[GPSCC-chat] SOPA and PROTECT IP and What Is A Nexus Of Contracts

Mon Dec 12 10:38:15 PST 2011

After thinking about this some more, I have come to the conclusion that corporate profit making ventures currently exist on a spectrum with the Traditional Corporation that owns all of its own assets at one end and the 2nd version, the headless mobius strip of contracts, at the other.  The players in the gulf oil rig disaster exist somewhere in the middle.  There are at least 4 players there that have various stakes and culpabilities in the disaster, but only one, BP, is being made to pay for the cleanup.  Not that BP is the good guy or anything, or even coming close to paying enough, but for instance the cleanup crew that was sent to contain the spill could have completely contained the spill and scooped it up using existing technology, according to Greg Palast in his book Vultures' Picinic, but because the companies involved were uderprepared this didn't happen.  As we move further down the spectrum towards the extreme end of the mobius strip form
 of incorporation, we may one day find that instead of having a handy fall guy like BP to blame, we will be facing down the mobius strip that consists only of the players who supplied the pilings, the players who supplied the drill bits, the players in charge of assembling the oil rig, the players in charge of hiring the workers who assembled the oil rig and so on.  There may be a paper fig leaf of a management company with a big insurance policy left nominally "in charge" that we could sue, but that company would itself likely have hardly any income or assets that we could sieze. Abolishing corporate personhood in a formal sense will just speed up the movement towards the mobius strip form of organization.  Plus it will invite the abuse of police power of the state against small businesses and nonprofits, even the Peace Center possibly. (Can you say "Committee to Stop FBI Repression?") I pointed this last point out to Merriam last night, but she
 brushed it off saying "I worked with a lot of vitamin companies that were raided by the FBI for spurious reasons in the 1980's." Not having 4th amendment protections for small businesses won't make a lot of difference according to her. I guess according to Merriam's logic, we don't need a constitution at all. The police will act the same regardless. And indeed, without a strong people's movement, they will act the same regardless. However, another point that Merriam misses in this argument is that although it took a long time for the vitamin cos to get to court and they went out of business in the meantime, the cases were ultimately thrown out I believe for various reasons.  If the Peace Center is raided for no reason because nonprofits no longer have 4th amendment protections (as they do under current law and precident) the case won't be eventually thrown out for lack of probable cause. Although if the FBI are following the rules no one would be
 arrested in such a raid, the officers of the Peace Center could easily be summoned to testify before a grand jury fishing expedition and given imunity from self incrimination when they finally do appear before a judge. And if you really want to start nit picking about copyright, taxes and so on we are not really innocent of some of the stuff they could dig up in such a fishing expedition. My room mate Pete Orielly also dissagrees with Merriam about the vitamin companies. He says that there were perfectly legit reasons to raid those vitamin companies. He also says that Move To Amend should be renamed "Move To Dead Ends."  He thinks we are a bunch of mixed up white folks fooling ourselves into thinking we can change something. We need to pass parts 2 and 3 of the Move To Amend amendment so we can have Congress pass laws with teeth and have a people's movement and a President with backbone to be sure those laws are enforced.  The rest is a bunch of
 wishfull thinking that will only get us in more trouble than we know how to dig ourselves out of, especially if we end up being lazy after an apparent "victory".  Abolishing corporate personhood with an amendment is a lazy solution to the alleged problem that we were lazy to begin with by allowing court decisions enacting corporate personhood. It is lazy, discriminatory and will backfire against the little people we are ultimately trying to protect.

John Thielking
From: Spencer Graves <spencer.graves at prodsyse.com>
To: RainbeauFriend at yahoo.com 
Cc: "sosfbay-discuss at cagreens.org" <sosfbay-discuss at cagreens.org> 
Sent: Monday, December 12, 2011 8:48 AM
Subject: Re: [GPSCC-chat] SOPA and PROTECT IP and What Is A Nexus Of Contracts

      Correct.  I'm currently reading Jeff Sachs (2011) The Price of Civilization (Random House).  Sachs makes similar points.        "Sachs is the director of the Earth Institute at Columbia University and special adviser to Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon on the United Nations' Millenium Development Goals."  (from the dust jacket)      This book is the best overview of the current international financial situation I've seen.  Or at least I think so, primarily because it is quite well researched and fits well with everything else I think I know.  Of course, I may be biased, because it largely reinforces and extends opinions I've formed from many other sources.  However, it also has 31 pages of notes.  As I'm reading, I often look at his notes pages to help decide how much credence I should place in what he says.  Later, I will sometimes go to the sources cited in things like this.        Spencer On 12/12/2011 8:39 AM, Drew
 wrote: 
Oh and I meant to write "with no damn given for people or planet"
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>Green is 7 Generations Sustainability!
>http://JillStein.org
>Drew
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>Sent from Yahoo! Mail on Android 
>From: Spencer Graves <spencer.graves at prodsyse.com>; 
>To: 
>Cc: sosfbay-discuss at cagreens.org <sosfbay-discuss at cagreens.org>; 
>Subject: Re: [GPSCC-chat] SOPA and PROTECT IP and What Is A Nexus Of Contracts 
>Sent: Mon, Dec 12, 2011 4:26:57 PM 
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>On 12/12/2011 7:58 AM, Drew wrote: 
>John I have my doubts whether any form of corporation is really accountable to anyone. The concept of being accountable to shareholders is largely mythology from what I can see. The CEO usually stacks the Board, and together they do whatever they please or believe is in service of profits  
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>      No:  They do whatever they perceive serves their best short term interests, though maximizing profits is a common mantra.  Given the choice of an action that will make the company boom in the short term but has a 10% chance of bankrupting the company and a more conservative strategy that will likely provide lower but reasonable profits for the long term, they will generally select the more risky strategy, because they most likely look like heroes in the short term and can leave with their golden parachutes if that fails.  
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>(with no damn given for people or profits). Shareholders rarely are effective in altering the course.  
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>      Correct.  
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>      Spencer 
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>As I encouraged before, check out the book and movie "The corporation ". I would recommend it as one of our movies of the month.
>>Green America!
>>http://JillStein.org
>>Drew
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-- 
Spencer Graves, PE, PhD
President and Chief Technology Officer
Structure Inspection and Monitoring, Inc.
751 Emerson Ct.
San José, CA 95126
ph:  408-655-4567
web: www.structuremonitoring.com _______________________________________________sosfbay-discuss mailing listsosfbay-discuss at cagreens.orghttp://lists.cagreens.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/sosfbay-discuss
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