On Sat, 27 Jan 2001, Christopher Gwyn wrote:
> Gautam Mukunda wrote:
>
> > Corporate interests are exceptionally important.
> Given that they have a lot of power - yes. (However
> 'Corporations' are not necessarily the only way that we can organize
> things. And there is a large difference between the employee/family
> owned corporation that runs the local corner store and a corporation
> whose operations span the globe and whose owners have no idea how to
> do the work they hire people to do.)
Thank you for bringing this up.
Every time someone goes into a rant about "corporations", I want to
explain that "corporation" is just a way of organizing a business, a way
that makes more sense than any other structure we have in a number of
cases; and that it's not "corporations" but "big mean powerful companies"
that should be railed against.
In 1996, both my husband and I were working for corporations; the one I
worked for, you could have fit all the stockholders and employees (but not
necessarily the spouses of all of them) into one bus. The one Dan was
working for might have needed a second bus. The president of the company
in each case knew all the employees and all the stockholders. In both
companies, the chairman of the board keenly felt the responsibility the
board of directors had to the employees. I'm not saying that every
corporation is like this (I know lots of them aren't!), but when you say
"corporation", you're not just saying "Microsoft and Monsanto and ADM" but
you're saying "the company that 4 guys started that's getting by, but not
making huge profits, and which is trying to do as well by its employees as
it can", and railing against *that* is silly, at best.
Julia
