Corporations Bad for Public Health

[Joanne98]

by Russell Mokhiber
You hear that cigarettes are bad for public health.

And that asbestos is bad for public health.

And that guns are bad for public health.

And that pollution is bad for public health.

That junk food is bad for public health.

But you rarely hear that corporations themselves are bad for public health.

That’s about to change.

A group of academics and activists are starting to push the idea that corporations are bad for public health.

At Hunter College, Nicholas Freudenberg has set up a web site to discuss the issue.

And now comes William Wiist.

Wiist is chair of the Health Sciences Department at Northern Arizona University.

Last year, he authored an article for the American Journal of Public Health titled “Public Health and the Anti-Corporate Movement.”

And now he’s working on a book for Oxford University Press tentatively titled Bottom Line or Public Health.

“There is a large contingent of people who believe there needs to be reform of corporations,” Wiist told Corporate Crime Reporter in an interview last week. “There are many campaigns against individual corporations - trying to get them to behave in a more socially responsible manner. But corporations operate the way they are supposed to operate - the way the laws were set up for them to operate. Any particular corporation may be operating in a way that we may consider egregious. But they are operating to produce a profit, to externalize the costs, as they are supposed to, to bring maximum profit. Their officers are supposed to act in the best interests of the corporation and its investors. So, all corporations are operating the way they are supposed to. And they operate in similar ways. So, why attack one corporation for doing this poorly, or that poorly? We need to look at the underlying foundations of the corporation and how they operate under the law.”

Is Wiist talking about corporations or capitalism?

“Some people would probably extend the argument to say that it’s really capitalism,” Wiist said. “But I’m focused on the corporation. It is a specific entity governed by laws and regulations. And those can be addressed through the democratic process and through advocacy. Capitalism is a more nebulous. Corporations are a manifestation of capitalism.”



Russell Mokhiber is editor of the Washington, D.C.-based Corporate Crime Reporter.

http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2008/05/05/8730/

[izquierdista]

1. Community Development Corporations

There needs to be a new class of corporations, one whose interest is to develop the local community. Call it a share-ownership Chamber of Commerce, a limited liability citizen partnership, it doesn't exist under the current rules of returning profit to capital stockholders.

The corporation I envision would be different from a regular corporation in the following ways:
1) Only people residing in a restricted geographic area would be eligible to be shareholders
2) Immigrants to the area could buy in, and emigrants from the area would be cashed out for the value of their shares.
3) Each resident in the area would be granted a minimum number of shares, and residents with more capital could buy more with certain restrictions.
4) The corporation would be allowed to operate in business areas beneficial to the whole community:
-- utilities such as gas, water, electricity, sewage
-- public transportation
-- banking, such as credit unions and microfinance projects
-- buying abandoned real estate and renovating it for resale or lease.
5) The profits of the corporation would be divided between new community development projects and shareholder dividends
6) The corporation would be able to issue tax-free bonds similar to a municipality

The rudiments of such a corporation are found in some rural water delivery and electric co-ops, so the idea is not completely foreign. I think that it needs to be broadened in scope and strengthened so that it is concerned with ALL aspects of development in a community. What keeps American communities from truly progressing is that every time progress is desired by the residents, they must wait until a capitalist sees a profit making opportunity, an opportunity to take money out of the town. Municipalities compete with each other, offering tax breaks to business until they are at a disadvantage, until they find some corporation willing to take their money. What they don't do, what they are in many areas prevented from doing, is to undertake projects on their own because of wagging tongues accusing them of socialism.

[Uncle Joe]

2. Kicked and recommended.

Thanks for the thread, Joanne.