Now we are human commoditiesBy Chris Maser
12/30/07 "ICH" -- The corporation, it turns out, is an invention of the British Crown through the creation of the East India Company by Queen Elizabeth I in 1600, which, being the original, transnational corporation, set today’s precedence for big businesses. The East India Company, "found India rich and left it poor," says author Nick Robin.
The corporate structure of the East India Company was deemed necessary to allow the British to exploit their colonies in such a way that the owner of the enterprise was, for the first time, separated from responsibility for how the enterprise behaved. This conscious separation of personal responsibility from the act of looting is not surprising because "looting" is, theoretically as least, considered immoral in Christian circles.
The corporation is thus a "legal fiction," that lets the investors who own the business avoid personal responsibility whenever the business dealings are unethical or even blatantly illegal, despite the fact that such unscrupulous behavior profits them enormously.
A corporation, after all, has but one purpose—to make money for the owners. Economist Milton Friedman gave voice to this pinhole vision when he answered his own rhetorical question: "So the question is, do corporate executives, provided they stay within the law, have responsibilities in their business activities other than to make as much money for their stockholders as possible? And my answer to that is, no they do not." In fact, the "corporate system," say analysts, "has no room for beneficence toward employees, communities, or the environment," a notion endlessly demonstrated on a daily global scale.
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