I am not attempting to \"sidetrack\" the issue. I am trying to point out that Mr. More is missing the font from which the entitlement mentality he finds so vexing flows.

While I agree with much of what Mr. More wrote, he focuses on the lower and middle classes and how we whine about wanting a “piece of the pie” without mentioning that entitlement thinking is fostered by Corporate America. Until we change the entitlement mentality of the upper 5% of the nation that thinks they are entitled to own as much of the \"pie\" as they can horde regardless of the effect on the nation, the market, or the people and regardless of the ethics involved then we really do not have any place asking the middle and lower class to give up the few crumbs they can pry from the grasp of the uber greedy.

Before we start asking people on welfare to give up their entitlement mentality we should ask the guys running these corporations collecting obscenely large paychecks for no discernable reason to give it up first.

Personal responsibility is nice but what about corporate responsibility? If a corporation is making money by fouling a river I am supposed to drink from who stops them? If a corporation makes money polluting air I am supposed to breathe who stops them? Corporations already weigh the cost of legal disposal of toxic waste against the fines do you think they would incur the costs if there was not a financial gun to their head? Read about toxic dump like “Love Canal” if you think corporations embrace the concept of personal responsibility.

Author More complains about endless legal battles and I have to agree that many are frivolous but just as many are deserved. Did people deserve to sue over Thalidomide? If it had not been for suits it might still be on the market if the corporation denied culpability in much the same way the cigarette industry did. If it were not for Thalidomide and similar events the FDA would not be as influential as it is but, yet again, Corporate America put financial gain ahead of public safety and the consumer had to pay the price.

If corporations could be trusted to act in the public good then suits would not be necessary but their default stance is “deny, deny, deny” even when they know they are wrong. In some cases the spend millions holding up cases until the petitioner looses interest, runs out of money, or dies rather than admit they screwed up and pay to fix it because of the legal precedent it sets. A little honesty from Corporate America would be a refreshing change indeed but that is not going to happen.

If a corporation puts out a faulty product that disfigures, wounds, or kills me or a family member then where is the evil in litigation?

He also laments the concept of “unfair competition” but fails to understand that the world is not a level playing field. Uncontrolled birth rates in India, China, and Latin America result in appalling standards of living where people will work for the scarcest of wages in order to avoid death. By tapping that labor market corporations can produce products and provide services at a fraction of the cost of domestic businesses driving their US based competitors out of business. This reduces domestic wages and shrinks the market unless other jobs are formed to replace the ones that are exported or filled domestically by foreign nationals.

The result of being able to access a foreign source of labor that is willing to work for substandard wages is a reduction in the standard of living in the US until such a time as the standard of living in these poor nations equalizes with that in the US. Unfortunately since the poverty in these nations is a direct result of uncontrolled population growth the only way this can happen is if the US worker becomes as poor and desperate as the worker he is competing with. This leads to a polarization of wealth as was seen when the “Robber Barons” refused to pay a fair days wage for a fair days work and this disparity has been steadily increasing since the late 1970’s.

The fact is that a corporation has a responsibility to the market they trade in and the employees that work for them that they are far more ready to abdicate than the typical worker is. You do not see corporations fighting in Iraq and dying for their country in fact, it is nearly impossible to get them to support Reservists due to the financial burden they represent.

There is a mutual dysfunction at work. Unfathomable corporate and executive greed is mirrored in miniature by those they employ. After spending a year at Disney running it into the ground, Ovitz walks away with 100 million leaving the corporation to fix his failures with layoffs, freezing wages and benefits, increasing ticket prices, and other measures while the execs that hired Ovitz still earned millions. Why didn’t they take responsibility rather than foisting it off on their workers?

Until such a time as Big Business abandons “liberty-as-license” then why should their customers and employees?