[lbo-talk] Penal nation

[Wojtek S]

[WS:] What Jordan describes is the assignment of responsibility (i.e. rules
who is responsible for certain types of losses,) not penalty.  My point is
that the same behavior is widely penalized in individuals but not in
corporations.  For example, if a person is late in making a payment, he/she
is typically subjected to a penalty (in addition to interest on the owed
amount,) if a corporation is late in making payments, its cannot be
subjected to a similar penalty by an individual.

What DRR describes is also a diffrent issue - formal vs informal sanctions.
That infomal sanctions rather than formal penalties are used as a means of
social control in virtually every society or community with some meaningful
level of integration is not news - this has been studied by sociologists and
anthropologists to death.  But again, there is a high level of reciprocity
in informal sanctions If A shuns B for a transgression, then B can shun A
for a similar transgression.  But my point, again, is the UNILATERAL  manner
in which US society is penalized: if A calls himself a corporation  he can
penalize B for a transgression, whereas B cannot penalize A for the same
transgression.  Stated differently, A can directly impose and execute
penalties on B, but B does not have the same power over A, but instead must
rely on a court system.  This is akin to medieval times when the lord could
penalize serfs directly, whereas serfs could only use the royal courts (if
they had access to them) in their grievances against the lord.

I do not think this is linked to neo-liberalism, but rather to a legal
system in which corporations became Übermenschen, and physical persons were
reduced to Untermenschen.

Wojtek

On Fri, Apr 30, 2010 at 3:46 PM, Jordan Hayes <jmhayes at j-o-r-d-a-n.com> wrote:


> Wojtek writes:
>
>  Virtually every incorporated non-governmental entity [...] have
>>
>> the power of imposing penalties on physical persons (which cannot
>> be reciprocated i.e. a physical person cannot impose a penalty
>> on a corporate entity.) ...
>>
>
> There are a few cases where they *can* be "penalized" (using your
> definition of penalty).
>
> For instance: If you lose control of "your" credit card and charges are
> made that you did not authorize, typically you can penalize the bank that
> issued the card for being stupid enough to have created a piece of plastic
> that can be used to get goods and services without a reasonable
> authentication scheme by forcing them to pay for the transaction.
>
> Mwa-ha-hah!
>
> /jordan
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