For a sole individual bartering, trading, or selling a piece of property, we generally do not feel it appropriate to impose a level of regulation that is insurmountable as long as they aren't poisoning the water supply, selling nukes, or something extreme like that. Yet what can start as one person doing business with friends, family, and other associates can eventually turn into a large, profitable corporation. The corporate fiction abstracts away the individual, limiting liability and genuineness. We see the disproportionate influence a corporation's wealth can have on our communities, the environment, and our democratic process. Since the "invisible hand of the market" sometimes works belatedly if at all, we feel it appropriate to instill regulations on the auto industry telling them to sell cars that won't kill us, for example. When a handful of corporations/employers dominate the labor market of a community, we sometimes need to remind them that working people to ridiculous extremes in the name of profit is not acceptable.
27 Sep 2010, 12:15 pm
