> Behalf Of J. van Baardwijk
> At 11:40 27-1-01 -0500, Gautam Mukunda wrote:
>
> > > So, for corporations being sued is a *given right*? I'd think
> >corporations
> > > would consider being sued a problem, not a right.
> >
> >Yes, they do. You'd think wrong. If you can't sue a corporation,
how
> >can you hold it accountable to its contracts?
>
> Then the correct phrase would be "corporations have a right to sue
others",
> rather then "corporations have a right to be sued".
No, it would not. The right to sue someone else is the right to hold
someone _else_ to _their_ contracts. The right to be sued is the
right to be held to your own contracts. If your contracts cannot be
enforced, then you cannot make them - the very idea of an
unenforceable contract is absurd. There are people in society who can
sue (or at least have other people sue on their behalf), but not be
sued. They are called children.
> > > How? Certainly not because Bush and his buddies suddenly became
> > > environmentalists. It happened because environmentalist
> > > organizations
> > > became so powerful that the government had no choice but to
> > > listen to them.
> >
> >Why do you care how? What the hell does it matter why they did it?
>
> Because it says a lot about that government. How can you trust a
government
> if they only do the right thing when they are forced to do it? The
fact
> that environmental laws were passed only because of sheer pressure
from the
> population shows that the government itself would happily let the
> environment go to hell.
So what? This is entirely besides the point. Everything you're
saying just strengthens my belief that it is not environmental
progress that drives these things - it is the desire on the part of
certain parts of society to seize control of the government and run it
in the way they want to, while eliminating opposing voices from
politics.
> >So what grounds are there, exactly, to
> >claim that corporate money dominates the political system?
>
> I assume that is because most of the election campaign funding comes
from
> corporate donations, which means that politicians will do anything
they
> can to keep those corporations happy. The environmentalist movements
> managed to get pro-environment laws passed anyway, but I can imagine
that
> those same politicians found a way to compensate the corporations
for that
> (tax breaks, for instance).
>
> Jeroen
So what? If the government is going to pass laws that harm
corporations and (more importantly) their stockholders for doing what
they had a legal right to do previously, then not only can it
compensate them, it _should_. Indeed, it must - to do otherwise is
called a "taking" and is both unconstitutional and, to be blunt,
immoral. Your desire to have corporations uncompensated suggests to
me that its harming corporations that is the goal of such laws - not
protecting the environment. There's plenty of other evidence for this
as well, of course, principally most environmentalist's aversion to
market-oriented solutions. If "politicians will do anything they can
to keep those corporations happy" then they wouldn't pass the laws.
Politicians must balance interests. Corporate interests are
exceptionally important. If corporations are hurt too much, the
economy goes into recession or worse, unemployment goes up, and a
virtually infinite number of things start to go wrong in society. If
they are happy, then things go very well for the country in general.
Protecting corporate interests is one of the roles of the government,
just as protecting the environment is too. The first is at least as
important as the second. So I repeat, what's the problem here?
********************Gautam "Ulysses" Mukunda**********************
* Harvard College Class of '01 *He either fears his fate too much*
* www.fas.harvard.edu/~mukunda * Or his deserts are small, *
* [EMAIL PROTECTED] *Who dares not put it to the touch*
* "Freedom is not Free" * To win or lose it all. *
******************************************************************
