(Spoiler alert — Answer at the end.)
Environment — Who gives you the right:
To treat nature and our earth as consumable resources – or as a dump?
To slice off mountaintops, build reservoirs of poison, and walk away as if you did nothing?
To clear-cut forests, eliminating all visible life?
To casually exterminate species that existed before humans appeared on earth?
To pump greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, until major climate change occurs?
To keep doing that, then find new profits in “repairing” your destruction?
To pollute underground water systems for countless future generations?
To deplete groundwater in 30 years, that took 10,000 years to accumulate?
To destroy the ocean’s ecosystems, decimate all major fish, and now vacuum Antarctic krill?
To export your manufacturing, and then blame the receiving country for pollution?
People — Who gives you the right:
To starve and displace millions of people?
To kill indigenous tribes that “interfere” with logging or drilling?
To ignore or encourage financial and social inequality, because you are the prime beneficiary?
To give antibiotics to farm animals and plants to increase your profits, while killing thousands of people, and endangering millions, from the resulting antibiotic resistance?
To supply modern weapons to medieval cultures, escalating religious and tribal wars?
To prevent domestic control of assault weapons?
To define liberty as freedom from restraint in the exploitation of the weak?
Regulation and Control — Who gives you the right:
To spend billions controlling political and legal regulatory processes that might constrain you?
To have the Supreme Court declare you — an insatiable, amoral giant — a person?
To support environmental groups — maintaining the appearance of balance — but not to the level they might be seriously effective?
To suppress research that may reveal the depths of your predation?
To lie about the depth and extent of your poisoning us and the planet?
To brainwash our children into consumerism, and deduct the cost as a legitimate expense?
To support carbon trading, so you can continue polluting?
To undermine unions so employees have little or no control — of hours, conditions, benefits, and pay.
Public Narrative — Who gives you the right:
To control the public narrative, so your actions are legitimized and unquestioned?
To redefine society’s purpose, from benefiting people, to benefiting corporations?
To extol efficiency, while using it to destroy jobs?
To glorify economic growth, while deflecting attention from who mostly benefits from that growth?
To define “best employee” as a 24/7 sacrifice to corporate desires.
Answer: We give you the right — and we can take it away!
Solution – Take responsibility for our negligence. Rewrite the public narrative — “Corporations must serve society, not just themselves.” Corporate attorney Robert Hinkley wrote in 2002 of ideal corporate charters: “the duty of directors [is] to make money for shareholders, ‘. . . but not at the expense of the environment, human rights, the public health or safety, the communities in which the corporation operates, or the dignity of its employees.’”
Require that corporations benefit — not undermine — people, society, and the environment. Hold corporations accountable. If corporations don’t shape up, consider the impossible, revoke their charter. Easy to say, very hard to do – because corporations now control the strings that regulate their power.
I welcome your suggestions, questions, or comments.
Thank you for visiting,
me, Barry Phegan
Comments & Suggestions
