Internetworkers: http://www.ibiblio.org/internetworkers/

[Karim Nassar <karim AT karimnassar.com>]

> > Much as we at Dow may care, as human beings, about the victims of the Bhopal catastrophe, 
>>we must reiterate that Dow's sole and unique responsibility is to its 
shareholders, and Dow
> > CANNOT do anything that goes against its bottom line unless forced to by law.
>
> To me, this is the embodiment of what is wrong with libertarianism. 
>
> this corporation *is* responsible. well, union carbide is, and now
> that it is a part of Dow, Dow is responsible for these people's deaths
> and illnesses, yet they are standing my and paying lip service by
> saying how sorry they are, yet do nothing to back that up.
>
> So what is a libertarian to do? let market forces work everything out,
> because if enough people think dow is responsible that they'd boycott
> and force a change? hah. like thats even possible.

How about holding voting shareholders liable for the actions of the 
companies they own? I guarrantee that if the shareholders had faced the 
possibility of criminal liability for this, they would have pressure DOW 
to settle rather quickly... and they probably would have taken greater 
care in examining and correcting the practices of the company before 
this disaster happened.

Treating Corporations as "people" causes a lot of problems like this.

The problem with the Libertarian worldview is that its agenda is most 
often evaluated piece-meal. Certainly a strict market is unworkable 
without other, equally important reforms such as equality in Justice, an 
educated populace, and a dismantling of the artificial corporate support 
systems that have been erected over the last 100 years to compensate for 
the psuedo-market system that we have.

In practice, Libertarianism may well be unworkable, but its values of 
individual responsibility and individual freedoms are, IMHO, important 
to advocate, especially in the modern environment of abdication of 
responsibilities.

--Karim

PS: New to the list. Hi Everyone.