Both the federal union and all the states, counties and municipalities are corporations, artificial bodies created according to laws passed by legislatures. Also, because of the principle of comity, corporations organized in one state are allowed to operate in all others. Delaware, South Dakota and Georgia are favored because their operating standards are almost non-existent. Georgia only requires the payment of a regustration fee annually and a street address. New York, apparently has many more standards which enable the Aattorney General to seek relief for malfeasance in court. Corporations with nationwide operations should be supervised by Congress. That is why they have lobbyists to argue for favors and intercept restrictions whenever they cannot get one of their own people elected, as the drug industry did with Earl Leroy Carter in Georgia. Commerce has always had influence and argued for monopolies. The electric utilities agreed to have rates reviewed by legislatures in exchange for territorial monopolies. In Georgia we cannot have proper health care because the insurance industry objects to having their premiums cut.
The Republican genius has been to promote the myth that the executive has charge of everything and downgraded attention to legislators, which van get changed out every two years if they do not meet expectations. It is not entirely fair to blame commercial enterprise for demanding service because that is how the framers set it up. He who asks gets. What commerce can be blamed for is the fiction that the market, not government, responds to demand. If the market were demand-driven, we would not have starvation or advertising. There are likely some old laws on the books which the federal executive can employ to rein in abusive enterprise, if Congress does not become more attentive to people’s needs. Competition is a good principle, but not when it is redefined as a contest in which entrants are to be destroyed.
