Capitalism is Great!
The problem with capitalism is corporations
Capitalism, as practiced here in the Unites States and globally, is, today, fucked. It cannot continue this way. It is end-stage capitalism. But is it really capitalism at all?
I do not purport to write a scholarly paper expounding upon capitalism’s suicide. I’ll just note that today’s capitalism contains hardly a shred of competition anymore. Economies are dominated by monopolies and monopsonies, and they control our political, regulatory, and justice systems as well. It is a totally corrupt form of capitalism, too corrupt to survive much longer.
But, to be fair, it is hardly correct to call it capitalism at all, is it? Capitalism is fair, competitive markets controlled by supply and demand. Is what we have today the inevitable fate of a capitalist society?
But suppose we had never invented or legalized corporations. I hypothesize that this single change would have kept capitalism robust for much longer.
What do I mean, to not have corporations? Does that mean preventing businesses from growing past a certain size? Does it mean public ownership of capital? Or worker ownership? A planned economy?
No, I refer to none of those things. I believe the problem with corporations is the absence of individual, personal responsibility for our behavior.
- The problem is that, when a business incurs debts, they are not personal debts of the owners, they are debts of the corporation. Take LLCs, for example. It’s right there in the name: Limited Liability Corporation. The corporation can go bankrupt, but the owners retain their personal wealth.
- The problem is that, when a business engages in terrible conduct, such as polluting our rivers and air and climate, it is the corporation that is responsible. We can sue the corporation, but rarely is the business’s management, owners, or directors held personally responsible.
- The problem is that, when a business violates the law, the corporation is responsible. It pays a fine, rarely of significant impact to its profitability. Rarely does a board member or an executive go to jail. Rarely, if ever, is the “death sentence for corporations” invoked, dissolving the corporation.
Author indi.ca, one of Medium’s fiercest social critics, describes corporations as Artificial Intelligences run amok. (The Worst Case Scenario For AI Is Already Here) They are given the singular goal of making profits, at the expense of all other considerations. They optimize for that goal very effectively. They are destroying humankind and the rest of life in the natural world in pursuit of profits.
It is not the corporations’ directors or executives that are greedy (though they may well be), it is the corporation itself that is greedy. It is designed to be greedy.
Let us allow businesses to organize however they like, but without the shield of corporate responsibility. You can form a company, but you are personally responsible for its debts, its decisions, and the lawfulness of its actions.
Maybe you will not let your company grow large because you won’t be able to control all of its actions, but you will still be responsible for them.
Maybe growing a company is tantamount to going broke or going to jail.
Maybe your appetite for risk just got a lot lower.
Maybe the inability to grow large companies means that we cannot develop sophisticated tech. We cannot build big things like skyscrapers and automobiles and space telescopes. We cannot generate a useful amount of electricity.
Is that so bad? Little businesses and craft shops are everywhere, competing to get your business and make your life easier. Don’t you think that would lead to a pleasing lifestyle?
Don’t you think we would have a more robust, stabler, more fair, more just society?
Don’t you think we would be happier?
Maybe, 100,000 years from now, when the climate has once again become habitable and stabilized, when the current civilization is long forgotten, when a new civilization rises, maybe they (be they man, monkey, or tardigrade) will be wise enough to never invent fucking corporations.
— Lannie Rose, August 2023
preferred pronouns: she/her/hers
AI was not used at all in the writing of this article
