[lbo-talk] Penal nation

Wojtek S wsoko52 at gmail.com
Mon May 3 07:30:28 PDT 2010


[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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> http://mailman.lbo-talk.org/mailman/listinfo/lbo-talk
>



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