In the Corporate World....

...there is no such thing as safe blogging. A few days ago Delaware Liberal asked what are the three biggest threats to our nation and why do we have so many problems? I can finally answer them with a clear head that the single greatest threat to the United States is the rise of corporate "personhood" that subjects the individual to its arbitrary social controls.

Why?

It is an issue of trust with and between the classes and as Delaware Liberal aptly noted, they have never been further apart in the history of the nation.

Well let's start with blogging.

It is apparent to me that there is no such thing as being protected or your privacy assured as a blogger or writer when an employer can fire you for anything you do or do not say off hours. And for some there are very real consequences of venting in public.

Despite the first amendment social controls excerpt much more effect through corporations and define life within narrowly defined and arbitrary limits than government policy does.

It goes further. Some corporations even feel it is reasonable to assert that they can legitimately own your genetic code.

This disturbing fact is part of the reason why, I think movements both for blogging privacy and individual protections under the first amendment are so important, if you are the government or the military it is as important to prevent corporate despotism as it was to prevent other forms of despotism in the past. That is why war planners frequently list corporations as a threat to national security.

But once again these are not normal and tolerant corporations. I was first exposed to the lack of protections that American workers have from their employers and the hostility and disposable nature of the relationship by Europeans and Latin Americans who outright refused to work with a prominent multinational company.

At the time, I suggested they consider changing their policies toward their workers and adopt a corporate bill of rights or follow the Confucian ideal that clearly defines what their employees can and cannot do- that way giving them guidance on what to expect working with the corporation with rights and responsibilities on both sides.

An idea they soundly rejected leaving the arbitrary nature of what is and is not acceptable to middle managers rather than part of a collection of standard operations like their European and Latin American counterparts. Who in turn, soundly rejected working with them and left them groping for new business partners.

The thing that amazed me is that they middle managers did not seem to care, as long as they kept their ability to control what workers could or could not do the good of the organization was irrelevant. I found it such an odd attitude, I spent my time in graduate school working on this issue.

Imagine what would happen if one day, we decided to take the entire bill of rights and apply it to corporations, you can read about the prospect and problems that average people face in this desire here and here as corporate control of just about everything seems to become more and more normal. At some point, I would not be surprised to see corporations launch an open and hostile takeover of the US government, they have already taken over our intelligence services with little accountability.

Or as an alternative imagine what would happen if we resurrected the idea of Confucian corporate paternalism.

Neither of these are bad ideas. Neither of these are excessively restrictive, rather they both clearly establish rights and obligations as part of a contract between employers and employees.

Government's only role in this is ensuring that rights on both sides are equally protected.

It is ONLY when an imbalance occurs and unclear expectations are present that problems begin.

None of this is particularly good news for the freedom of the normal citizen whose loss of civil rights through social and corporate consequences was something the founders would have never expected.

If the Bill of Rights was applied inside corporations rather than unleashing wave after wave of anti-corporate material, I suggest it would probably, like Microsoft, increase the productivity of the normal workers and add to the revenues of the corporation.

Freedom in one area, leads to creativity in others. Or in the Confucian model, trust in one area leads to loyalty and morality in others.

Such a mechanism and legislation would in effect open up the creativity of Americans outside of the narrowly defined limits of corporate control that are now in universal effect and act as a restraint on all aspects of workers lives, we should not forget that there is no longer a free social contract, instead there is a managed decision making that determines everything from the workers' place in the organization to the pre-designed social hierarchy they fit into.

Labor as Adam Smith understood it, as a free exchange, does not really exist in cooperation with capital anymore: as both seem more intent on conflict and struggle than cooperation; leading me to believe that both Marx and other economists like him are being proven right only in corporate situations where trust is low. This low trust results in an increase of government regulation on corporations, it also results in an increase of corporate restrictions of normal workers and this cyclical process can continue indefinitely until the whole process grinds to a halt or it can be changed through building trust in the old fashioned ways that made American companies so successful and competitive in the first place: as people like Carl Ichan and Warren Buffett would probably like to see.

Isocrates, was the first human being to write as far as I know about this process in the 5th and 4th centuries BC when he noted that this lack of trust between the richest citizens of Athens and poorest led to constant and to his mind inexplicable fighting. He felt it represented a complete breakdown of the trust needed to maintain a citizens government and sure enough, at about the same time trust was at all time low across the Greek world banking cartels on Delos and elsewhere were at an all time high, and funding the rise of the Macedonian army while giving lip service to Athenian ideals. This eventually led to their complete self-destructive fury when an 18 year old prince smashed their army and his nobles killed many of these bankers and replaced them with his own bankers.

So there are really two options, begin to restore trust in both the short and medium term or expect that at some point the system will be so divided that it will no longer work and people will no longer want to or be willing to work for it. In the absence of trust all kinds of abuses become normal and thin veneer of civilization wears away underneath the amorality of dividends.

That is why I think one of the most important priorities of the next decade is to open a political discussion about the restoration of trust in the workplace and between the classes of American life.

Otherwise expect more restraints on your social life.

Restraints I would add that are NO less authoritarian than they are in totalitarian countries.

The other option is that people choose to accept all the restraints imposed on them until we reach the Brave New World scenario that Huxley called "the horror."