Originally Posted by The_Dunedan

The first thing to understand is that a Free Market has not existed in the US since, at the lastest, the Eerie decision, which destroyed the Common Law pleading system of the US and which permitted the rise of the Corporation within the US.

Since Corporations exist as Persons before the law, they can apply for and recieve all the "benefits" that a Human can; this is how Corpoerate Welfare came into existance.

Since Corporations are propped up by the Gov't, they are insulated from the pressures of the Market; look at the big American airlines. The big boys, such as American and Delta, have been in this pits for years and have declared bankruptcy 3-4 times each. This is because their service and employee relations blow, and as a consequence they arelosong customers and employees. The market is "selecting against" American Airlines, to borrow the biological term. In a Free Market, AA would have gone out of buisiness a long time ago, as customers and emplyees defected to a more reasonable and responsive competitor.

However, since AA has been repeatedly bailed out by the Fed, they see no reason to change their behavior, and so the problems get worse.

In a Free Market, a strike or boycott is the "nuclear option" available to employees and customers, both individually and collectively. Strikes and boycotts can cripple or destroy even a major company in very short order ( just as Smith & Wesson ), by running through their assets until they go broke. If a company can't sell a poduct ( because of a boycott ) or produce one ( because of a walkout ) they go broke, as they should. Companies which screw their employees or consumers deserve to fail and, in a Free Market system, they would.

Without Corporatism, there could be no Enron, nor Standard Oil, nor Microsoft. The Founders recognized the trouble that Corporations inherantly were, having had experiance with the ravages of British Mercantilism in the recent past. As a consequece, they were very careful to frame the Constitution in terms of people; ie, "the right of the People...shall not be infringed."

This is part of the danger inherant in the somewhat dicey language of Amendments 13 and 14, both of which replace "People" with "citizens." Since a Corporation was, legally speaking, a citizen, it extended Personhood-in-reverse; not by defining Corporations as People, but by redefining People as Corporations.


If this false unity is removed, and companies are no longer able to call upon the federal Gov't for aid, the Market becomes an astonishingly effective tool for regulating an out-of-control company or employer. By way of example, I point to the fall of one of the country's oldest gunmakers, the venerable Smith & Wesson. After being sold to a British firm, S&W made a series of agreements with the Clinton Regime which a large number of gunowners regarded as a sellout. S&W immidiatly came under boycott, and after having gone broke and changed hands several times, was acquired by an American firm for less than 10% of its' worth 5 years prior. S&W had been punished by the consumers, and has learned its' lesson: they no longer even -joke- about cutting deals with the feds. After watching what happened to S&W, neither does any other American gunmaker, and damned few foreign ones.

It must also be remembered that, while Corporations can, in the current Mercantilist economy, pillage and plunder to their larcenous hearts content, they have yet to enact 1/100th of the suffering which can be laid at the doorstep of the States. Not counting wars, over 170 MILLION people have been murdered by their own Governments in the last 100 years alone. If one adds casualties of war to the total, it exceeds 250,000,000 souls. A quarter-billion people exterminated by the State. Simple comparison shows which of these two entities is the more dangerous to life, limb, and liberty. Despite their influence and vast reach, Corporations do no command armies directly, nor can they afford to sustain wars or genocides, since they must actually be able to show a profit ( somehow ) in order to survive. Lack the State's ability to print and spend their own ( worthless ) paper money, they cannot do nearly as much damage.

Frequently, Corporations will enlist the State to do their dirty work for them. This is another result of the Corporatist/Mercantilist system. Since the largest and most damaging corporations ( WalMart, GE, etc ) are all owned by the same banking combines which control the Federal Reserve, it simply comes down to JP Morgan blackmailing the Gov't into doing WalMart's head-cracking for them. However, note that if both the Corporation and the central bank are abolished, which are both libertarian goals, this three-way screwing of the consumer ceases to function. The company then becomes, again, limited by its' own finite resources.


As a case-study, let's specifically address pollution. Let's assume we have a company that produces Pork Rinds. Now, in order to produce the Pork Rinds, this company owns a large pig farm, with all the usual accompanying mess.
People downstream of the pig farm are getting sick, as they frequently do, from runoff, fumes, ammonia overload, tainted groundwater, etc.

In a Corporatist system, such as we have now, our fictional Pork Rind company needs fear nothing. If it suffers a strike or boycott, it can get help from the Feds. Likewise, if it is sued, it can draw upon the assets of its' parent bank, for example JP Morgan. It is fully or partially insulated from the effects of the Market, and is basically untouchable.

In a Libertarian system, the Pork Rind company has a big problem and it needs solving NOW. Because all the people downstream have gotten together and declared a boycott of the company. Their workers, many of whom are related to people who are ill ( or who have become so themselves ) have threatened a general walkout. Worse yet, everyone with an even plausible illness connected to the hog farm is now initiating a Class Action lawsuit. Our fictional Pork Rind company has a very short time in which to clean up their act, or suffer the consequences. With no help forthcoming from the Feds, or JP Morgan, they have only themselves to pick up the pieces. If they fail, they go bankrupt. Meanwhile, other Pork Rind companies are watching the battle...and not liking what they see. They recognize that, if -they- treat their employees badly or poison the local water supply, they'll be next. And so they don't.


Nobody ever said Corporations were nice things; they're not. Worse yet, since they act as the economic-control arm of the State, they not only expand Gov't power over people's lives, they do it while falsely claiming to support the very Free Market which would be their own destruction.

A Free Market is one in which nobody is insulated from anything, economically. A Free Market, by definition, cannot feature Corporations, since such are market insulations and therefore distortions. A distorted market is not free.