If there is no struggle, there is no progress.

Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will. Find out just what a people will submit to, and you have found out the exact amount of injustice and wrong which will be imposed upon them; and these will continue till they are resisted with either words or blows, or with both. The limits of tyrants are prescribed by the endurance of those whom they oppress.

I saw a subset of that Frederick Douglass quote on Slashdot, and it got me thinking a bit. That's an excerpt from a speech given almost 150 years ago. While that speech was for a completely different subject, and not to belittle that as it's unfortunately still an issue, this portion applies to so many things these days. I'd say something that can be taken and applied to things like that is a good measure of something that can relatively safely be considered a universal truth. While slightly disconcerting as a general summary, it's even more so considering that the context of it appearing was in a person describing a former employer's business philosophy.

The problem isn't really that companies are attempting that model, it's that they're actually able to run with it. It seems that the root cause of a lot of these problems is that people got the crazy idea that the government (speaking of the United States here) is there to keep them safe and protect them from others. People will go off about the First Amendment when someone (even other than the government) tries to prevent them from expressing their views, but then turn around and say they were offended by something someone said or did and think the government should stop it. People expect the government to keep terrorists from causing problems. While that sounds good at first glance and may make people feel good, it's contrary to freedom as it leaves the system wide open for abuse of power. Unfortunately the line between safety and a framework for reasonable fairness is a fine line, and those with power have incentive to encourage the former.

The framework for fairness and keeping control with the people works well across a level playing field, but the power given to corporations has allowed a ridiculous imbalance. Back to the First Amendment issue, with individuals there's a level of equality. If someone does something others with which others in the society strongly disagree, there is a social pressure to either conform or separate. The government is there to mediate and provide a structure for expressing/enforcing the important group values, not to force resolution of minor disputes. Thus the federalist structure and the Tenth Amendment.

Corporations don't feel the same pressure however, and when given the legal status equivalent to a person, aren't effectively kept in agreement with society by it. There is no way to appeal to a corporation's conscience, incarcerate or otherwise punish it. While society has seen fit to give individuals life in prison or the death penalty, punishments for large corporations are all arranged so that is has no major impact. Even the comparison creates an issue in that there's no reasonable equivalent to a corporate imprisonment and the death penalty is controversial. The corporate structure was specifically designed to shield the executives from liability, which is only recently starting to be seen as an issue and adjusted after the major corporate scandals.

The government created monsters called corporations, and is turning itself into one trying to control them. Unfortunately it seems like it's already the other way around, and now it's just creating the perspective that the corporations are being controlled. Everything is based around the economy, money and greed. This whole thing reminds me of Ben Franklin's response of "A republic, if you can keep it." How bad will things get before people start paying attention? How bad will things get before people start actually caring?