I think you are mistaking the purpose of the modern corporation.

It is a psychopath with one goal only: to return the most value possible to its shareholders within the bounds of the law. And that value typically boils down to share price.

Its managers are human beings that respond to incentives given to them. If their CEO's compensation is based on stock price movement, then they will do whatever is in their power to move that in the desired direction. If their various managers employment is oriented on the metrics that drive that share price movement the they will do that. They are ALL doing what they're theoretically supposed to be doing if share prices go up.

It does not matter what we THINK a company should do or not do. It will only do what it is incentivized to do.

A company does not care about employee welfare unless it impacts the value it can bring to its shareholders.

A company does not care about its customers welfare except where their treatment impacts the value it can bring to its shareholders.

It does not care about the communities it operates in except where they can impact the value it can bring to its shareholders.

The only way to reign in a company's activities in furtherance of its goal of returning value is with regulation: see the "within the bounds of the law" thing.

However, a majority of the country has been convinced that regulation is evil and will reflexively say "the government is the problem".

Until THAT perception changes, the only recommendation I have is don't buy property or live within the "event radius" of class one railroad tracks.

Here is what the evil of big government gets you:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aHuEXVZOAxY

Sir Winston Churchill, the man who saved us all from terror and slavery, said, democracy is the worst form of government, except for all the others that have been tried.
The same can be said about free enterprise.
The alternative to free enterprise and the ability of citizens to reach their highest goals is too evil and horrendous to imagine.

Hmmm--that itself suggests part of the case for outlawing corporations. Who wants to be under the thumb of a psychopath under any circumstances?



An alternate version of what you're saying could be "changing the rules of the game." Changing the rules to where you have to argue for a course of action by convincing a lot of people who aren't fellow psychopaths to go your way might be a bit harder than when your fellow stockholders are Wall Streeters and hedge funders who have the same mindset you have. In fact, I'd expect the financial establishment to fight such a change of entity proposal tooth and nail for just that reason. They'd lose the control they have with a bag of money, and would have to argue their case to people instead of bulldozing them with dough.



And that's part of the reason I suggested the actions I did.

Anyway, thanks for some more thoughtful input compared to someone else who's responded who likes Fox News (which has, due to the psychopathic nature of its organization, is in trouble with another corporation.)

Remember the old joke about 'the men who manage men manage the men who manage things"? And its comeback "the men who manage money manage the men who manage men"? Extend that one level further, as to where the men who manage money get their money, and you have most of the distortions where you'll see them.

I thought the answer was coming in the 1960s, when the C&NW became 'employee-owned' and the IC spun off the railroad from the 'valuable assets owned by the railroad'. (Similar manipulation was observed in the SLSF fiasco, but the detail design of that merger bears contemplation).

Kneiling thought the implicit nationalization of the "iron ocean" (subsidized trackwork, fair access, professional evenhanded scheduling and dispatching) was likely within decades of the 1960s. If the operating companies were operated for the general good of their employees, at least the worst depredations of those who could care less about actually doing what a railroad needs to do would become less likely.

We'd probably still have a race to the bottom in many respects involving capital and risk management. But at least it would be a choice.

Capitalism is the best system humans have come up with so far. However, unbridled capitalism is sooo not the way to go. As with any system, there needs to be rules and regulations in place to prevent a system from being abused, perverted and running amok.

Greed is only a part of the problem. The other big downside is power to which greed is intrinsically linked. We’ve have too much corporate money in politics and, as the saying goes, money is power. Democratic government is supposed to be for the people, not corporations. However, your government has decreed that corporations are “people” thus giving them more power to manipulate through individual greed. Can you afford to buy your own politicians? Nope, me neither. I can’t even afford owning one a tiny piece of one let alone pull any of his/her strings. Your voice is your vote. Use it wisely.

I’m putting my soapbox away now.

First, it is possible, but hardly ever, if never used, a corporation that violates the law and rules of public decency can have it's charter revoked. That needs to change.

Second, we don't need to nationalize all of the railroads. Nationalizing the Rights-of-Way would accomplish pretty much what is needed. Operate them like a tollway or airport infrastructure. Set rules and standards for any operator to use that can meet the qualifications. This can be good for all of us in general. Railways in several countries, including the UK operate this way. The RoW authority determines who gets to operate, where and when, which means, passenger trains could have priority, there would be competition over most routes, routes could have more tracks and longer sidings added as needed. And for most of us, excursions would become possible (with steam) over most of the system, just as they are operated in the UK and other European countries.

Capitalism only works well for society when corporations have adequate competition to keep service up and prices down, but not too much competition. And if companies have adequate and effective government oversight, but not too many unnecessary regulations. Above all else, that corporations and institutions (as well as state and local governments) don't become so dependent on federal government handouts. Greed is good, but too much greed and power is bad.

I'm a fan of the German corporate model where the employees (and other stakeholders) are represented by half of the board of directors. I like employee ownership or profit sharing. I'd like to know how that worked out for the C&NW. A cooperative sounds interesting. And I'm surprised that the big rail shippers don't form a hedge fund and invest in the railroads to influence the railroad BOD's. Of course all this takes money away from Wall Street, and probably has zero chance of successful implementation.

The problem with this is defining "rules of public decency." Deviously and maliciously applied, this can be pushed from egregious examples like, say, Enron to a broadly/vaguely defined definition of "public decency." Do we shut down Union Carbide because they half-owned a subsidiary behind the Bhopal disaster in India in 1984? Did we shut down Exxon for its small role in the Exxon Valdez oil spill in 1989? Do we say all those coal-mining companies, and their corporate successors, are morally responsible for "climate change" more so than all the people and utilities and corporations that bought their coal? Given various actions of vengeful/activist government officials over the years, I (and no doubt hundreds of millions of other Americans) are rightfully distrustful of either our government or "democratic mob rule" to properly judge or apply such a "death sentence," and would suffer from the resulting damage to economic stability that would result. (Would YOU start a company if government or "mob rule" can shut you down over an accident or misunderstanding?)


The problem with this proposition--which has existed in some form in the USA for well over a century--is that unlike stepping down from an already-nationalized system, as happened in most of the European Economic Community in recent years, the proposal is for "the government" to assume the physical assets of many for-profit corporations. This requires either massive compensation to said corporations, or Fascist-style "expropiation" (see: Venezuela).

Classic "Fascism" is usually defined as a merging of a far-right dictatorship with corporate interests for the benefit of both, not the forced takeover of the means of production by the government, which is often the definition of communism. I know nationalization of the roadbeds is old news, I've been calling for it myself for over 40 years. No it wouldn't be cheap, but once done it would be self-funding through user fees. And one good thing about a separate quasi-public corporation owning the infrastructure is that that corporation works for us, we The People, and can be made to operate for the general good and in a safe manner. Generally speaking, government run turnpikes are usually the best maintained roads in a state. If they want to relay track 4 over Horseshoe Curve, they can. If they want to increase capacity on the Water level route, so be it. If the ATSF 2926 people want to run mainline excursions from Albuquerque to Williams, AZ, and on to the South Rim, that becomes possible. My guess is it could be financed through the sale of bonds.

As for corporate charter revocations, not only are they seldom used, they are NEVER used, including when a corporation does truly corrupt and evil deeds. Right now Ohio is in the middle of the biggest corporate bribery scandal in state history. An electric conglomerate, First Energy, the people who brought you the 2003 Northeastern blackout, spent over $60 MILLION in bribes to get a bill passed to get a taxpayer-funded bailout of two failing nuke plants on Lake Erie. Then they spent more illegal money successfully quashing a referendum effort to overturn the bailout. The former state House Speaker and GOP chairman may go to prison (don't hold your breath), and another player committed suicide when the jig was up. But FIrst Energy got a relatively minor financial slap on the wrist and life, and billing, goes on as usual. If ever a company deserved to have it's charter revoked, it's assets seized, it's executives sent to prison and the company turned into a consumer-owned coop, it's them. But that's not even open for discussion. And the players involved should be glad they don't live in the People's Republic of China, where they take public corruption seriously, and offenders end up getting a bullet to the back of the head.

Not to launch a long, drawn-out quibble over terminology here, but the definitions of any such terms always get tweaked to fit the agendas of those using such terminology. In fact, "definition of fascism" has its own Wikipedia article, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Definitions_of_fascism (but you will search in vain for matching pages for "definition of Communism/capitalism"). Ironically, many of the tactics and stated goals of self-proclaimed "anti-fascists" of the past few years could have easily been lifted from the "tracts" of Mussolini and Hitler, save for direct opposition to outright communism (which is what I think the self-proclaimed "anti-fa" are really opposed to, opposition to their own communist-style objectives). By contrast, Jonah Goldberg's 2007 book Liberal Fascism (released well before the "anti-fa" fad) attracted scads of polarizing and galvanizing praise and criticism for comparing much of progressive political movements (going back to Teddy Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson) and their goals/strategies to the Fascism of Europe.

I would strongly suggest steering away from applying such terminology in any honest discussion of these transportation matters, simply because it often leads to "name-calling" based on just these malleable definitions. After all, Germany, Britain and Japan have "denationalised" their railway operations while retaining ownership and control of the national rail network infrastructure, but I don't think anyone would label any of those nations anything beyond "socialistic democracies" or vice versa.

There is nothing happening here related to preservation. This thread is being locked. I suggest other online platforms for discussing the most posts on this thread.

Tom Gears
Moderator