Legislation aimed at protecting the interests of the East India Company, one of the earliest mega-corporations (too big to be allowed to fail), brought on the American Revolution. Efforts made to eliminate or curtail the slave trade were thwarted in Parliament by the Royal African Company. In the 19th century the raiilroads and mining companies bought and sold congressmen. Ambrose Bierce, a hundred years ago, defined a corporation as “An ingenious device for obtaining profit without individual responsibility.” The real problems of capitalism rarely seem to arise because someone acts irresponsibly or immorally in regard to a business he owns. Perhaps this is because large enterprises are rarely owned outright by individuals, or small groups of partners. Usually they are owned by innumerable and anonymous stockholders, while control is vested in persons who are thus enabled to wield the combined vast resources while shield themselves from actual responsibility or liability. All this is made possible by laws (laws that are in no way new) which recognize these “ingenious devices” as persons with standing in the law, persons that may avail themselves of laws necessary for the protection of real persons, while immune from other laws that serve to control the reckless behavior of real persons. Perhaps there is more truth than jest in the old one “I will believe that a corporation is a person when Texas executes one.”
Legislation aimed at protecting the interests of the East India Company, one of the earliest mega-corporations (too big to be allowed to fail), brought on the American Revolution. Efforts made to eliminate or curtail the slave trade were thwarted in Parliament by the Royal African Company. In the 19th century the raiilroads and mining companies bought and sold congressmen. Ambrose Bierce, a hundred years ago, defined a corporation as “An ingenious device for obtaining profit without individual responsibility.” The real problems of capitalism rarely seem to arise because someone acts irresponsibly or immorally in regard to a business he owns. Perhaps this is because large enterprises are rarely owned outright by individuals, or small groups of partners. Usually they are owned by innumerable and anonymous stockholders, while control is vested in persons who are thus enabled to wield the combined vast resources while shield themselves from actual responsibility or liability. All this is made possible by laws (laws that are in no way new) which recognize these “ingenious devices” as persons with standing in the law, persons that may avail themselves of laws necessary for the protection of real persons, while immune from other laws that serve to control the reckless behavior of real persons. Perhaps there is more truth than jest in the old one “I will believe that a corporation is a person when Texas executes one.”