Of Corporate Personhood

              This is a quote from Two Treatises of Government, The Second Treatise, Chapter 7 Of Politcal of Civil Society, "Man being born, as has been proved, with a Title to perfect Freedom, and an uncountroled enjoyment of all the Rights and Privillages of Law and Nature, equally with any other Man, or Number of Men in the World, hath by Nature a Power, not only to perserve his Property, that is, his Life, Liberty and Estate, against the Injuries and Attempts of other Men; but to judge of, and punish the breaches of that Law in others, as he is perswaded the Offense deserves, even with Death it self, in Crimes where the heinousness of the Fact, in his opinion requires it."
            The propisiton of corporate personhood violates these principles.  Corporate personhood came about in the late middle ages and the early renaissance when corporations first came into being and the elites needed to set up the legal infrastructure for these corporations to operate in.  Originally, corporations were simply a group of people granted a charter to perform a specific function.  These groups would seek out favors from religious or secular authority. 
           The problem is how do you put a corporation to death?  A corporation only gets fined for any criminal activity while the individuals who commited those crimes can sleep in their own beds.  A corporation that gains a monopoly can be broken up.  Indeed, trust busting would put an end to Silicon Valley's stranglehold over the information technology, and not to mention the banks monopoly of the financial system.  In the business environment a diversity of companies and small business is needed.  This is lacking in the finance and technology industries. 
           In the early 1900s trust busting put an end to The Standard Oil Company's monopoly over the oil and railroad industries.  As I mention in a previous blog, even conservative economist at the time wanted this to happen because monopolies infered with the working of the free market.  Indeed, monopolistic capitalism is not free market capitalism, nor is finance capitalism.  Both systems are bound to bring about an economy controlled by a small number of people with very little if any competition.  Also, the political system would be under the control of small group of oligarchs.
            In order for democracy to thrive the marketplace needs to be free and open for everybody.  This means that people would engage in entrepreneurial activity, and that consumers would have plenty of choices.  Also, corporations would not be above the law, and any monopolies would be broken up.  I've mentioned in earlier blogs the need to have a placed based system of finance and industry in which the goods and services people consume are produced in the communties they live in.  People would be able to talk to the people the are involved in the process of producing the goods and service they buy.