If you love corporations, you might want to start taking the protesters a bit more seriously.

Yesterday, Stephen Bainbridge explained why he loves corporations.  In the course of his post he referenced "The Company," by John Micklethwait and Adrian Wooldridge.  I, too, am a fan of that book--though not because (as Bainbridge notes) the authors identify the corporation as "the best hope for the future of the rest of the world."  (I am at best agnostic on that point.)  Rather, my recollection of the book (which I admit may well be distorted by the passage of years since I last read it) is that the authors did a decent of job of acknowledging that the history of corporations is marked by evil as well as goodness, including "imperialism and speculation, appalling rip-offs and even massacres" (p. xx).  Of course, the authors do note that corporations "pillage the Third World less than they used to" (p. 188).

What I liked about the book is that the authors recognized that "[t]o keep on doing business, the modern company still needs a franchise from society, and the terms of that franchise still matter enormously" (p. 186).  Furthermore, they acknowledged that "[t]here is a widespread feeling that companies have not fulfilled their part of the social contract: people have been sacked or fear that they are about to be sacked; they work longer hours, see less of their families--all for institutions that Edward Coke castigated four hundred years ago for having no souls" (p. 188).  (Note that these are all pre-financial crisis quotes.)

All of which leads me to conclude that if you love corporations you might want to start taking the "Occupy" protesters a little more seriously.  You may think they are "illiterates," silly and absurd--but they are growing in number and they may well end up having something to say about the nature of the franchise corporations need in order to survive.

SJP