Separation of Corporation and State
#SOCAS
Here’s a musing:
What if there were a constitutional amendment, or a clause of a constitutional amendment that functioned to prevent corporations from having any influence over the government or to prevent the government from privileging some corporations over others. Think of it in a way similar to the establishment clause of the First Amendment. Of course, that is much disputed and not always followed or valued in the U.S. — but at least we have it!
So, what if we did have separation of corporation and state? How would things be different in our country?
Would corporations have so much sway over government? Maybe not, because it wouldn’t be constitutional (at least until some Supreme Court justices who claimed to be strict textualists would decide a case based on something other than the text before them, while maintaining that they are indeed textualists).
Would corporations like Amazon actually have to pay some federal income taxes? Maybe because their armies of lobbyists wouldn’t have jobs anymore? Would that also mean that Amazon could use some of that money they would have spent on lobbying to pay their workers a better wage? And would the government have forced Amazon to have better working conditions for its employees? Or, would the government have shut down Amazon’s anticompetitive practices that have forced so many small businesses to disappear or use Amazon to sell their products thereby decreasing their own profits and increasing Amazon’s?
Ok, I’m not just picking on Amazon. Maybe Comcast and Verizon could use all the money they had budgeted for lobbying to improve their services, so we could actually have broadband internet service that is remotely comparable to what most other more developed countries have.
Would Boeing still be able to convince the government to let it “self-regulate” and inspect its own aircraft and software systems? Would there have been two major crashes of their 737 Max 8 that killed 346 people? Or would door plugs be falling off Boeing planes in mid air?
Would the tobacco companies have been able to get away with their mendacious claims for so long? How about Exxon-Mobil? Would it have gotten away for so long with misleading the public about greenhouse gas emissions and the effect the corporation’s leaders knew about for decades? Would Exxon-Mobil have been able to deceive its investors for all that time as well?
Would the Great Recession have happened in 2008? Would we have universal health coverage? Would insulin prices skyrocket like they have in recent years? Would we ever be able to do anything to combat global warming? Would private equity firms be able to play the housing market like a slot machine while many people struggle to afford a place to live? Would the minimum wage actually be a livable wage?
Would Perdue Pharma have been able to easily convince the FDA of the safety of its opioids that caused a multi-decade nationwide crisis with untold numbers of deaths? Would the Sackler family actually face some criminal punishments for leading the company down that path while enriching themselves beyond their own wildest imagination?
Would the food and beverage industry be able to engineer addictive ultra-processed foods that take advantage of our evolutionary biology while also disrupting our metabolic and endocrine systems, causing epidemics of diabetes, obesity, cancer, heart disease and other illnesses?
Would social media companies so freely be able to surveil and profile us, sell our data to advertisers, and generally just enshitify our lives? Spread disinformation and division?
Would the plastics industry have been able to get away with deceiving us that all our plastic waste was being recycled in a circular sustainable process instead of just getting dumped in landfills and bodies of water, or being incinerated? Would scientists be finding microplastics at the bottom of the oceans, in animal tissue, in our own blood streams and testicles?
Would chemical companies have been able to get away with poisoning us with PFAS? They are literally in Everything Everywhere All at Once. And, as far as we know, in everyone, likely forever. They’ve even been found in the snow in Antarctica, the rain falling over the Great Lakes, the blood in our veins. But, the government allowed the chemical industry to put these chemicals in all kinds of household products, food wrappers, non-stick pans without having to prove the chemicals were safe. It took nearly 70 years for the government to start regulating 6 of the 15,000 or so chemicals in this class. Now they are everywhere forever. Would that have happened if we had separation of corporation and state?
We may never know the answers to any of these questions, because we do not have separation of corporation and state in the U.S.
But wouldn’t that be an interesting social experiment?