It is time we stopped expecting corporations to be virtuous or good citizens. They serve shareholders and the bottom-line, period. When they do good, it is based on an ROI calculation. Society--via governments that serve it--must be the guardians of its own interests.
The history of the rise and empowerment of corporations is one of exploitation, abuse, fostering inequality, short-sightedness and damage to our environment and to all those too weak to stand up to the corporations.
The accumulation of influence of these "imaginary people" (corporations) and those who control and benefit from them over real people, all the rest of us, is one of the great perversions of history.
The 14th amendment of the US Constitution, to illustrate this, has been used more often to assert and "preserve" the rights of corporations than of individual people. This rise started with the first corporations a thousand or so years ago, but was accelerated in the US & the UK.
No sector has been immune from abuses and we are seeing this again, right now, in spades with the tech sector. Much hope was placed in these new enterprises and their "enlightened" young leaders.
But in the past few weeks alone we have seen striking examples of how Facebook, Amazon and Google, to pick three, have acted precisely like the worst of Wall Street, the oil patch or the robber barons of the 1890s would have.
It is not that all corporations are bad (though some are). It is that they are legally precluded from actively being good-of making material sacrifices for the community at large. That is why the current deregulatory mania among Trumpists is one of the great perils we face.
