Who Says We Can't Curb Corporate Power?

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5. Make Investors Responsible for Damage Done on Their Behalf

Changing the rules to make investors liable for harm done to others in their name would make them pay far more attention to the conduct of the companies they back and would greatly change financial calculations made by corporative executives deciding what sort of actions to take to protect people and nature. Some environmental and justice activists are developing legal strategies to change the limited liability laws that shield corporate shareholders from responsibility for the damage done on their economic behalf.

6. Eliminate Corporations’ Legal Status as Human Beings

Significant democratic and economic gains would come from overturning the bizarre legal doctrine that corporations qualify for all the same rights as human beings. As author Thom Hartmann argues in his book Unequal Protection, few judicial pronouncements have dealt democracy and human rights a more bitter blow than the 1886 Supreme Court ruling establishing this special and unprecedented legal status, which has been used ever since to remove corporations from public acountability for their actions. Hartmann’s Web site, www.ThomHartmann.com, offers a history of the corporate personhood debate and resources for citizen activists.

7. Devolve Mammoth Corporations

Some thoughtful observers call for breaking up large corporations and spinning off their different businesses for sale to workers, customers, suppliers, and community members. This would remedy the well-documented problems of absentee ownership as well as the harmful concentrations of power that distort our economic and political systems. An added benefit is that smaller companies are typically more efficient and create more jobs. Vigorous enforcement of existing antitrust measures would be a start. Creation of new taxes on corporate assets and total sales—with larger corporations paying a sharply graduated rate—would make size an economic disadvantage, thus creating an incentive for larger enterprises to become more efficient or break themselves up voluntarily.

8. Get Corporations Out of Politics

Corporations should be prohibited from contributing funds or in-kind support to political candidates, public officials, political action committees, political parties, lobbyists, ballot initiatives, political conventions, meetings of public officials, issue-oriented advertising, policy institutes, or any organization that engages in public education or advocacy on matters of public policy. Corporate officials should participate only as private citizens.

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