Today our world is reeling from the effects of all manner of profound challenges. Crashing economies. Climate change. Energy shortages. Increasing hunger and thirst. Threats of epidemic disease. The snowballing effects of environmental destruction. A widening abyss between the “haves” and the “have-nots,” and the increasingly deadly competition for the resources that support both economies and life itself.

Though often undetected by the unpracticed eye, these systemic failures are reflections of the failure of modern corporations. Relatively few citizens in the United States, where corporate power amassed its greatest zenith, have examined corporations from the perspective of their unique set of powers as they relate to governments and fundamental human rights. Nevertheless it is now more essential than ever that we subject the corporate model to this inspection.

Let me clarify that I am not addressing the locally-controlled business corporation, which concerns itself with making a profit that benefits its owners, employees, and the community. Nevertheless, the current accepted model of corporations contains no limitations that would prevent Moe’s Meat Market, LLC, from complimenting its legitimate mission, business, with another less-healthy: pseudo-government. Let me explain.
Assuming Moe’s business thrives, its appetites may expand to swallow other businesses as appropriate for building a food empire. Eventually, newly-renamed Triple M Foods might be accused of price-fixing, exploiting its workers, and - reminiscent of an earlier time when such distinctions were seriously considered - attempting to build a monopoly.

Triple M’s well-funded legal staff, bristling with legal rights extended to corporations but not to living persons, would be free to devise strategies for getting around government regulations designed to protect workers, communities, and the environment. Outraged groups of mere citizens would be easily steamrollered in the regulatory arena, itself fashioned by other corporate lawyers. Should ingenuity fail, Moe’s News Corp. could massage public opinion while lobbyists, company-funded think tanks, experts-for-hire, and carefully cultivated politicians turn to the task of changing the offending regulation or law.

Eventually, MMM International could change the way food is produced, including where it’s grown, what inputs and methods are used in its production, the effects on the land, even what kind of life those along the supply chain will live. Moe, the breathing, walk-around person, could have died years before, but hardly anyone encountering his stylized portrait on the corporate logo 200 times a day would realize it.
A plethora of industries totally unrelated to food could come under the control of MMM Global. New corporations such as M-Care Health, M3 Insurance, and MoBank would exercise the vastly magnified financial power of “the group” to transform an ever-widening collection of industries around the world. The next step might be an invitation from a self-appointed trade body (as opposed to one democratically elected) for certain MMM Global representatives to attend meetings to dictate international trade.

The one – and only –condition on The Company’s absolute control over the earth, her people, and their governments would be the legal mandate that corporations return profit for their shareholders. All powers of The Company would be out of the reach of citizen control, heretofore known as Democracy. Herein lies the fundamental problem with corporations.

Isn’t it time we re-examined how the narrow corporate mission of shareholder profit is playing out in the dramas we are witnessing throughout the world? Are human societies and natural systems adequately served through the awesome powers we have allowed corporations to steadily gather since the days they had carefully defined missions, life spans, and powers? Who should rule, people or their creations?

A playful gimmick, perhaps, but hopefully the point of Moe’s Meat Market is clear: corporations are out of control, and their single-minded priority is out of sync with the rest of society. And we know it. 82 percent of respondents to a 2000 poll by Business Week magazine agreed that “Business has gained too much power over too many aspects of American life.” 76 percent of respondents to a March, 2007 Gallup poll said Washington politicians “pay too much attention to the needs of big corporations.” In 2002 Newsweek found 66 percent of those interviewed believed that recent corporate damages were either “a lot” or “somewhat” the fault of a “decline in moral and ethical standards in society.” Where more than in the “greed is good” culture celebrated by the corporate business world would we expect to find the origins of this kind of decay?

Business is not the issue between corporations and living beings. The problem is power. By exercising its unmatched privileges to over-invest in short term profits, under-invest in human communities, and hide the real ecological costs of its methods, the current corporate model has proven a disaster. For the sake of future generations as well as our own, it is time for us to submit the fiction of corporations to a thorough democratic review.

Dave Wheelock, a member of the Oneida Nation of Wisconsin, lives, works, and home-studies in Socorro. Reach him at davewheelock (all one word, lower case) at yahoo.com. Mr. Wheelock's views do not necessarily represent those of Socorro News, but frequently do.