Reviews for Meaning & interpretation

The average rating for Meaning & interpretation based on 2 reviews is 4.5 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2016-02-09 00:00:00 Michael Villaraza Remember when jobs came with benefits....security......back before companies got rid of many of their full-time jobs for part-time employees that could be payed half the amount per hour, receive no benefits, and have no rights to many worker rights? Remember when corporations were accountable to the people? 'A corporation in law is just what the incorporating act makes it. It is the creature of the law and may be moulded to any shape or for any purpose that the Legislature may deem most conducive for the general good.' This premystique legal language, similar to that of most early state incorporation charters, made clear that the primary function of the corporation was to further the public interest. In serving such ends, whether building canals, turnpikes, or colleges, private parties were free to gain wealth and profit. But as the Virginia Supreme Court argued in 1809, if the intention of the corporators is 'merely private or selfish; if it is detrimental to, nor not promotive of, the public good, they have no adequate claim upon the legislature for the privileges.'" "William T Allen, current chancellor of the state of Delaware, argues that America has alternated between a property-based conception of the corporation, as sanctified by the Gilded Age, and the view of the corporation as a public or social entity that was revived in the New Deal. As a social entity, the corporation is understood as a creation of the state to serve all of society. It must respect the claims of shareholders and creditors, he writes, but there are 'other purposes of perhaps equal dignity: the satisfaction of consumer wants, the provision of meaningful employment opportunities and the making of a contribution to the public life of its communities.'" "What gets ignored in the debate between executives and shareholders is the continuing powerlessness of workers and communities. They are at the mercy of corporate downsizing, outsourcing, and other current trends, which dish out rewards to both shareholders and top management at the expense of the larger society. Corpocracy threatens shareholders, but it is the larger public who really suffers." "Ralph Nader makes clear both the nature of the claim and how it is received. He points out, for instance, that Taxol, a new cancer-fighting drug, 'was produced by a grant of $31 million of taxpayer money through the National Institutes of Health, right through the clinical testing process. The formula was then given away to Bristol-Myers Squibb company. No royalties were paid to the taxpayer. There was no restraint on the price. Charges now run $10,000 to $15,000 per patient for a series of treatments. If the patients can't pay, they go on Medicaid, and the taxpayer pays at the other end of the cycle too.'" "The musical-chairs game by which corporations have historically pitted one state against another---just as today they pit nations against each other---is a splendid tool for persuading governments of the political correctness of the corporate agenda. Those that don't play the game of carrying out the corporation's legislative wish list will lose jobs and ultimately their tax base---ensuring that the public powers of government are being wielded, surely if indirectly, for and by the 'private' corporation." "Harried, exhausted, and helpless, many Americans retreat after work to the cocoon of the television room. There we are comfortably seduced by corporate messages about the world, pacified by sitcoms and soaps, and removed from the contact with others that might begin to elicit a sense of empowerment and hope." "Most communitarian writers and the majority of community groups have failed to acknowledge that market values are subverting community values and that the new corporate economy is the biggest wrecker of community itself. As jobs go overseas, wages decline, and people have to work longer hours, the economic infrastructure of community breaks down and everyone becomes an entrepreneur motivated primarily by personal survival. Competition for scarce resources undermines solidarity within Third Sector communities, even as corporate pressure for balanced budgets, welfare abolition, and the like drain the federal government of resources for personal and community relief." "Martin Luther King,Jr, anticipated this possibility and urged another route for the civil-rights movement in a prophetic 1967 speech. Asking where the civil-rights movement should go, he cast a light on the 40 million Americans who were in poverty. "You begin to ask the question," he continued, "Who owns the oil?" You begin to ask the question, "Who owns the iron ore?" You begin to ask the question, 'Why is it that people have to pay water bills in a world that is two-thirds water?...I'm not talking about communism...communism forgets that life is individual. Capitalism forgets that life is social, and the kingdom of brotherhood is found neither in the thesis of communism nor the antithesis of capitalism. It is found in a higher synthesis that combines the truths of both. "In his last year of life, King was trying to redirect the civil rights movement toward populism." "As American wages stagnate and corporations reduce health care, pensions, and other benefits, the social contract that built the middle-class family is disappearing. Numerous studies show that financial pressures in the new corporate economy are the single biggest stress on family life, and that as both parents work longer hours in more insecure jobs, marriages and parent-child relationships suffer greatly. Juliet Schor has documented that 'the average employed person is now on the job an additional 163 hours, or the equivalent of an extra month a year,' compared to 20 years ago. The stress is particularly severe on women, who now average more than eighty hours a week combined paid work, housework, and child care." "The values that the Christian Right promotes are unabashedly those of the market. ...The explicit embrace by [Pat] Robertson of the free market as God-inspired has helped unleash a flood of financial support from sectors of business and the media."

Review # 2 was written on 2016-12-31 00:00:00 Susan Masten I'm glad that Derber wrote a book about corporate power because I think it was definitely needed and I think that this being written in 1998 (the height of the Clinton era) makes it seem extremely prophetic. That being said I also thought that Derber rambled and repeated a lot. I wasn't hooked at all times and my mind tended to wander. Maybe too much overlap with some of his other writing. I would like to see a more succint focused book on this topic by Derber.