Corporations are a problem we can solve.

In a democracy, the people should be in charge. In America, we the people are not in charge. The corporations are in charge.

The problem is so self-evident it doesn't need to be explained, but super-simply, just envision calling your representative in Congress. Then envision Jeff Bezos calling his Congresscritter. You're going to be talking to an answering machine. He's not.

It's a big problem, but it can be solved.

Start by taxing corporations at a reasonable rate, with no loopholes, simply for doing business in America.

Regulate corporations. At a bare minimum, corporations should be prohibited from harming Americans and/or America. Facebook, as an obvious example. Where it's shown that a company's products, practices, and decisions are flat-out harmful, make sure that harm is illegal.

If the harm continues, fine the fuck out of them and make arrests beginning with the CEO.

If the harm continues after that, then — since "corporations are people" — invoke the death penalty: nationalize criminal corporations, fire everyone in upper management, and continue the enterprise but without the lawbreaking, with decent human beings in charge, and with all profits funneled into the federal budget.

Anti-trust should be a real thing again. Any company that controls more than 30% (maybe less than that) of its industry should be broken into separate companies. We want competition, not one-company control.

You can't totally solve the problems, because criminals will always be among us, but we don't have to let the biggest and most obvious criminals get away with their crimes. Regulate, fine, imprison.

Of course, the real crux of the problem is that there's nobody in Congress who sees any of this as a problem. There's nobody in Congress who isn't owned by corporations, so Congress itself is a wholly-owned subsidiary of Chevron, Disney, and Microsoft.

 

itsdougholland.com 

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