A Potted History of the growth of Corporations.

British kings granted charters to the British East India Company, the Hudson’s Bay Company and many American colonies, enabling the kings and their cronies to control property and commerce. The American colonists did not revolt simply over a tax on tea.
Craft and industrial workers feared absentee corporate owners would turn them into “a commodity being as much an article of commerce as woolens, cotton, or yarn,” according to historian Louis Hartz.

Incorporated businesses were banned from taking any action that citizens and legislators did not specifically allow.
In 19th-century America, many citizens believed that it was society’s inalienable right to abolish an evil.
During the last third of the 19th century, “Corporations confronted the law at every turn,” according to Harvard law professor Lawrence M. Friedman.
Workers, the courts also ruled, were responsible for causing their own injuries on the job.Judges created the “right to contract” doctrine, which stipulates that the government cannot interfere with an individual’s “freedom” to negotiate with a corporation for wages and working conditions.
Judges established the “managerial prerogative” and “business judgment” doctrines.
The US Supreme Court ruled that a private corporation was a “natural person” under the US Constitution, sheltered by the 14th Amendment, which requires due process in the criminal prosecution of “persons.” Following this ruling, huge, wealthy corporations were allowed to compete on “equal terms” with individuals.

“There was no history, logic or reason given to support that view,” Supreme Court Justice William 0. Douglas wrote 60 years later.
Within just a few decades, appointed judges had redefined the “common good” to mean the corporate use of humans and the Earth for maximum production and profit—no matter what was manufactured, who was hurt or what was destroyed. Corporations had obtained control over resources, production, commerce, jobs, politicians, judges and the law. Workers, citizens, cities, towns, states and nature were left with fewer and fewer rights that corporations were forced to respect

and your point is?

DEMOS,
That’s the comment of a mushroom living in a box just like most loyal corporate slaves, I would like to have my say on this topic but Graham wont leave them up for more that a couple of hours. It must be upsetting to his mates in the Liberal Party, or whats left of it.

Dear Demos,

Supreme Court Justice Morrison Remick Waite in 1886, simply pronounced before the beginning of arguement in the case of Santa Clara County v. Southern Pacific Railroad Company that

"The court does not wish to hear argument on the question whether the provision in the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution, which forbids a State to deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws, applies to these corporations. We are all of opinion that it does".

Thus it was that a two-sentence assertion by a single judge elevated corporations to the status of persons under the law, prepared the way for the rise of global corporate rule, and thereby changed the course of history.
The doctrine of corporate personhood creates an interesting legal contradiction. The corporation is owned by its shareholders and is therefore their property. If it is also a legal person, then it is a person owned by others and thus exists in a condition of slavery -- a status explicitly forbidden by the Thirteenth Amendment to the US Constitution. So far as I have been able to determine, this contradiction has not been directly addressed by the courts.

Corporations exist beyond time and space: they are legal creations that only exist on paper. They do not die a natural death; they outlive their own creators. They have no commitment to locale, employees or neighbours. Having no morality, no commitment to place and no physical nature. A corporation can relocate all of its operations at the first sign of inconvenience—demanding employees, high taxes and restrictive environmental laws.

The Howard Government used the Corporation Powers adopted into Australia's Constitution to crete WorkChoices and circuvent the Industrial relations System.

My point is, that if the corporation tree has grown from a poisoned fruit, our present labour laws are dubious and and therefore reqire an examination by the High Court of the Corporation Powers in our constitution.

Your belief in the Corporate boggy man is about as silly as small child’s belief in the monster living under his bed.

The facts are corporation that you attack so bitterly provide hundreds of thousands of jobs to people in Australia and tens of millions too people around the world. They are the backbone of our economic success like it or lump it.

Sure people who vote for the democrats and greens like lorry and young dan are only showing there poor education and lack of understanding of the world we live in.

Corporations are not perfect but what is?

ok. now that we have established that some of us don't like corporations, we can move on to the next step: what to do about it.

i think it's not good enough to say "somebody should do something!" unless, of course, your mother didn't tell you what happened, "the day the mice decided to bell the cat."

what can you do, to change the power of corporations?

[fair warning: unless you're in parliament, nothing. if you are in parliament, nothing. i'm actually sucking you into a discussion of real democracy]

EasyTimes
Before you go claiming anything about my education and who I vote for you should do a little research before you make any comments and display the level of ignorance and incompetence that is now identified.
As for my education, I am fifty seven years of age and at what stage of my life was I poorly educated, in the first twenty years or over the last twenty years or the seventeen in between. The last twenty years I was a preferred Government contractor in the building industry I don’t take drugs and I very rarely drink alcohol. I don’t vote for any of these criminal gangs of thugs that have infested the Corporations Parliament and I don’t consent to being forced to do anything. I don’t wish to vote and take part in the so called parliamentary process because I don’t agree with the enforced government corporation policy, I would rather rely on the rule of law but I would guess, with your education, you would not be able to identify the difference. I don’t vote at all because I don’t have to, I don’t pay tax either because I don’t have to, I don’t work either because I don’t have to, I don’t collect any Australian Govt Corporation Pension or the dole because I don’t want or need it, I don’t have any medicare card either I would rather die than rely on the Qld health system, I have my family and my children to provide for all of my needs because they support me in what I am doing, of which, you have no knowledge of.

Dear Young Dan,

Are you Alan Bond? (just kidding).

Seriously though. There's not much we can do about corporations.
We can't fight them. The size and economic power of the major corporations are immense. Some of the largest corporations, such as the American, Exxon and General Motors have budgets that are larger than those of every country in the world other than the US (and the former Soviet Union).

These huge organizations have developed much more quickly than the means of applying social control over them. Dedicated to the pursuit of profit and subject to the authority of no one nation (multinational
corporations), run by a tiny elite of managers and directors who have a largely fictional responsibility to their far-flung shareholders, they represent a disturbing and growing concentration of global power and influence.

We must abandon the idea that corporations can reform themselves. To ask corporate executives to behave in a morally defensible manner is absurd. Corporations, and the people within them, are following a system of logic that leads inexorably toward dominant behaviours. To ask corporations to behave otherwise is like asking an army to adopt pacifism.

Corporation: n. An ingenious device for obtaining individual profit without individual responsibility.
—Ambrose Bierce, 1842-1914.
Form Is Content Corporations are inherently bold, aggressive and competitive. Though they exist in a society that claims to operate by moral principles, they are structurally amoral. It is inevitable that they will dehumanize people who work for them and the overall society as well. They are disloyal to workers, including their own managers. Corporations can be disloyal to the communities they have been part of for many years. Corporations do not care about nations; they live beyond boundaries. They are intrinsically committed to destroying nature. And they have an inexorable, unabated, voracious need to grow and to expand. In dominating other cultures, in digging up the Earth, corporations blindly follow the codes that have been built into them as if they were genes.

So Demos, on what can we do? What is happening in the US of A, is there is a movement in a number of states, to go back to the Supreme Court and challenge the 1886 decision. Here in Australia in the High Court in December 2006 Houghton Vs Arms found that misleading conduct by any representative even when there is absence of malice, means that person must make good any damages that they have caused.
This means that corporate officers and directors can no longer hide behind the company seal any more.
It is disgusting to me that The Thirteenth amendment of the US Constitution that was made to free slaves and the Fourteenth have been turned on their head to allow exploytation of laws that were meant to bestow equal rights to the citizenry.

Lorry, What is the importance of the company seal that you identify.
What make you believe that the High Court of Australia actually made a lawfully binding decision in the Houghton Vs Arms case as you may find that this alleged ORDER is also not under the SEAL of the High Court of Australia in accordance with section 32.1 of the High Court of Australia Act 1979 and Rule 4,06.1, but under the stamp of the High Court of Australia OFFICE SEAL and which is not provided for under the Act. The members of this Body Corporate and their senior Registry staff are also highly educated in use of the same scams that all corporations engage in.
It is all coming to an end and the judicial grubs that have not used the seal of the Supreme Court of Queensland for many years are fully aware of what is going to happen to them

Young Dan,
The Company seal is the rubber stamp that represents the Legal entity that exists on paper only. The directors of the company, in particular the company seretary are the humans who represent this legal fiction called "the corporation" .
Here in Tasmania this has been clearly demonstrated recently, where company directors have pleaded not guilty to being responsible for the death of two workers, but "the company put up its invisible hand and basically said "fair cop guvner you got me dead to rights".
So the humans representing the 'company' dodged their duty of care and had "the company" plead guilty.
You cannot sue a company. The company Secretary is the person that sues or is sued on behalf of the company. If you call a company to give evidence in court a lawyer could place the company seal (the rubber stamp) on the stand and say "Question That".

Not being human, corporations do not have morals or altruistic goals. So decisions that maybe antithetical to community goals or environmental health are made without misgivings. In fact, corporate executives praise "non-emotionality" as a basis for "objective" decision-making.

Corporations, however, seek to hide their amorality and attempt to act as if they were altruistic. Lately, there has been a concerted effort by industry to appear concerned with environmental cleanup, community arts or drug programs. Corporate efforts that seem altruistic are really Public relations ploys or directly self-serving projects.

There has recently been a spurt of corporate advertising about how corporations work to clean the environment. A company that installs offshore oil rigs will run ads about how fish are thriving under the rigs. Logging companies known for their clear felling practices will run millions of dollars' worth of ads about their "tree farms."

It is a fair rule of thumb that corporations tend to advertise the very qualities they do not have in order to allay negative public perceptions. When corporations say "we care," it is almost always in response to the widespread perception that they do not have feelings or morals.

Young Dan,
You seem to be a very alienated young bear.
A pity you don't vote otherwise I would vote for you as you obviously care a lot.
I share your fear and loathing of coporations but there are some little attempts to fix their amorality
See the work of the "St James Ethics Centre" in Sydney.
You may also be interested in joining in some of the economic discussions in Hypography Science Forums.

"It is a fair rule of thumb that corporations tend to advertise the very qualities they do not have in order to allay negative public perceptions." beautifully put 'lorry'
But is not this the way of the world?
The Taxation Department makes tax avoidance schemes,
the Environment Department licences polluters,
the Forestry commission cuts down trees?
One day I will write a best selling book about how the stated objectives of an organisation are always the exact opposite of what they actually do/archive. It will be bigger than "The Peter Principle":)