The Corporation: To-do List

The Corporation
Watch the Corporation

I just finished watching a documentary called The Corporation, an intriguing look at the modern day exploits of global corporations. I wanted to quickly mention a couple points that I found particularly interesting:

  • For all legal purposes, corporations are considered a person
  • Being a person, corporations are allowed to give campaign constitutions because it is free speech
  • Before 1987, the patent office clearly stated that it was not legal to patent any living thing. After a misguided supreme court ruling stating that a bacteria looked more like a chemical than a bug, a corporation was allowed to copyright that bacteria. The ruling now states that you can patent any living thing in the world except a full birth human being.

The end of the documentary gives a list of things we can do to remedy the issues that are posed by modern corporations:

  • End corporate personhood
  • Put people before profit
  • Build economic democracy
  • Use full-cost accounting
  • Stop corporate welfare
  • Localize ownership
  • Support unions
  • 3 strikes for corporations
  • Be an active shareholder
  • Jail corporate criminals
  • Strength regulatory systems
  • Get corporations out of schools
  • Make trade fair
  • Run corporations from politics
  • Use local democratic power
  • Support independent media
  • Internalize externalities
  • Buy local
  • Work for worker rights
  • Jam corporate culture
  • Ride a bike

I think this is a fantastic list of things that people can do to fix some of the broken aspects of corporations.

I hope everyone has a chance to watch the documentary. I’d love to hear any comments anyone has on the film or about corporations in general.

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