Libertarians, corporations, and "Occupy Wall Street"

I wasn't enamored with the Tea Party from the very beginning, and I said so.

I am bemused about Occupy [enter name of urban area] more than anything else.  Such demonstrations in dictatorships inevitably lead to more repression on the part of the regime, international pressure, calls for the ouster of a ruler who has lost his legitimacy, general strikes, and sometimes civil war.

Yes, a few cops are going to break some heads, the mullahs in Iran and the old farts in China will blather, we're already on schedule for an election that will settle Barack Obama's fate, people actually have to be working to go on strike, and of all the fringes of the political spectrum the Wall Street warriors are probably the worst armed and least likely to resort to anything much beyond name-calling and mild civil disobedience.

In short:  we won't have an Arab spring because we're not a sheikdom and it's not spring.

What Occupy Everybody is really about
is energizing a comparable element of the Democratic Party to that energizing by the Tea Party in the GOP.  This is not a bad thing.  Once upon a time, in the late 1950s-early 1980s both parties had liberal and conservative wings.  This made it possible for liberal Dems and GOPers to line up against conservative Dems and GOPers from time to time, and at other times to have party-line votes.  It made compromise not only possible but required.

But let's not kid ourselves that we're seriously seeing anybody "take it to the streets" in the revolutionary manner that my good friend Dana Garrett sometimes laments will be necessary for real social change, because (sorry, Dana) it ain't happening. In many ways I'd love to be proven wrong on this one, because a good dose of real sixties radicalism would be entertaining and even energizing for the body politic, but again it ain't gonna happen no matter how many sleeping bags and old coats Delawareans tote up to NYC.

You're going to get about 18-20% support nationwide.  That's roughly what the Tea Party gets, and that's about twice what libertarians usually get.  Put those all together and what it adds up to is that 50% of the politically active populace doesn't want any of the extremes.

But about libertarians:  as one, I have to admit some serious sympathy with the idea that corporations are close to the root of what ails America.

Here are my Libertarian reasons:

1.  Corporations are creatures of the state; they cannot exist without it because only the State can grant the shareholders immunity from liability.  Corporations are therefore anti-libertarian because they are a business organization that derives much of its efficiency from statist power and not the competencies and/or risk of the individual entrepreneurs.

2.  Immunity from personal liability for either investment risk or wrongdoing (negligent or intentional) is an open invitation by the State for the individuals in power in corporations to use Force and/or Fraud to achieve their ends.  Corporations are therefore anti-libertarian because they sever the individual from responsibility for his or her own actions.

3.  Corporations act as tax farmers for the State.  They literally cannot be effectively taxed because they are allowed to pass on all tax increases directly to the consumer, while pretending they aren't doing that.  Corporations are therefore anti-libertarian because they whore themselves out as mechanisms of tax farming in order to safeguard their special protections.

4.  Corporations have been granted "rights" by the State that are reserved for living, breathing, responsible (in the liability sense) human beings.  An organization of multiple people working together for a business end cannot become an immortal sovereign individual under the law without vitiating virtually everything our Constitution and Bill of Rights stands for.  Thomas Jefferson famously wrote (in another context) "The Earth belongs to the living."  Corporations are not living entities and they have no more "rights" than the government has.  Corporations are therefore anti-libertarian because the State and its agent the Corporations may exercise powers but they may never have rights.

This last one is not libertarian, but essentially progressive (just for you, Dana--seriously).  Corporations are economically disastrous for a republic if not specifically limited in scope and charter because they sequester much greater amounts of wealth out of the public hands than any elite class of wealthy people ever could.  Railing against corporate honchos is like railing against baseball players who make millions of dollars (Ryan, how could you--two years in a row in the bottom of the 9th?).  Baseball players get paid millions because they function to allow the entities behind baseball (from owners to networks) to make billions.  Same for corporate honchos--whether you see it in the balance sheet or not, they are making somebody or something a crapload of money by doing what they are doing.

Unfortunately, those who worry about a socialist state have failed to realize that we already live in a corporate state.

And even more unfortunately, Occupy Wall Street aside, that's not going to change anytime soon.

I'm just sorry that more libertarians don't get it.