A seat at the kid’s table

When I was young we always did a big Christmas dinner at my grandparent’s house. There were a lot of us, and the children were always relegated during the meal to a kid’s table in the kitchen rather than given a place at the adult table in the dining room. It made sense – kids are a disaster at large meals. They make a mess, add nothing substantive to the conversation, and are generally so distracting that the pleasure of what should be a fine supper is drained away by having to constantly keep at least one eye on the small person sitting next to you. This is not to say that I don’t like children. I simply think that if there are more than just a few of them they should be able to do their own thing at Christmas dinner while the rest of us eat in peace.

I feel the same way about corporations. I like Google, trust me, I really do. I just don’t think that they or any other corporate interests should have a place at the negotiating table when it comes to laws and policies that are directed at them. When our leaders invite corporations to the table, they’re essentially inviting distraction, selfishness, and greed to the conversation. It strikes me as foolishly counterproductive to have businesses help to build new policy meant to counter problems that those same businesses have themselves often created or ignored in the first place.

Look at it this way. Let’s say that this year you invite to your Christmas dinner a family with a small child who has not yet mastered the art of drinking from a cup. He wants to drink from a big person cup, but he just can’t quite do it yet. This is normal, or course; but you certainly wouldn’t sit this child down at the adult table and negotiate with him about what kid of cup he should get. He get’s a sippy cup, because that’s all he can handle right now. Were you to banter back and forth with him for a time, eventually arriving at a compromise where he gets to use a regular cup as long as he puts a straw in it, what do you really think will happen? I’ll tell you – you’d have yourself a nice big spill.

Now imagine that instead of negotiating with a small child you’re negotiating with a very large oil company. And instead of trying to determine what kind of cup to drink out of you’re trying to determine what kind of regulations are needed for deep water drilling. The company would do their best to convince you that they’re fully capable of operating with limited supervision, because that’s what they want. They’re stubborn and single minded, but they’re also a bit overconfident in their abilities (sounds a lot like a small child, doesn’t it?). Now imagine that this company was drilling in the Gulf of Mexico and had the letters “B” and “P” in their name. You get the picture – you’d have yourself a nice big spill.

Across the board we see instances where corporations get a place at the bargaining table when ordinary citizens do not. On issues ranging from last year’s health care reform to this year’s net neutrality debate it has been the corporate interests that have had the greatest access to the politicians who write the rules. Sure there was plenty of screaming by angry citizens at “town hall” debates across the country over the health care proposals, but how many of those people actually met with Congressional committee members behind closed doors? And while the FCC ran an internet campaign to get feedback from consumers about what rules net neutrality should contain, how many of those same consumers actually got a chance to offer lengthy proposals directly to FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski? I’ll save you the trouble of guessing, the answer to both of those questions is a big fat ZERO.

This lack of representation for the people of this country in our government is the most distressing issue for our modern republican democracy. Under the original terms of the Constitution a member of the House of Representatives was never supposed to represent more than 30,000 people. Today each member represents over 700,000. This huge number makes it virtually impossible for a Representative to have a meaningful dialog with any of his or her constituents. And besides that, they spend much of their time away from their districts in Washington, D.C. anyway. The only people who do get to have face to face conversations with our Representatives are lobbyists and large campaign donors – groups who very often represent the exact same interests. Thus, when we invite businesses to the policy making table, they’re in many ways simply negotiating with themselves. Our Congressmen are supposed to be the representatives of the people, but they no longer do any such thing. They no longer know any of the people.

Back when I used to sit at the kids table at my Grandparent’s house I would long for the day when I could finally get to sit at the adult table. One day, that finally happened; but it wasn’t until long after I was mature enough to not play with my food or carelessly spill my drinks. Corporations, on the other hand, aren’t even that mature. They are single minded organizations with one goal – to make the largest profits that they can under all circumstances. It’s not even really their fault. That’s what people created them for, so they’re acting in exactly the way they were intended. However, this doesn’t mean that they should be more represented in government than the people. Because they have only one point of view and perspective, they should be less represented. People have multiple wants and needs, and these must all be weighed together to formulate policy that is the best for everyone. Corporations don’t care about “everyone.” They can’t. They’re always going to be like the small child who wants to be at the adult table even though he’s not mature enough. And that, to me, is why corporations should be forced to go sit at the kids table – they can always come ask us questions if they need to, but we should no longer allow them to constantly ruin our dinner.

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