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Monday, May 05, 2008

Corporations: Forged by Satan in the Very Fires of Hell

Recently I've been exposed to more than my share (surely) of poorly-conceived anti-corporation rancor. For example, I just finished reading a little screed against Starbucks offered up on the MySpace page of a musician who, for all his assured other virtues, elects to spell the word as "corperation" more than once (and also had no concern about appropriating a photo I took and placing it on his MySpace page without permission, acknowledgegement or thanks). I was not sure if he was going to boycott Starbucks because it does not provide free food for employees, or because it breeds catty employees who talk among themselves about how another employee didn't pay for a sandwich. These are weighty matters.

A few nights ago, at a dinner party, an employee of Seattle's most celebrated architecture firm was reviling corporations as despoilers of the environment who must be required to be accountable to "the common good" or "the public weal" (I think it was the former). I pointed out that this was by no means an easy task and that corporations are not people and can't be expected to behave as we want absent the right incentives. And, of course, this line of argument begs the question massively on the matter of what "the common good" is. I pointed out that a very valid idea of "the common good" would be for the extra wealth residing in the United States to be disgorged and spread more equitably around the world, whereupon there would be no market for the high-end buildings, "green" or otherwise, of my conversation partner's employer.

Why do some seemingly rational people more or less go unhinged on the subject of "corporations"? They never seem to have an alternative model for organizing economic activity, unless it's a thoroughly discredited one.

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posted at 3:29 PM

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