Well, the market only looks for financial value. Whether there are or not unemployed people in America is not the market's concern. Actually, unemployment, by holding wages down, automatically raises prospects for higher profits. You could say that, with too many unemployed, demand is not enough to support growth. But the point is that even unemployed people are consumers, and for many product markets, only wealthy individuals are important Markets are not political instruments. There are places where supply meets demand. And today, in these financial markets, there is still little demand for "ethic" or "social" investment. Hopefully, with facts like the one you point out, we'll get there eventually. But changing the markets is going to take years and a real change of viewpoint for policy makers and C-level officers in corporations

Interesting debate. Not being à US citizen I might be a bit far from it. I see two different issues: - treating corporations as legal persons would bring you where you are today, if I understand the Bill of Rights correctly, - corporations are legal persons that employ scores of natural persons, and yet, corporations are not democracies. What you basically have then, is a social structure with influence in government affairs that is not a democracy. I might be pushing this, but how different is this from having one of the 50 states not being a democracy ? I have discussed it in my blog, as I understand this issue brings us, in fact, to the need to change big business governance fundamentally

This is a very interesting post and conversations. I think that this issue (regulation, charter, rules, governance)is key, as without a proper answer I deem it unlikely that the social media environment will reach its potential WITHIN the corporations. I like the comment of Kristina, even though I think it relies only on the corporate viewpoint. Including the employee viewpoint in the set of rules and how you design them is to me a key notion. At the same time, I also like the idea of the "leadership team" on the issue. Actually, we are in a fast moving environment and building a community that oversees these regulatory / governance issues and links with corporate governance is a pragmatic way of trying to continuously adapt the relation between the corporation and its employees

Great post. I have been thinking about firms and feudal kingdoms for some time. Evolution might be a bit more complicated than what we can imagine, and probably, appart from people regaining power through community-based organizations, there will also be an evolution of corporations as they come of age - by that, I mean as they themselves get rid of their dependancy on financial religion (short-termism and growth for growth).