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>"They worry that the burgeoning marijuana industry, like alcohol and tobacco before it, could eventually use its profits to gain clout and subvert attempts at
by dikdik 11y ago
>"They worry that the burgeoning marijuana industry, like alcohol and tobacco before it, could eventually use its profits to gain clout and subvert attempts at regulation."
Or they worry about corporations being corporations, but put the onus on citizens. Maybe the problem isn't with our citizens, but with our laws? Maybe corporations shouldn't be able to use an unlimited amount of profits to affect laws and regulation, but no mention of that in the article.
- oldmanjay 11y agoSeems like a red herring to me. It's not like "corporations" turn otherwise acceptable people into raving power brokers.
- dragonwriter 11y ago> It's not like "corporations" turn otherwise acceptable people into raving power brokers. One of the major functions of corporations is shielding the people involved in them from most personal liability (and, hence, accountability.) Its hardly a novel thought that reduced accountability might make "otherwise acceptable people" into problems for the rest of society. (Plato was certainly not the first to point this out with his account Gyges Ring in the Republic around 2,500 years ago.)
- oldmanjay 11y agoIt shields people from losing personal assets that aren't tied up in the business. It isn't a get-out-of-anything card, though, and I see no evidence that corporations as a concept allow people to be personally unaccountable for actions. When people complain about corporations as evil in the abstract, I can only assume they don't understand the nature of the exercise of power, or are unwilling to examine it closely due to "down with corporations" being emotionally resonant for them.