Corporate power blesses, not oppresses, the American people

Townhall.com ^ | 10-17-07 | Michael Medved

[DeweyCA]

Today, one of the students in my Sunday School class had to submit a paper for his Sociology class at UC-Irvine. He had to watch a 3-hour video, entitled, "The Corporation." You can watch this ugly screed at Google video. The video featured Michael Moore railing against corporations. This was the 3rd video that this new Fall semester class has already seen that criticizes business. The socialist brainwashing that takes place on US campuses is amazing. I wish that this column had come out a couple days earlier. I would have had my student read it before he wrote his paper. Still, he did a good job on his paper. Now it will be interesting to see if the prof gives him a bad grade for defending capitalism.

[Brilliant]

Congressional power oppresses.

[RC2]

We have lost the desire to compete and gained the ability to believe that everything should be given to us.

I come out of the corporate world. I worked 8, 10, 12, sometimes 20 hours a day. Some times we worked 24 hours and hit it again the next day. On top of that, I was on a salary, didn’t get payed over time. It was a desire to produce and produce better than anyone else. I don’t think we have much of that today.

[SShultz460]

bmfl

[SpaceBar]

Corporations can both help and be harmful to society. They are neither the benevolent saviors nor the devil’s own invention preached by those on either end of the spectrum. On a good day they provide the needed concentration of capital to achieve what can’t be done by a single person, and on a bad day you get things like I.G. Farben. As entities driven solely by the lust for profit without conscience, they need to have well defined boundaries of conduct as well, lest we become the third corporate run penal colony from the sun.

[khnyny]

“Power tends to corrupt; absolute power corrupts absolutely.” Lord Acton

[Mygirlsmom]

It’s not popular to say these days, but it has primarily been Judeo-Christian values that provided that conscience and defined those boundaries.

[RC2]

“they need to have well defined boundaries of conduct as well”.....as do the employees. Employees control the company to a great extent. If they don’t have the desire to produce the corporations will do what they must. The young employees are the future managers of any company. If their values are not held to the highest standards of productivity, when they become managers, they will take those lower standards with them. It works two ways, not just the corporations.

[DeweyCA]

I agree with you completely. Corporations are amoral, and, in their drive for profits, can be used for evil. Think of Loral giving our rocket secrets to the ChiComs in return for their own profit and the ChiComs giving money to Clinton’s 1996 re-election campaign. Or Toshiba selling to the Russians our secret manufacturing technology for making silent subs. Regulations have been put on them, and need to stay. Unfortunately, in classrooms today, students never hear a balanced view on this subject.

[Fee]

I never had a problem with corporations, I have a problem with the leaders in corporations. They are the ones who support amnesty for illegal immigrants, they are the first ones to enforce diversity, they are actually the first ones to introduce bi-lingualism into US, they are the ones who outsource jobs even when the corporation is making record profits, they are the first ones to eliminate the pledge of allegiance in board meetings, they get bonuses after they screw up a company and retire (imagine a plumber come to fix a leak in your house, and ends up creating five new ones, presents the bill with a smile and demands a bonus on top of that). Enron, Worldcom, S&L crisis, Wall Street derivative scheme, dot.com bubble, real estate bubble, subprime crisis, were not perpetrated by high school grads, but by white collar college grads (many come from top tier business schools). Until moral leadership and leadership by example is re established at the corporate level, Americans will never trust corporations no matter how good the times are. That will be hard to do when colleges provide education (how to make money) with little or no moral education (separation of religion), thus today our best business schools provide education and no moral education and end up graduating educated menaces who eventually will become CEO’s. Big government and regs will not provide a solution because we cannot write laws that can cover every loop hole and scheme devised. Only a man with knowledge on the ins and outs of a system tempered by morality can exercise his power with responsiblity and civic mindness.

[facedown]

bttt

[RightWhale]

The modern American corporation was enabled by the XIVth Amend. It really took off when the courts decided corporations could own corporations. We tend to ignore the corporations, but they represent eighty percent of the American economy. Also, globalization is primarily commercial. If somebody wants to upset the applecart by getting rid of the corporations or globalization he ought to think twice, or he could be one of the Population Bomb crowd.

[RC2]

I agree. But I go back to the idea that corporate leaders come from the young.....eventually. People need to realize that they can leave a company any time they feel that the moral values of that company do not meet theirs. Staying with a company like that is foolish. Without good employees, the company could not exist and these good people can help the competition.

[xjcsa]

Wow - great piece.

[xjcsa]

Over here.

[RightWhale]

• our best business schools provide education and no moral education and end up graduating educated menaces who eventually will become CEO’s

  Used to. The MBA is useless now. The CEOs are paid $200 million a year for something other than bookkeeping.

[skeeter]

Agreed. Corporations should be viewed with the same jaundiced eye as should the government. Both are made up of flawed individuals who, as you say, are capable of both help & harm.

[Clock King]

People are basically very ignorant about how the world works. They think everything happens magically. Why do you think corporations are “driven solely by a lust for profit?” Most people who started them wanted to make something that would change the world or use talent to the best of their ability. At least in the tech world, it’s that way. Some one with a better idea, a better mousetrap. They don’t usually become profit driven monsters until after the original founder(s) is long dead and the “new breed” has taken over. The new breed didn’t actually put the hard work in to build something from nothing, so they don’t appreciate what they have. Thus, they are driven just to make money and live fabulous.

[SpaceBar]

They don’t usually become profit driven monsters until after the original founder(s) is long dead...

Henry Ford built trucks for the Wehrmacht.

[UCFRoadWarrior]

This is a fair observation.

I think corporations today have become a problem....they have pushed many liberal ideas that were unfathomable a few yrs ago.

Pandering to liberal globalist free trade, and, replacing Americans with illegals have become a huge problem. I remember when business invested in local communities and their staff. Now, they do not hesitate to dump America for Communist China

Also, it is absurd for a CEO to get a bonus when the company loses money. You should see all the Business-Socialists come out of the woodwork to defend these bogus bonuses. I remember a time when failure was never rewarded

And, most of the jobs created in America today are by small business....not large corporations. Seems also most of our government these days is to keep these failing corporations afloat....not letting them die and newer better ones taking over

Todays big corporations could not survive in a true free market