Libertarians and Corporations

Lean Left links to an interesting post by Doctor Biobrain (maybe the blogosphere should work on slightly better names!). Anyway, 'Doctor Biobrain' has an interesting post on libertarians but what caught my attention were the comments on corporations:

But those who call themselves “libertarians”, particularly of the Republican variety, aren’t in agreement with that. More often than not, they’re mainly in support of business rights. In particular, Big Business. And here’s the thing: More often than not, individual rights are in direct conflict with business rights. I’m not at all sure how libertarians haven’t figured that one out, but it’s so obvious as to be ridiculous. And because Big Business is nothing but a collection of individuals, the libertarian position is often that of granting special rights to certain individuals, over the rights of other individuals; with the distinguishing factor being whether the individual is acting on their own behalf, versus that of their business. And when stated like that, it’s obviously a big absurdity. These libertarians believe that some people have more liberty than other people.

Or that there is one set of rules for the wealthy and another set of rules for the rest of us. I have no real problem with the concept of corporations but it seems to me that when corporations forget their responsibilities to workers, consumers, their neighbors and even the government, we have a problem. In a democracy, corporations exist at the discretion of the people and when things are working the way they should, corporations are held accountable by the people.

In our early history, all the rights and limited liabilities of corporations were given if it was clear a corporation provided something for the common good such as transportation canals and the manufacture of goods that helped our young country maintain its independence. We are, as a nation, flirting with a situation where corporations are being allowed to be more powerful than the government or the electorate. That is not a good thing. If it was important to limit the powers of King George III, it is also important to limit the powers of Chairman George.

We need better laws to protect the American people from corporate thugs. I have no problem with honest corporations, but making it easier for the next Enron to hide its irresponsible behavior, which is basically what the current Republicans in Congress seem to specialize in, is not the way to go. Keep in mind that Republicans are still blocking an investigation of where all the reconstruction money went in Iraq that was paid to our corporations. And Republicans are still letting corporations write legislation that isn't in the best interest of all of us.