathematics describe zero-sum games and laws of thermodynamics, and power over humans is the same way. There is always someone waiting and willing to take the power that someone else has pissed away.
In America, it has become common to hear the Constitution and the Bill of Rights being talked about as a historic relic and no longer "real". Voter turnouts have been small for decades. Few people talk to their representatives, if they even know their names. Most people are not even interested in discussing their government, which is a way of saying most people have no interest in discussing their own power. People have developed overblown responses to small amounts of blood spilled at the hands of foreign strangers such as 9-11 and cringe in fear far more than necessary, and they cry for someone else to take responsibility for providing them with their safety and well-being. Citizens are happy to let government take over and do their job in secret. And so the predator class has heard the invitation for a daddy to take over and have aggressively grabbed up the power from the slack hands of so many American citizens. So now that so many have cried for a daddy, and daddy is here now, how many want to admit to living in a fatherland? If you check a dictionary you will notice that democracy and freedom are not defined by being some geographical regions on any map.
I suppose widespread confusion has not unexpectedly resulted from a system in which a 95%-plus incumbency reelection rate is the norm in the House of Representatives. Members "serve" for decades if you still want to call it that. Government "servants" have naturally started to notice that their jobs are less temporary and more permanent, and likewise they begin to act not as servants but as elite masters in other ways as well. They are frequently unresponsive to citizens. But they are very responsive to corporate lobbyists. A minority of citizens even communicate with their so-called representatives, and much less demand obedience from their servants. With such a long tenure for incumbency, with so few citizens even attempting communications much less demanding obedience from their representatives, the members of the House of Representatives have taken notice, and now act more like an untouchable House of Chairmen of the Board. Are you happy now that daddy has made you into a voiceless employee of the state-corporation? Does disenfranchisement taste good?