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Comment by wrinklz | Hacker News Reader

I liked Bill Black's comments on the Bill Moyer's Journal last week. He said (my paraphrase) that if corporations are to have the privileges of personhood, most notably free speech and rights to political contributions, then they also should have the same consequences: As in losing civil rights for felony convictions, and the "three strike" rule, meaning I guess they should be permanently dissolved upon the third felony conviction.

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Corporations of this type are "executed" by starting the first criminal prosecution. E.g. Arthur Anderson, the shell of which was ultimately vindicated.

WRT to Goldman, a pointless discussion since they are primary dealer of Federal government treasury bills and bonds. As long as the government is depending on borrowing 1.5 trillion a year at low interest rates, they can't afford to trash primary dealers.

Somehow it's controversial to argue that corporations should have responsibilities other than to their shareholders. You don't have to take many steps back from our present-day paradigm to see that as awfully weird. Personally, I'd have thought the controversial view would be that corporations shouldn't need to balance shareholders' interests against, say, employees' and public's. That seems like the ideological dogma to me: this idea that if you place one set of interests above all others, magic will happen.

Logical error: "place one set of interests above all others" is not the same as does not have "responsibilities other than to their shareholders".

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