[Dominic Harr]

Bottom line, to me:

A 'corporation' has become a 'collective' person. Collectively-owned, collectively-managed. The 'individuals' running the collective at any given moment are insulated from almost any external accountability.

It's such a national problem that 'Dilbert' has made a pretty good living off of the 'PHB' syndrome.

All our corporate problems are problems associated with colletives. Inefficiency. Waste. Corruption. Management that is completely devoid of any experience or talent in the business they're actually in. A 'hierarchy' of management

Consider the Erin Brockovitch story. A 'corporation' takes decisions that kill people. The punishment is for the corp to pay out money, most of which went to the lawyers. Look at Enron, for god's sake.

We've actually created a set of laws that make the favored business organization a 'collective'.

It's literally not safe to be an old-fashioned 'sole-proprietor' entrepeneur in America.

Are we still a 'capitalist' country if we're dominated by collectives?

[GOP_1900AD]

A more doctrinaire interpretation of Adam Smith and Edmund Burke would help light the way to correcting this. Never in their wildest dreams did either man envisage today's lack of true accountibility. Chartered corporations may be one step toward regaining sanity - the current one size fits all incorporation process has sunken to the lowest common denominator (small businesses) and in the process opened the door to the collectivism you mentioned that we see with the big boys. The big boys can get away with murder because of the rules made for the little guy (e.g. made to encourage small business by protecting founders' personal assets). Once a corporation reaches a few hundred people or 10s of Millions in revenue it should be subject to much harsher scrutiny and the officers should be held accountable personally for decisions in all cases.