Corporations are simply one or more individuals who invest supplying a product or service for profit.

When will the individuals themselves be held accountable, ESPECIALLY the millions who are NOT part of a corporation ?

Such as YOU. Are you burning something to heat your home, propel your car, cook your food, illuminate your lights ? Are you poluting via improper waste disposal, etc. ? Are you doing any of the above either directly or indirectly ?

If so, please stop. And as a result, there will be no corporations profiting from your rampant poluting.

Filthy corporations had their say through disgraceful canwest goebell today in rags province, sun and last and certainly least putrid national post.
"OPED"s directly from corporate lawyer's office to canwest editorial pages!
Filthy disgrace!!
harper and bag-men can't wait to implement "recommendations" from canwest opeds, including massive tax breaks for greedy, polluting corporate overlords (i.e. further massive taxpayer subsidization for oil and gas industries etc etc)and severe "austerity" for public service spending i.e. social programs and critical environmental programs even though massive taxpayer surpluses are forcast!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Filthy fcking thieves!@#$%^&
Smaller scale of same corruption is wretched bc liberals proposed changes to forest practice codes to further favor raping corporations plugged shamelessly in another canwest "editorial". Corporate a$$hole on CBC right now is plugging these changes using low-brow fear tactics. Fcuk you canwest D'you hear what I'm saying?
Also in similarly disgraceful canwest "editorial" have bullying, childish, peurile argurment to allow corporate nomenclature to replace heritage names throughout vancouver. Fcuk you corpoarations and canwest, D'you hear what I'm saying?

JJ - still an angry young man on the dole, I see.

NLN
Aside from highlighting you ignorance do you have any substantive rebukes to my claims?

p.s.- I'm not on the dole. If, however, I was put in that position I think I would rob rich a$$holes as my first course of action.

p2.s2.- IQ test for NLN. Did you pick up the woody allen reference in the first blog?

rebuke - how about you're delusional and you should check you meds......

p.s. a little left wing thuggery, how Glen Clark of you

p2. s2 a woody allen reference as an IQ test? Since when?

JJ - BTW, that's not some filthy corporation that gives you your pay cheque is it?

Gentlemen please, keep it semi cerebral.

Personally I think economic Darwininsm is going to deal the corporations a lesson. Only the ones that evolve to maintain a green healthy planet will survive and thrive. The others will ultimately destroy themselves and the market place that feeds them. Tobacco is losing profits because education has removed the customers by changing the culture.

The oil corporations are in their death throes as we speak. Their product is poison and getting too expensive and the market is ready to move on and embrace a kinder form of energy.

Join the gasoline boycott. May Long Weekend, stay home. Together we make a difference. JJ and NLN kiss and make up now there are bigger things at stake.

Economic Darwinism? I don't think that means what you seem to think it means.

Oil corporations are demonstrably not in their death throes. Haliburton is waging war as we speak to prove it.

If oil companies are evolving, it is to exercise greater control over markets and supplies by force. If that makes them unfit, then the civilization they built will be what fails to survive.

What if there were a way to use the hydrogen in water to run an internal combustion engine, so you could somehow zap the water, then run the motor on it. Then what if oil companies knew this, and suppressed it to protect their markets, and that behaviour then led to the extinction of that civilization?

How would a scenario like that effect your economic Darwinism argument?

Umslopogaas: Great idea for May long weekend, I had already decided to stay at home "Vancouver" and go by bus to Grandville Island, Kits, Jerico or English beach, Gastown, so many things here don't have to go far & cheap!
U & I that's 2 soon hundreds each cutting more from Exxon et all
Exxon top boss retired with a severance package of &400,000,000.00 something wrong here!

"Oil corporations are demonstrably not in their death throes. Haliburton is waging war as we speak to prove it."

Healthy companies don't have to take their raw materials by force.

I think if you want to exercize some evolutionary pressure on oil companies, pick the worst one and boycot it absolutely, until the corporate types find they have to sell up, change their name and generally hide their shame and embarrassment.

Everybody seems to name Exxon. Maybe it's the nazified double Xs or the Texaco tie in or the Texas connection or just their bad behaviour, but I say everybody should trust the first thing they think.

Why not boycot Exxon? Until there is no Exxon. You still buy oil, as they know you must, just not from Exxon.

I heard about a similar popular action in South America a while ago, and last week the price of gas in Venezuela was under twenty cents a liter. While Europe was paying six dollars.

Maybe we can't force them to be ethical, but it's still our money they want and need, and we have the power to choose what to do with that.

The one thing corporations are for sure is pragmatic. They will do what they must to survive. If our actions make it necessary for them to behave in certain ways to survive, they will behave that way.

There's a kind of economic Darwinism that might serve a benign purpose. If you want corporations to serve society, you will have to eliminate somehow all those who won't.

Nothing less will work, if Darwin is to be our guide.

I saw a sign today that said:

"If you work really hard and save your Ducats, one day you will be able to afford to buy a whip."

Funny how there hasn't been a new refinery built in years. Either there are enough refinerys, or there is not enough oil left to justify building new ones, or the oil companies are manipulating the market.

Remember the OPEC crisis? Turned out afterwards that the refinery tanks were full all the time and there were loaded supertankers anchored off shore while the "No gas Available" signs blossomed.

Well they are doing it again.

Anyone who studies the stock market will tell you that we are in a parabolic commodities market right now. This scam happens over and over again. Create a shortage and prices go up and up and then inflation follows and the whole thing results in another generation losing their savings as paper money gets printed by the boat load.

Blame oil, blame China, blame Bush, blame the dot coms, these things occur in cycles and the sheople get fleeced every time. The whole economy is recalibrated to put the workers back down where they belong and the cycle starts over.

When I was in high school (dating myself) a can of pop cost 10 cents. I made $2.00 per hour on my summer job. Gas was about 30 cents per gallon.

BY 2000, pop went up 10 times. Wages(for a similar job) went up 10 times and gas about 10 times as well.

Well it is happening all over again. Give it enough time and gas will be $10.00 per liter, pop will be $10.00 per can and wages $200 per hour.(maybe)

Who would believe a minimum wage would rise from $1.25 to where it is now?

Nature works in cycles and corporations, governments and the masses are just along for the ride. Some would like to take credit for the cycles but they do not really have that power. However, the savy predators know these things happen and position themselves accordingly to steal your savings.

Vote with your feet and park on the long weekend. It will make you feel good and if we all do it ...

I think one poster hit the nail on the head. Its not corporations but public demand that is destorying the environment. Not an evil cabal, but a suicidally bent Western culture.

If we want to restore the planet, we have follow every single bad decision from the stockade to the dinner table.

Take responsibility! That should be the message of the neo-environmentalist movement. The problem with the past generation was that it blamed big institutions instead of the overall cultural weakness which has caused the whole problem.

As an environmentalist, I can see no aspect of our Western civilization which does not do some act of destruction to the environment. All too often, though, the blame gets shifted onto "the higher powers".

Everyone who harms the environment should pay to fix it. If only we were able to incorporate the living ecosystem into our monetary system, then we could see the real value of the global economy after the dust settles.

The health of some Corporations is essential to our standard of living.
I get a kick out of those that want to tear down ALL Corporations, or try to police them into submission to the masses, Robin Hood riding through the glen, Robin Hood with his merry men. Steal from the bad, give to the good. Robin Hood, Robin Hood, Robin Hood. '
They bring us advancements to our way of life, due to the fact they will be rewarded on some way.
Work for a Corporation, it's life's greatest reward, and the best way you can help the world.

"NDP supporters usually claim all capital is evil and all labour is good.". says "Cycling Commuter".

This is so egregiously exaggerated as to amount to an outright lie. I have never known even one "NDP Supporter" who has said anything remotely like it, and I've talked to thousands of them over the years. I'm a party member myself and believe nothing of the sort, and never have.

It's easy to beat straw men, and apparantly so easy that "Cycling Commuter" sinks to it without even thinking first.

Then he'll probably call for elevating the tone of debate in the Province!

The question is when is "capital" real "capital" and when is it inflated money supply freshly created by some bank to licence the takeover and collectivization of resources, stealing them from their rightful owners, anywhere on Earth.

Corporations don't use their own "capital" because it is a tax deductible business expense to borrow, which makes it "cheaper". So they go to the banks, who will "create" the imaginary capital to licence the takeover the lives of millions and destroy the ecology to service that imaginary money.

Do people realize this monumental fraud that's going on ? Looking at some of the nonsense written by the defenders of this crime wave, I don't think they have the slightest idea of what they're talking about.

Real capital has died with the deregulation of the banks and what we have now is a scam and con job to take over the world by a corporate oligarchy. Just another murderous pseudo religion in the service of another aristocracy.

Ed Deak, Big Lake.

Some ymaulka at the royal bank or chase manhattan pushes a few keystrokes on his computer and voila .. half of Vancouver Island now "belongs" to a big developer buddy of george dubbayee bush!!
First the clear-cut logging for a tidy profit and then million dollar condo's for retiring rebublicans!!!~ sweet deal!!

I think IAMC hit on a valuable point.....Robin Hood. I have long been a fan of feebates...where you tax a behaviour that you don't like and subsidize one that you do, thereby skewing the market as it pertains to that activity. It is a tool that must be applied very carefully but I think it is one that we should evaluate as to when it makes good sense.

I think Matt has a well written article here. Corporations are not going away, so if we do not like the world they are helping to shape we need to work to modify their rules. The only problem is that corporations are now able to play countries off of one another like divorced parents.

Corporations definitely won't go away, neither should they. But they can and should be strictly regulated as to what their duties and responsibilites are. Including the paying of their share of taxes.

The problem is not corporations, but the way they operate and the way governments and the public permits them to get away with theft, environmental destruction and murder.

Small corporations have to watch their steps and toe the line, I had 3 and still have 2, worth about 50 bucks each, but this multinational corporate mafia have become an uncontrolled crime wave.

This is the problem. It used to be corrected by anti trust and anti cartel laws, but now they are permitted to grow into uncontrollable parasites stealing, destroying and blackmailing for more and more. To hell and into jails with them and their boards of directors.

Ed Deak, Big Lake.

Mr. Deak's point about "real capital" is a very good one.

In "Critical Path" Buckminster Fuller points out that to create a gallon of oil from scratch would cost us around a million dollars. (1970 dollars I think) So, he argues, it would be more sensible to pay someone a million dollars to stay home than to let him burn two gallons of gas to drive to work.

This is one big problem with the whole 'let the market decide' arguement. The market charges not for the cost to replace the oil, but only for the cost of extracting it.

A blatant robbery from the standpoint of 'real capital', which would necessarily have to consider the replacement cost in real terms.

Bailey, you just discovered my 1991 Efficiency Principle, and I'm glad.

The vast majority of people, today, could stay and work at home, or in loccally based small industries, which would immensely cut down the criminally inefficient commuting, causing illness, waste of resources, psychological problems, accidents etc. etc.

But we have whole industries built around the present wasteful, inefficient economic theory, where waste, sickness, the cost of eccidents and deaths are all part of the "growth of the GDP."

The more accidents and natural disasters we have, destroying lives and properties, the higher the GDP. If commuting would stop only for a single week in North America, the GDP would drop like a rock and we'd be in "recession".

As far paying people to stay home is concerned, it could be done very easily with the present monetary system by turning it around to pay people to live and enjoy life, instead of creating capital to expropriate and destroy their lives.

Ed Deak.

Banks @ one time, a long, long time ago had to have @ least 1/3 of the morgage in money before they could legally write one out.
Just before "Liyin Brian" left office he made sure the banks were able to write their own money for the whole morgage.
I'm not sure of the particulars but I'm sure someone here can verify this!

Banks now can use the collateral against which they "create" money out of the air, account it as their own asset, and then "create" more money against their own loans. This way banks in certain countries, Canada being one of them, can "create" imaginary capital to take over the resources of any other country on Earth.

E.g. when "wealth creating foreign capital" comes into Canada and takes over our resources, or of any country, they bring nothing, but a few computer figures that permits the expropriation of all human rights and the exploitation and destruction of the ecology.

The worst part is that much of that "foreign investment" is created by Canadian banks to permit the takeovers and control of our economy from abroad.

Foreign investment has never been anything else than the inflation of a country's money supply from abroad. We're in a tremendous inflation of
money right now, but it is going into resource control and the money markets to blackmail countries to give up everything they have.

Many, if not most, of big business now makes most of their profits on the money markets, where the artificially caused fluctuation of monetary values is used to alter the physical dimensions of trade goods.

In short, the neoclassical market economy is a con job, a racket and the biggest crime wave in human history.

Ed Deak.

Ed
I've been following your posts about the economy for some time. In a lot of ways what you've written has confirmed many of my own thoughts - but, hoping not to be simple-minded, I have a couple of questions...if you don't mind.
First, what's going on when big companies like Enron and World Com collapse? Is it simply because they've failed to convince the banks to continue to pump money into a system just designed to enhance shareholder value and not to actually provide a service or manufacture a product? Alternatively, does it have more to do with the fact that such companies are grafting their own ponzi scheme onto the one already being run by the banks, the World Bank and the big capitalist countries?
Surely, in some way don't these failures kind of presage what must inevitably happen to the international system as a whole.

There are lots more questions, hope you haven't already responded to these. My apologies in advance if you have.

Of course, I have no idea how and why those outfits went broke, but I can guarantee that some people got filthy rich in the process and the few years they may have to spend in some very comfortable jail will be small price to pay.

I never employed an accountant, always farmed out the job, and I can remember one guy who walked into my office and the first question he asked was whether I'd wanted to show a profit, or loss.

This was in ordinary, small business accounting. Large and multinational corporations are legalized robbery in motion. National economic accounting systems
are outright fraud, by reporting everything as incomes and credits, without any deductions for debits. Not even the most fraudulent business could get away with the accounting of accidents and the sale of capital as incomes. Economists can.

A very well known and prominent Vancouver businessman, and good customer of mine, was walking around my shop about 40 years ago, reminiscing about a wonderful fancy woodworking factory he once owned and saying how sorry he was that he had to put it into bankruptcy.

So, I asked him if he liked it so much why did he bankrupt it. "Oh- he said- I was making too much money with my other businesses and had to write off something." 80 people out of work.

As a custom furniture designer and maker, I have known many of the top business people in Vancouver and saw them in their offices and homes . It always amazed me how openly they talked about the schemes and fraud they were pulling off, or planning against others, their employees and the governments. I even asked one or two why they're telling me all those things, but they just laughed with pride.

That was before the neocon/neoclassical theory became dominant and their profits and takes were still chickenfeed, compared to today. Now the doors for fraud are wide open and encouraged by economists, politicians and the stupid public, who let them get away with it.

There used to be a very good, top notch, modern, fancy plywood manufacturing plant, Beattie Laminates, below the Oak St. bridge in Richmond. I knew the owner very well and we insisted on buying his products. Then, somehow, he was bought out by Crown Zellerbach who ran the plant into the ground with lousy products within a few months.

I was doing some work for the Canadian President of CZ, who later became Lt.Governor of BC. all bills paid by the company, and as we were having tea in his study I comnplained about the loss of quality of the products. He started laughing and said: "Ed, you just don't understand these things!" He was right.

All the good, small plants were bought up and closed and we were left with the inferior products of Weldwood and Sauder, plus the garbage imported from Asia.

Figure out what was going on and why I hate big business with a passion?

Jim Pattison is feted right now as the most respected businessman, who put on Expo 86 and BC on the map. The same "respectable" Pattison, who used to fire the lowest selling salesmen in his car business, put thousands of his store staff on part time so he wouldn't have to pay benefits.

A very good friend of mine was warranty manager for Nissan, but when they moved to Toronto he took early retirement and stayed in NWest. He was asked to set up a computerized warranty claim system for Jimmy, that may have saved him up to a million and half per year. He never met Jim until the system was working smoothly and he walked into the office, shaking my friend's hand with both hands: "Tony, you don't realize how grateful I am....you're saving me a fortune!" Tony was fired the next day and replaced with a Pattison hack.

So, what do you think the Enron etc. people have been and their brethren at CN etc. are
still doing on the "wealth creating" road? Bankruptcies by large corporations are the biggest profit making rackets, as it saves them paymnents to their suppliers, stealing the pension plans of their employees and laughing all the way to the Bahamas.

Ed Deak.

Fiat Lux
Thanks for that. I'd always thought the failures - the big ones like Adelphi, Global Crossing, World Com and Enron - were maybe just examples of a management structure that got too greedy and when they weren't satisfied with the 'normal' proceeds - tried to use the usual accounting dodges to skim even more off the top for themselves. Like overextended gamblers, when the normal growth of the economy couldn't sustain the sales necessary the lies deepened and eventually the wheels came off. Just kind of wondered if you thought it might be something more significant than that – you know, a kind of early warning of what was to come.

Of course the frenzy of business acquisitions, which you mention, has to be a big factor since no real productive capacity (frequently the opposite when the buying business is looking for tax write-offs) is added with each new expansion of the corporate family. I still wish I could hope that his Blackness, who was one of the worst offenders in the bankruptcy and pension swindle thing after he took over at Argus, would actually end up serving a little time - posh though it would undoubtedly be.