Our urban green spaces have become increasingly occupied by an angry mass of the occupation-less, and “an end to corporate greed” seems to have become their motto. It would be all too easy to dismiss the literally unwashed masses at the Occupy protests as being little more than a gaggle of bored middle-aged hipster kooks and ignorant college-aged spoiled brats, but we shouldn’t. I don’t agree with all their slogans, chants and angry rants but the Occupiers do something right.

When asked to what they’re protesting, a confusing muddle of complaints will issue from the average Occupier’s gaping maw. Corporations seem to be a major target of the Occupation and the three complaints that I’ve seen most often in the media are that corporations don’t care about the individual, they are greedy and they spend millions lobbying government for special favors and tax breaks. Of these three, only the last accusation has any merit, but it has so much merit that I find myself hoping that these dirty denizens of the drum circle find some success. I’ll explain.

Corporations Don’t Care About the Individual!

They aren’t supposed to. I don’t think I can put it much plainer than that. A corporation is an entity created by a group with common interests to protect and serve that group’s interests. A business corporation serves the general economic interests of its shareholders just as a trade union serves the general economic interests of its members. Political action committees and charitable corporations are formed by those lobbying for common social interests, be they a shared religion, racial identity, or sexual orientation. In all instances, the specific wants of the individuals in the group are subordinated to the common will of that group.

Corporations Are Greedy!

They’re supposed to be. Corporations, like all communally organized endeavors, are meant to combine the resources of those who belong to them for the general advantage of the group. There’s nothing particularly wrong with them doing so as long as belonging to the group is voluntary, and there’s no particular difference between people combining their capital in order to earn a profit and people are combining their voices in order to right an ill of society.

Corporations Lobby For Special Favors!

Bingo. The Occupiers have stumbled upon the greatest problems facing Americans today. The First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution protects the rights of the citizens of the States to assemble and to petition the government. That’s a good thing. Combining our numbers and petitioning the government is an important means of redress when it oversteps its bounds, as it so often does. The U.S. federal government began as a form of corporation. It was an association of men and women who agreed to combine their voices and their efforts for a common goal, individual liberty. The federal government was initially meant to protect its citizens from groups who would use force, even violence, to infringe upon an individual’s liberty. This was in stark contrast to other governments, formed throughout history to allow the few to enforce their will on the many.

Unfortunately, over time we’ve allowed our government to stray from its original mandate and start granting special favors for petitioners, backed up by threats of violence that only a government indifferent or belligerent to the liberties of its individual citizens could make. Our government, almost completely free from the Constitutional chains that bound it, can now be petitioned to apply its force to any cause imaginable. If the leaders of a business corporation want a special loophole in the tax code to give them an advantage over their competition they can lobby your congressperson to do that. If they want a special regulation to prevent smaller businesses from competing with them they can lobby for that too.

Take My Liberty and Give Me Hotpockets

Our representatives don’t just stop at awarding special favors to business interests in exchange for our liberty. If you want to take money that one person earned and give it to another person the representatives in our government will do that. If you want to prevent a person from freely practicing their religion because it annoys you the representatives in our government will do that too. If you want to force an employee to join your union or obtain a special license in order to work in your profession the representatives in our government will be happy to oblige. If you want to force a business to hire you based on your self-professed racial identity rather than your merit just round up a group of like minded people and I’m sure that there is a representative in our government willing to cater to you.

Our government, the most powerful corporation in the history of humanity, is no longer in the business of preventing groups of people from enforcing their wills upon one another. We have traded our liberty for wish fulfillment backed up by the government monopoly on violence. From their various lists of demands it would appear that the Occupiers want to remove the advantages given to some groups while increasing the advantages provided to other groups. If any Occupiers read this, I hope you’ll decide instead that our government needs to get out of the political favoritism business altogether and get back to the business of defending individual liberty. Pretty please with organic trail mix on top.

Author: Yeoman