How (see below) do corp.s take over small businesses.  Typically they
do so by underpaying their labor.  Small business provides the typical
owner with a middle class life.  After takeover not so for the remaining workers.
wcm
>
> On Thu, 19 Jun 1997, DDeBar wrote:
>
> > .
> > snip>
> > >  Corporations are logical consequences..of monoploy capitalism, which
> > > engulfs and devours small enterprise, no matter how strongly those
> > > enterprises products may be demanded.
> >
> > Point of fact - corporations existed as legal entities long before monoply
> > capitalism did.
> >
> Well, not necessarily. Many early corporations (e.g. British East India
> Company, Hudson Bay Company) exercised monopoly power, well before the
> well-documented rise of monopoloy capital in the 1870's. Also, the fact
> that corporations existed as legal entities isn't really the point--it's
> the nature of those entities. Early in the republic, corporate charters
> were granted by state legislatures in ways that strictly limited corporate
> activity, requiring that corporations operate in the public interest, and
> setting limits on profits, activities, and even the lifespan of a
> particular corporation. All of this began to change in the 1870's, when a
> series of legislative acts and court cases gave corporations the same
> legal & constitutional rights as persons. It's from this point that most
> of our modern problems stem. (David Korten, "When Corporations Rule the
> World", Kumarian Press, Ch. 4). The question is not one of corporations
> per se, but their ends, and who controls them.
>
> "Corporations have been enthroned....An era of corruption in high places
> will follow and money power will endeavor to prolong its reign by working
> on the prejudices of the people...until wealth is aggregated in a few
> hands...and the Republic is destroyed"  -Abraham Lincoln
>