Corporations Aren’t Parasites

People who dismiss the unemployed and dependent as "parasites" fail to understand economics and parasitism. A successful parasite is one that is not recognized by its host, one that can make its host work for it without appearing as a burden. Such is the ruling class in a capitalist society. – Jason Read

Associate Professor Read's catchy word-bite is making the rounds of gullible Facebookers. Read's quote and blog seem to advocate for the intersection of modern Communization and the anarchistic breakdown of traditional culture; in short he is an ivory tower Occupier. As with Jeffrey Clements's middling book Corporations Are Not People, a little thought reveals that corporations and capitalism reflect the highest ambitions of, and are the only mechanism that allows for, the wealth they take for granted.

So, what is a corporation? A corporation is a voluntary agreement between different sorts of people so that they may work together. A single family might be able to build a log cabin, raise some livestock, and spin wool to make clothes, but that is the limit. Civilization, a concept not especially well received by the Occupiers, requires the specialization of skills, which requires trade between those specialists. Today, it is commonly assumed that everyone is a specialist (e.g. plumber, lawyer, engineer), but for the vast majority of human existence, nearly everybody shared the same skills with his neighbors.

Specialization leads to the need for a corporation. Truly huge endeavors require more than specialized laborers, they require capital and management (i.e. ideas). For example, a jet airplane certainly requires a variety of specialists such as metalworkers and electricians to construct, but its design and planning also require the equivalent of thousands of lifetimes of labor before the first spar is set. How can those who would realize their idea for a new jet marshal the massive resources required just to get to the start of construction? Capital formation.

Contrary to Mr. Read's sophistry, capital is always formed by a combination of someone working harder and spending less than his neighbors. He might then give it to his children, or it might be taken by thieves and taxes, but it started with work and savings. His savings, which came through sacrifice, are precious to him, so he wants to protect them. The capitalist would never simply give his money to any person with an idea for a new jet; indeed hardly any one person has enough capital to fund such a project.

The corporation is a means by which a large number of capitalists, or savers, can join together with labor specialists and a manger with an idea to create something none of these groups could on its own. The capitalist (saver) is protected from the errors of the manager beyond his investment. The manger is protected from liability should the venture fail. The laborers are largely protected from the responsibility for what they have built and can receive compensation now rather than years in the future. Without such an arrangement, established by law, truly big and beneficial ventures would be impossible. Corporations are a voluntary pact between managers with an idea, labor with specialized skills, and capitalists with savings to invest. And, absent government action such as bailouts, nobody outside of the corporation is at risk to lose his money. By the way, Mr. Clements, these are all people.

The absence of this voluntary pact is the communism that Mr. Read seems to embrace. Communist systems replace the capitalist and manager with parasite politicians. Politicians decide where to allocate labor, while savings and investment are outlawed. The result is proven and predictable – stagnation and eventual collapse. Most disheartening is the academics such as Mr. Read who should know the sickening track record of communism.

The corporation is the intersection of savers looking for the best place to employ their capital, managers seeking to profit from ideas and innovation, and laborers looking for the highest pay in exchange for their skills. The corporation is for people and by people, and it is the ultimate expression of the potential of capitalism. It is voluntary and there are no parasites. One only need visit communist China to see the parasites – party members with soft hands perpetually taking bribes. To the extent that US capitalism and corporations are corrupt, look to government graft and coercion. GE, GM, and Solyndra are not voluntary capitalism, they are government sponsored corruption. Comparatively free corporations like Microsoft, Facebook, or the humble local florist create the wealth that feeds their critics like Mr. Read and Mr. Clements.

Talisker: I suspect that you did not read the article all the way through. My point was that people can start small businesses with corporations, but nobody is going to venture into something as large as building an airplane without forming a corporation. People need to quantify and limit the risk they are willing to take in order to cooperate on a large enough scale.

Fascinating - I disagree with you, ergo there is a flaw in my reading comprehension. But no, that's not enough of a jab, so you have to turn it into laziness as well.

Let me tell you something - people will take any level of indemnification they can get. ANY. If they had their way, people would be indemnifed from life itself. So to look at these people and claim that there is no way to create airplanes without indemnifying them BECAUSE of their immorality is an ass-backwards argument.

The fact is that airplanes WOULD be made without indemnified corporations to make them. And they would be made in exactly the same way - by people forming coordinated work units, applying themselves to discrete responsibilities delineated by contracts, and organized by overseer work units. The only difference would be that there would be no overarching corporate shell for all of these work units - they would be independent contractors agreeing to work together for a common contractual goal. And as a result of the requisite personal responsibility, quality would soar, and tens of thousands more people would be employed - AND it would be competitive in a world where megacorps were outlawed and this was the only was to get things done (and where tax and import laws supported this kind of coordination).

Non-responsibility is FUNDAMENTALLY immoral and indefensible, yet universally argued FOR. Why? Because people are hypocrites, that's why. Because there's only one country in the entire world based on negative rights, and its own people are trashing them as hard as they can in order to trade them for mere privileges, in exchange fore WHAT? Indemnification. What do you think a government worke has, or someone who is on the government dime, in exchange for their status? Indemnification.

The philosophical definition of the corporation - a "legal entity" to be treated AS a live human being in order to indemnify the actual human beings who run its operations - IS "the Beast." And it is utterly destroying this world, because it competes with actual human beings to survive.

The needs of actual human beings are NOT the needs of their corporations that have been given human "standing" by the courts. MILLIONS of highly intelligent people have created, and are running, a vast legal machine that is literally destroying them and their families. They try to climb ever higher into the machinery, so "they and theirs" stay safe while others feed the Beast (turning themselves into soulless monsters while doing it), but it still doesn't work, because that's not how the corporate machine works. The legal definition of the corporation is a functional vector with ONE goal: monolithic domination. It cannot be "appeased" because it violates the Laws of God - and most specifically, the law that human beings are personally responsible for their own behaviors and lives.

"The Elite" designed this corporate creature to have that absolute domination built in to it because their bright idea was that it would do the dirty work, and they would run it. But they didn't count on what it would TAKE to run it - namely, that they feed themselves TO IT (or it would see them as the "other" and destroy them). It's lose-lose, and their too arrogant to admit it, even as they are consumed by it.

Look up at the stars. Imagine vast interstellar civilizations hundreds of thousands or millions of years old. You know how they ALL got that way? They passed the test of rejecting corporate indemnification on their home planet. Because there is no other way off - NO intersteller civilization would allow a "corporation" into their midst - they'd be insane to, because corporations are war machines.. And yet, if you examine our ACTUAL laws, that's the ONLY thing we claim to be sending off planet - our "corporate" representatives!

And this while billions of non-corporate humans starve to death, or are subject to CORPORATE communism (you know that communism is merely the political application of incorporation by a government to its people, right?).

Shout Bits, I suspect you haven't read a LOT of things. At least I hope so, because otherwise you're trying to confuse the nature of incorporation and real human beings, and that's a bad thing to do. Because the enemy of human business - of human beings working together through voluntary contracts with personal responsibility - is the corporation. That's WHY it was created, to compete with, dominate, and destroy human business. And it uses the false claim of efficiency to hide its inefficiency and waste, and dismisses the billions of starving people as useless eaters to hide its inability to make use of their massively valuable abilities.

Ultimately, if the corporation wins in the end, the human race will die. And conversely, if the human race survives, it means the corporation has died and human business has triumphed.

God is not mocked.

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