Farewell Democracy?

[the2real4mafol]

badgenome said:

the2real4mafol said:

That's not the problem here. The problem is that these corporations will have political power to do what they like really. We people vote for government, they pass the laws and we follow them. But with this law, it seems corporations would be exempt and have some power over the state to enforce what it wants at the cost of everything else and guess what? They are non elected bodies and so shouldn't have such power, it's just wrong. Also, they are not transparent in the slightest. Thus, farewell democracy. 

"These provisions elevate corporations to the level of nation states and allow them to sue governments over nearly any law or policy which reduces their future profits"- you may have missed this sentence, but this shows it is not as simple as you thought. It is a scary though.

 "The dirty little secret about [the negotiation] is that it is not mainly about trade, but rather would target for elimination the strongest consumer, health, safety, privacy, environmental and other public interest policies on either side of the Atlantic"- here is another exempt to make it perfectly clear. 

Again, I don't get it. Are you saying that at present in the EU only a nation state can sue another nation state over a law? No individual can challenge a law? That seems... dumb. And untrue. I don't believe even the EU is that warped.

And do you really believe a court would ever say that BP doesn't have to clean up the mess BP made because doing so will reduce BP's profit? Really really?

Of course, people can sue each other and companies. But, i never said corporations can't sue a government but why would they? If they have a decent business environment, like in most countries then what's the issue with following health and safety, privacy, environmental and worker regulations etc and paying your taxes on time. They make profit anyway as they pay literally pennies to some poor locals in the developing world. Anyway, most governments are reasonable and wouldn't doing anything that would make a corporation want to sue them (the company wouldn't go there to start with)

As for BP, that's what this law sounds like because corporations would have that extra power to do what they like. They have to be accountable like everyone else.