America as oligarchy

Does anyone ever think about the fact that we are in a true oligarchy? I do.

http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/videos/jimmy-carter-u-s-is-an-oligarchy-wit...

I also think of Ancient Greece.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thirty_Tyrants

One doesn't want to overthink this, but I would be a lot happier if a few more people did a bit more thinking on the topic.

At the moment it is widely reported that about 160 wealthy families in America are making the majority of the contributions to Republican and Democratic nominees.

Why is this not defined as a plutocracy? Too few plutocrats? ;-)

It's a toss up.

Oligarchs are of course plutocrats but I don't see all plutocrats as oligarchs.

Whatever...

Looking at the definitions I have to say we are a plutocracy. We don't have any type of organization that our leaders need to rise through to rule, no hereditary aristocracy like medieval Europe, no military, like in Egypt, no one ruling political party, like the Soviet Union or China. Our "leaders" answer only to their donors, the wealthy elite.

I'd really rather the US not be a plutocracy. How do we get this changed? ;)

4>TLCrawford
'no one ruling political party'?

Does the fact that our corporations and their money control our politicians suggest that the corporatocracy or oligarchs are in fact guiding the ship?

The corporations and govt. work hand and glove. It is simple symbiosis between the two.

https://theintercept.com/2015/10/23/drones-ibm-and-the-big-data-of-death/

Possibly this is all a matter of semantics.

Maybe a re-statement of it might be "the 1%" or when the 1% of a nation owns the wealth and the govt. of a nation. Either label is probably usable; it still signifies the 1% as having The Power and the 99% as impotent.

Corporations are not persons! Try starting from there!
Then, re-boundary your congress seats to be uniform in population, and relatively square in area. Maybe go county by county like the original plan.
End the concept of a "Safe seat" as a seat in Congress should not be seen as a piece of personal property. I think Norman Mailer gave your system a good hosing down in "The Idol and the Octopus".
Limit political contributions, by giving each political candidate a limit on running for his or her particular office with jail terms for getting more money sneakily. And put both the candidate and the campaign manager in the pokey for violations...

At law, corporations are persons - "legal persons" able to sue and be sued - but I know what you mean.

6> At one time we said that "What is good for GM is good for the nation". At that time the CEO of GM might have had the power to steer the nation's government but I can't think of any one corporation that can do that today. The wealthy owners of our corporations do a fine job of steering the government but the only power they have is their checkbook. As I understand the distinction oligarchs have an organization that grooms them and that they have to rise through. Plutocrats can be born into inherited wealth like Trump and the Koch brothers were.

>9 TLCrawford:

The wealthy owners of our corporations do a fine job of steering the government but the only power they have is their checkbook.

The "only power?" the financial services industry, petroleum industry, etc, have is the "check book?" Seems to me that power has been pretty effective in taking over this country and determining policy.

Being the power behind the throne is a lot better than being on the throne and being a target.

Anyone who does not think that a corporatocracy is running this country and determining policy is welcome to prove me wrong.

>10 Urquhart: Yes, the owners of those corporations have taken the country hostage. Their checkbooks are the only power they have but it is nuclear. When I said the checkbook was their only power I did not mean to diminish that power. If the United States only military power was nuclear armed ICBMs we could still rule the planet but it would be messy. Like the 2012 election was for the Koch brothers.

>11 TLCrawford:

"Their checkbooks are the only power they have but it is nuclear."

Excellent point; thank you.

The "Corporations are persons" finding by the supreme court of the USA can be overturned by another case and ruling, if it be written and defined carefully enough...or it can of course be more directly combated by at least negative publicity. Your coming presidential race may provide some examples of such resistance, and altering the the chief justices may also see an overturning of that finding. There are very few people on the planet who agree with the finding outside of the USA. Where, I understand, there is also resistance to the concept.

Which decision was that? Sounds alarming, but you are not very clear. Why would anybody have challenged the doctrine in the first place? Can you let me have a citation please.

If the concept of the legal person is overturned in the USA trade will be impossible for lack of binding contracts. The Western economic system would wobble on its axis. It is absolutely fundamental to capitalism. I guarantee you that Canada has regulations governing corporations, though the directors may well be personally liable for ensuring compliance.

>14 dajashby:

I'm quite sure that the original intention of corporations (to protect managers and shareholders from catastrophic losses in case of failure, lawsuit, etc.) could be preserved without allowing corporations to use the legal fiction of being a person in order to claim religious faith (to deny coverage), donate to elections, etc. Contracts existed prior to corporations, and so I'm not sure what you mean by a 'lack of binding contracts'. Nor am I entirely sure that the modern corporation, as defined legally at this moment, is 'absolutely fundamental' to capitalism, and therefore must be held immune to revisions or restrictions.

Corporations are contractual agreements to allow risk to be lowered and profits to be increased. Contracts exist in all sorts of forms; we wouldn't consider a marriage contract as being a 'person' in its own right, for instance.

There was no initial SCOTUS decision on the matter; the declaration was inserted by Justice Fields in the reporting of the case, much like speeches can be introduced into the Congressional Record that were never made on the floor. (Age of Betrayal, chapter 6.) This was in 1886, so corporations had existed previously (and been granted protection by the courts against discriminatory legislation and arbitrary taxation.)

In short, reversing recent decisions on the rights of corporations would not threaten capitalism in the slightest.

>15 BruceCoulson: Agreed, and let's also parenthetically add that there was not some identified difficulty in corporate contract enforcement that this policy rectified. It may be who I'm hanging with here in NY, but as to >13 DinadansFriend: "few people on the planet who agree with the finding outside the US" - I've only heard opprobrium expressed for this notion, never agreement.

What I said, was " the very few people on this planet", as I'm sure there is a contrarian on this point somewhere...because you always get input from a contrarian after one uses the terms "never" or "everyone" :-)

>17 DinadansFriend: No, you specified "outside the US" as if opinion differed inside the US. Not so. The exact quote: "There are very few people on the planet who agree with the finding outside of the USA." Perhaps you may have not meant it that way.

Here in the US the idea that a corporation is a person, for some activities only, dates back to a Supreme Court decision in the late 19th century that was based on the 14th amendment., “No state shall ... deprive any person of life, liberty, or property without due process of law, nor deny to any person ... the equal protection of the laws.” I have heard that the confusion was caused by a footnote in the original decision and that since then it is simply poorly interpreted. It was supposed to only decide if a railroad corporation could enter into contracts and endorse the terms of the contract. The Roberts court has made a mockery of common sense by granting these legal fictions the power of speech and the ability to worship a god. Citizens United removed the caps on corporate and Union spending in politics. Hobby Lobby decided that a "closely held" corporation could disregard laws that it believes violates it faith.

After reading all this, there seems to be a fallacy in the logic of this corporations are people stuff.

I'm not going to go back a recheck all the entries here, so pardon if I get this wrong but....

Somewhere in all of this it was stated that corporations were given people status a long time ago in order to protect the owners and employees from losing everything if something goes wrong. (I believe it was Tim who said this and used himself and LT as an example stating that he could lose his home and everything if this were not possible.) Now here's my problem. The owners want to be protected behind this corporation shield... okay... I get that... That seems fair in most normal circumstances, but.... They also want to be able to use their corporation to express and enforce their personal beliefs. This seems like a case of either it's you or it isn't. If it is you then you and your family should be liable for EVERYTHING that company does and the contracts are actually in your name... not the company. If it isn't you then you shouldn't be allowed to use it as your personal tool to buy legislation and force employees to live by your personal beliefs.

#20
You have correctly stated the function of the doctrine of corporate legal personality. The proprietary limited company is an essential component of the capitalist system. People would not engage in commerce if their personal liability was not limited. we could discuss this topic all day; when I was a law student I actually did a subject called Legal Persons, but it is not an area in which I have taken more than a rudimentary interest.

But what is this stuff about people wanting to use companies - of which they are proprietors or majority shareholders - to force beliefs on their employees? It seems that there has been some peculiar SCOTUS decision which I am not aware of, but nobody will give me a citation.

Am I the only lawyer here?

>20 inkdrinker: I agree, there is no logic in extending this idea beyond the ability to enter into contracts.

I was a little shocked when I learned that at the dawn of the 19th century it took an act of the featureless to create a corporation. My research subject, Dr. Drake, had to travel to the state capital and petition the legislature for two corporations, on for a collage, now the University of Cincinnati and one for a medical school which eventually became the University of Cincinnati's Medical School. At one time to get the special protections of incorporation, mostly potential immortality at that time, you had to demonstrate the corporation was for the public good.

#15
Oh dear. Linguistic difficulties.

Corporations are not "contractual agreements", they are legal structures which are able to make binding contractual agreements, which once upon a time could only be made between real people, usually defined as adult males. Women of course could enter into a contract of marriage, but no lawyer would ever describe that contract, or any other, as a "person".

It may well be that your recent decisions do not threaten the functioning of the law of contract, but nobody here seems able to provide a coherent explanation of what point was at issue. I speculate that somebody has attempted to sack all staff who do not worship the Great Spaghetti Monster in contravention of the US Constitution.

You are all burbling on in a most exasperating fashion without explaining for the benefit of benighted foreigners.

2 cases were already mentioned, citizens united and hobby lobby.

I suggest you read scotusblog.