If you want my take, a big issue I have with corporations is their legal structure is such that the owners of the company reap all the benefits of what they own, without suffering any liabilities if their entitites do anything seriously wrong.  This level of disconnect, while it does afford greater risk-taking, is prime for corporations to not act as responsible as entities where their owners suffer liability.  Because of their very nature, which violates principles of ownership, corporations need to have extra safeguards placed around them.  Remove these safeguards and you run a lot of risks.

Throw in also the Citizens United case which now has corporate money flooding the election process.

Exactly.  Corporations shouldn't grant owners defacto immunity and they also shouldn't be given first amendment rights as if they're human beings.

However they don't reap the benefits of all they own though... there are a ton of complicated tax and criminal laws that specifically govern how much an owner can benefit from a company.

If Gabe Newell was the sole owner of Valve, he couldn't decide to say "Fuck it i'm rich" drain the companies entire money supply and close down shop.

if he did he'd face huge penalties... both tax wise and criminal wise.

In corporate structures, the owners of the companies don't go to prison if their companies do evil.  In non-corporate structures, they can.  Usually in corporate structures, no matter how badly something happens, there are fines levied on the companies themselves.  The management seldon goes to jail for anything.  

The issue arises in the disconnect between ownership and management.  Management gets itself compensated a lot, with golden parachutes and so on, and ownership is asked to keep quiet as they watch stock prices rise, and get dividends for this.  The management doesn't think long-term, because they could be fired if there is any short-term downturn.  And the management side will often leave before the problems they cause get revealed.  There is little to no minding the store long-term here, due to the disconnect.

1) Right... in coprorate structures, owners can't go to jail.... and they give up many many rights and benefits that one gets in a non corproate structure.  Like I noted above.   Which goes against your claim that they get "The full benefit of owning the company."   Becuse they don't.

2) Often times management doesn't go to jail for anything in a corporate structure.   Also rarely happens in a non-coporate structure by the way.   There are no laws protecting management from going to jail.   Government just doesn't prosecute them, because the government benefits more by getting 125 billlion from a company, then it does prosecuting John CEO and throwing him in jail.  

See Bob Diamond who just worked out a non prosecute agreement for a bunch of company cash (and presumibly to change his testimony about what BoE told him).  Despite the fact that he's stepping down.

You shouldn't be complainging about corporate personhood here, and instead be argueing that there should be a law that outlaws nonprosecution agreements using company money.

Or just a presidential order or whatever... but right now the government has a HUGE incentive to NOT put people in jail... that has NOTHING to do with corporate personhood.

3) If an owner has hired a seperate Manager... chances are they "stay quiet" because they don't know enough to note when somethign is going wrong.   Note most owners of companies who built it from the ground up, and know the buisness are also the CEOs.

As for the rest of what you said... it seems like a convincing narrative... it just doesn't seem like an honest one.   Generally when management fucks up, they still seem to be around when it goes down.   In just about every case I can think of in the last 3 years or so, every company who had a downturn, had the CEO at fault still at the helm at the time it screwed up.  Golden Parachutes suck, but that's what having a good CEO (or one that seems to be good) gives you.

Meanwhile, managers CAN be thrown in jail for only thinking of the short term, rewarding themselves and hiding long term issues.   For like, the third time in this thread.... see the Savings and Loan Scandel in the 1980's.

This didn't happen during the GFC largely due to regulators being lazy assholes who weren't doing their job in the first place.... because if they did we'd of never had this problem in the first place.

Well that and the fact that if they did and their were prosecutions, the government would probably just waive jail time for cash donations since the government is strapped for cash.

The monetary system will collapse itself, it's a self-killing system.

Too much power in the hands of the regulators, makes them high targets for corruption. That corruption breeds negative consequences which grow like a cancer, and, ultimately cause the system to collapse. The globalization of the system only makes the collapse quicker (a system can be sustained for longer when everything is interal under one state, as the Government can use force to confiscate the wealth of the citizens, to sustain the cancer - they do not have such force in the international system).