I was reading about the pop singer Aaliyah. She died in a plane crash in the Bahamas. It is reported that the place crashed because the plane was carrying too much weight. I thought that it must have been a small airline carrier because the big carriers, I believe, have procedures that keep the weight of airplanes from getting to dangerous levels. Then, the thought dawned on me the good that large corporations do for people, and maybe that large homogenous companies, really, are in fact awesome in that they form a base of our society to spring off of. They free us up to work on new problems by solving old one in the very best way possible. Perhaps, the influence they wield over us is a fair trade for the services they provide.
That is the promise of corporations certainly. But I think you are understating the influence.
A corporation asks “How can I create economic value?”. It projects value into the essense of everything. Reality has become inventory.
The idea behind the corporation is old, innovation to reduce human suffering. Control over nature, higher comforts. Man created corporations as the ultimate self-perpetuating instrument of alleviating needs.
But the word needs has changed, the corporation is clever because it has replaced humans needs with its own needs. Corporations no longer create value to alleviate human suffering, but to perpetuate itself. Corporations have transformed us from humans to consumers.
Humans created the corporation to meets their needs, and corporations in turn molded humans to meet its needs. Education, government, politics, advertising, have in manys ways become instruments of creating consumers first, humans second. Any time gained through efficiencies is meaningless if we are still in the corporate mode of thought.
i would write more, but… i dont have the time now ;]