The proliferation of these investor-state cases has three major impacts. First, in cases where the corporations win (as they often do) the result is a massive transfer of scarce public resources to wealthy private corporations. Second, even if governments are successful in mounting a legal defense, doing that comes at a cost of potentially millions of dollars in legal fees paid to one of the handful of high-priced law firms that specialise in such cases. Third, the net impact is a dangerous chilling effect on the willingness of policy makers to implement policies in the public interest for fear of costly international arbitration cases.AlterNet
How Corporations Are Subverting Attempts to Rein in Their Power
Thomas Mc Donagh
More neoliberalism at work.
"It's the power, stupid."
1 comment:
Corporations would not be a problem except for the government-backed counterfeiting cartel, the banking system. Why? Because in the absence of that cartel, businesses would have either:
1) Paid honest interest rates for the population's savings.
OR
2) Used their own common stock as money to buy assets and labor.
In either case, power and wealth would have been broadly diffused throughout society instead of concentrated into a few hands.
As for socialism, it is merely a kludge to get back (but only partially) what should never have been stolen in the first place.
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