The Bully Pulpit If you have a pulse, and if you read this weekly rant of mine, you already know that our esteemed Supreme Court has conferred personhood status on corporations, at least as far as their ability to contribute money to American politics. This may or may not be quite the same as saying that corporations are human beings, as Mitt Romney suggested, but it certainly goes the extra mile in that bizarre direction, and there are other cases now waiting in the wings which may give us the final proof. On a romantic level, you can already kind of see where the Supremes are going, and to tell the truth, I am not unsympathetic. I mean, corporations are made up of people, after all, and people, as we know, have their individual quirks and beliefs and peccadillos. Readers Books is not a corporation (we could never afford such an extravagance), but if we were, you could easily imagine how Id exercise my God given right to free speech by flinging my money around to tip an election one way or the other. At present, I have a grand total of six bucks in my wallet, so I guess the election would have to be very local, you know, and very close. Most of all, it would have to be very poorly attended. If more than ten voters showed up on either side, I suspect my influence would wane rapidly and Id be in trouble. But its instructive to look at corporations as if they were human. Think of them as school kids roaming around during recess: There they are, those lovely ever popular children, Google and Apple and Microsoft, all playing dodge ball with the government regulators. And theres General Motors tinkering with his new little electric car. Oh, and over in the corner there is that big bully, Amazon. Whats he doing now? Well, Amazon, it turns out, is beating up on Hachette Book Group. Why? Because Hachette had the temerity to ask for better terms than Amazon was willing to offer. At the moment they are locked in a battle of wills, and to get Hachette to cry uncle, Amazon is serving up all sorts of cruel and unusual punishment. For instance, if you go on Amazon, and try to buy a book published by Hachette, they may sell it to you, but at a much stiffer price than theyre selling other similar books. Or they may sell it to you, but tell you it will take much longer to get to your doorstep than is actually the case, and then delay the shipping. Or if you choose a Hachette title, they may suggest a different title which they deem to be preferable, then try to talk you into buying that one instead. If Amazon were a person and not a corporation, what would you think of that kind of behavior? Or lets put it another way: What would your mother say? Andy
Posted on: Sun, 18 May 2014 22:30:00 +0000
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