Ian,
I think this quote acts as if there is not a simple baseline being promoted
by conservatives, ie. the status quo when a corporation makes a particular
investment. Regulations that are put in place before such an investment do
not require compensation, but any regulation must compensate those who
invested with expectations of profit based on lack of such regulations.
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Well that's part of the argument we used in Seattle; the new economic treaties [that's what they are] lock-in the current regulatory regime and substantially raises the costs of trying to do substantive policy experiments at the subnational level to mitigate various externalities, thereby regulating governments abilities to regulate commerce. Of course the corps. and their legal staff both within and beyond the firm and their liaisons in the great revolving door we call "the state" refuse to think about the flip side of the coin; namely, regulations and laws that are generative of spillovers that increase profits. Do state govs. get to raise property taxes when industrial districts agglomerate increasing returns in a Marshallian manner when the costs to the state of procuring public goods like roads and schools goes up due to inflation? If not, why not? Isn't that a double standard to say the least and isn't it an example of a clear cut case of business using/pitting the state against itself? Where did those rights come from? I don't see the word corporation written in the US Constitution do you? I think there's a genuine and deep reason for that absence that's been obscured and is exacerbated by the un-historical thinking of the US citizenry.
Hence the need for subnational governments to create policies that generate crises of jurisdiction; either we have federalism or we don't. If the elites are trying to apply economies of scale and scope reasoning to the way policy is formulated on a planetary system-level, then slowly but surely we'll drift into an arena whereby national governments become like state governments and state governments look like county governments. Just look at how the US made Mexico change it's constitution. Well, if thats where were headed then let's just call the nation state itself totally into question. Let's redraw all the boundaries, push de-territorialization and re-territorialization as far as it can go. Hell let's have a world money, that would get rid of one hell of a lot of problems--no more beggar thy neighbor currency wars, economies of scale with regards to credit flows yaddah yaddah. And how about free movement of workers. And how about having governance structures that map ecosystem boundaries as they exist in ecological theory.
>> In fact, this is the standard promoted in Eastern Associated Enterprises
[June 25, 1998]
O'Connor for the Court argued that imposing liability for paying the health
care benefits of former mining employees on mine companies "interferes with
the claimant's reasonable investment-backed expectations" and "attaches new
legal consequences to [an employment relationship] completed before its
enactment." Like the Ex Post Facto Clause in penal legislation, O'Connor
argued that "the Takings Clause provides a similar safeguard against
retrospective legislation concerning property rights."
This is an intellectually cogent if politically deadly position for
conservatives to defend. And they are increasingly doing so through their
control of the Supreme Court.
-- Nathan Newman
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Which just goes to show the state is a protection racket. Note how she completely elides the question of human rights--"expectations"-- to health, the diverse interests of all the stockholders are reduced to "the claimant" etc. This is why the corporation must be completely rethought. With thugs like O'Connor on the bench the hope of attempting to regulate them will simply get more exasperating for those few lawyers who try valiantly to defend human beings against thugs.
Ian