Re #3 - Could you please explain how penalizing people for choosing to not patronize certain corporations fits that criteria? Because that seems like a huge boon to the corporations, basically cementing their positions and outweighing the procedural concessions they traded.
Making it marginally easier for those with means to save some money by reducing their taxes... because they took away some essential service from those without means.
Which "helps motivate" the people without means to stop being so lazy. /s
That's a false dichotomy. Corporations are the basic units of the wealth-creation engine that gives Americans among the highest standards of living in the world, not to mention employs almost all of them. Doing what's good for the corporations is usually also what's good for people.
Corporations are the basic units of the wealth-creation engine that gives Americans among the highest standards of living in the world, not to mention employs almost all of them. Doing what's good for the corporations is usually also what's good for people.
You're missing the /sarcasm tag. Doing good for corporations has, since Reagan, eviscerated the living standards of the American people.
Plus you're ignorant of how people in this country are actually employed. For example, a number of the wealthiest individuals in this country, and most of the top 5%, actually work for or own partnerships (in the form of LPs, LLPs, or LLCs), none of which are corporate entities. This doesn't include those employed by the government agencies or armed forces at the state or federal or local levels.
And last I checked, every major invention of the past century was funded in whole or in part by the government--there are no major discoveries wholly funded by corporate dollars.
Maybe in some fantasy corporation-league version of America, but I see a constant stream of "oh, you lobbyists want concessions for your anonymous sponsors/donors/owners? Sure, always glad to get more votes paid for!"
The only way to keep the general populace from getting trampled as far as they will allow is to push back against all this.
I've said elsewhere, vote out every incumbent Congressperson. Once the current paid members are gone, if the new set appears to be voting by donor status, vote them out too.
Keep voting them out until we find a few decent souls who realize that we the people are serious about being represented, not sold.
I would use campaign contribution reports as a "who should be first out the door" list... individual personal donations of fixed maximum size only, everything else counts against.
If you want to reduce corporate influence, reduce the size and influence of government.
The more a central authority takes and dictates, the more lobbying and money will be the influence that runs them. When you have a powerbase of politicians that can make or break conpanies, industries, and entire regions with a law or regulation, you will naturally have players interested in that space working for their own interests above all else.
Deregulation is the worse case in that sliding variable... an effectual government balances between the various parties, preventing corporate abuse of power at the expense of individuals.
When existing government gets hijacked by power brokers, that's where we the people should step up and say no by voting out the worst offenders. Tha's our check and balance, and where I despair of getting people to understand and care.
The person you're replying to presented no such false dichotomy. They said when was the last time they sided with the people WHEN they were in opposition, not that they were always in opposition.
It's like asking "When was the last time Congress did something to help feet, instead of shoes?" It's a really weird thing to ask, because like shoes, corporations are a tool used by people. They cannot, therefore, be opposed to anything as such. They're merely mechanisms, tools, in the hands of their principals and agents.
You can suggest that certain uses of these tools are improper and that the agents who effect these uses should be restrained, punished, or otherwise legally addressed, but you don't phrase that as a punishment against the tool -- it is rather a punishment against the agents who manipulated the tool improperly.
Sometimes I wonder if the whole "corporation v people" thing is a propaganda tool intended to misdirect public anger off the robber barons themselves and instead put it onto a formless legal abstraction that can't be held accountable.
American corporations are tools for people in much the same way that monarchies were tools for people. It pretty much is a tool that's only useful for those with the means to make the most use of it. Small businesses often can't use it to the fullest abilities because to do so requires an army of lawyers and accountants who are able to find every advantage possible. Playing to the rule book is especially advantageous when you get to write the rule book. The other problem is that corporations have more legal rights and power and are considered people in legal terms.
Using another example. Indentured servitude used to be a completely valid legal contract that benefited both sides. The reason it went away was because those writing the contracts started treating it like legal slavery.
The reason people go after corporations is because they are the ones in control of the government and what exactly will going after the people who own the corporations do? They often have private armies, write their own laws, and essentially function as royalty.
e.g.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dodd%E2%80%93Frank_Wall_Street...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Credit_CARD_Act_of_2009
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patient_Protection_and_Afforda...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lilly_Ledbetter_Fair_Pay_Act_o...
etc.