As a human grows older s/he generally loses power to the final end when all power disappears.
As a corporation grows older its power and wealth generally increases and its life has no obvious termination.
Do humans control corporations or do corporations control humans? As time goes on how does this power ratio change?
We seem to have developed a fetish (obsessive devotion) for commodification (making an entity an object of commerce) and reification (making an object of an idea). In other words, we seem to be obsessed with making more of what were human values into objects and making these objects valued in dollars.
In a world of such fetishes it seems to me that the corporation constantly gains and humans constantly lose.
What is the logical end for such a process? I think the logical end is that humans slowly morph into a machine controlled by our invented machines, i.e. our corporations.
Interesting, I would tend to agree with your final outcome, in that the corp is a machine of our making and futher that it has rights just has a human does, no question that it as it stands today has more power than the individual, and may soon have more power than the mass. Moreover its interesting how historically the ‘object’ has more primacy than us, at least thats how it appears to me.
This might all be an accident/design, however it looks like the process is not logical in the first place. If the first instance of turn towards ‘machine’ was irrational. Why should we forced to believe that the outcome will be logical. When this process started to ‘really’ happen I dont know. I would say that this thread alone represents ‘hope’ of something different. That humanity puts itself in a position to win rather than as you said " constantly lose".
Maybe we should try and convieve more cleary as to what it means that humanity wins.
I have discovered the author Ernest Becker who has written several books that I have decided, after scanning four of them, has created a synthesis of relevant knowledge from which he has proposed a solution for our problem, which is a lack of moral consciousness equal to the task of controlling our technological rationality.
The Corporation is an excellent documentary. If you know how to download torrents, I suggest you find it. It is a fascinating program.
It first outlines the history of corporations and shows how the hell they came to be legal entities with a life of their own, like a person. It then asks, “If a corporation was a person, what kind of person would that be?”
I don’t want spoil it for you, but when they bring the checklist of the personality traits of corporations to a psychologist, his analysis of the person described on the list reveals the same personality traits as a psychopath! This is only one portion of the documentary, so it’s not ruined for you.
I would highly recommend it. It got me to wondering, “How different is a country/government from a corporation?” I don’t think they are that dissimilar. They are like single minded beasts that are trying to gain more power and grow bigger at any cost.
I think that corporations are just like the history of nations. Some nations or corporations grow bigger, some grow smaller, some merge together, some die, and in the long run, the ones that stay alive change so much to where they are a completely different entity than they were in the beginning.
