hyc's Journal: Enemy of Tyranny

Our world is seriously broken. If Thomas Jefferson were to walk around today he would probably be shocked that we let things degrade so far.

Back in the 18th century, I suppose the Founding Fathers could only imagine that Church and State were the only two seats of power that threatened an individual's liberties, and so State government is the main focus of their attention, and the Church was excluded from the interfering in government. The oppression they were fighting was wielded by a monarch in a long line of monarchs. Their solution to guaranteeing our freedom from tyranny was to insure that no person could rise to power in our government and remain there for life - so we have short terms of office for the President and the members of Congress, and term limits as well.

But it's common knowledge today that something is broken in the system. In the country that was founded on the principles that all men are created equal, the rift between the wealthy/powerful and the poor/powerless continues to widen. How can it be, that our population is losing more and more of its freedoms day by day, despite the ironclad language in our Constitution that our public servants are sworn to uphold?

A lot of people talk about how Big Business is now running this country, and not our actual elected officials. The people we vote for are just puppets, front-men for a shadow government run by the people with the real power. The fact that people see this yet do nothing about it is pathetic.

Yes, the reality is that the power-hungry have done an end-run around the Constitution. Since the powers of our legitimate government have been so successfully limited, they've chosen to pursue an avenue toward power that has been left unchecked. It's not that the Constitution has failed, just that it wasn't designed to protect us against tyranny from this direction.

Laws are being bought and paid for by large corporations; decisions are being made in our government by people nobody elected. This has to stop.

There are a number of steps necessary to fix the problem.

The basic guiding principle for the USA was that nobody should be allowed to ascend permanently to a seat of power. But today, power isn't concentrated in our seat of government, it resides in corporate boardrooms. The first remedy then, is to bring terms of office and term limits to corporate leadership, in the same way they apply to government positions.

The next is that people placed in power (through election processes) are accountable to the people they govern. Yet corporate decision makers are not held accountable for the decisions they make. The corporate veil that insulates corporation owners from liability for their company's actions needs to be abolished. It is unconscionable that we accord corporations the rights and privileges of natural citizens, but none of the liability that natural citizens bear.

When your company is responsible for an oil spill that devastates hundreds of miles of shoreline, you should be *punished*, and the punishment should cause you actual *suffering and remorse* for your actions, it should not just be a token slap. When your company is responsible for *deaths of consumers* your company should be taken to trial and a *death sentence* should not be out of the question if the company is found to have acted in a premeditated fashion. That sentence should apply equally to all of the responsible decisionmakers in the company (officers, major shareholders) and the company itself should be immediately liquidated/terminated.

Ultimately I think the basic notion of corporations is flawed and should be abolished. But in the interim, another measure that would improve the parity among all parties would be to require that all corporations extend ownership to all of their employees. The way large corporations get away with abusing folks working for minimum wage while company profits soar is totally reprehensible. The phrase "wage slave" should not even exist in our language. The fact that it does proves that here in the Land of the Free, we have lost our way. Every employee should have a voice in the running of their company, and an opportunity to influence the salaries of positions across the whole range, from top executives down to their own posts. The influence from external investors should be minimized. Indeed, outside investors are only there to make a buck, typically using *surplus* cash, but for the actual employees it is their livelihood at stake. Their voices should carry far more weight in the day-to-day operation of their company. The system that exists today is as repugnant as the "taxation without representation" that spawned the American Revolution.

I would take all of the capitalization of a company, cut the externally owned shares in half, and redistribute them to all existing employees (pro-rated by their current salary rate). And from that point forward, all external investors can only buy shares at 2x the cost of an insider. Nobody outside the company should have a louder voice in the running of the company than any employee of the company; cutting their influence in half will help somewhat to maintain the balance.

I suppose some would object that "this is America! We should be free to run our businesses any way we want!" That's true, but only as long as how you run your business doesn't infringe on my personal liberty. In today's world, Big Business is a major threat to civil liberty and it *is* the government's proper duty to remove that threat.