Strike the root

I'm sure I won't be the only one quoting Paddy Chayefsky in the wake of the Supreme Corporate's idiotic decision, but here you go:

There are no nations. There are no peoples. There are no Russians. There are no Arabs. There are no third worlds. There is no West. There is only one holistic system of systems, one vast and immane, interwoven, interacting, multivariate, multinational dominion of dollars. Petro-dollars, electro-dollars, multi-dollars, reichmarks, rins, rubles, pounds, and shekels.

It is the international system of currency which determines the totality of life on this planet. That is the natural order of things today. That is the atomic and subatomic and galactic structure of things today! [...] There is no America. There is no democracy. There is only IBM and ITT and AT&T and DuPont, Dow, Union Carbide, and Exxon. Those are the nations of the world today.

(If you haven't seen the movie, you really should see the movie.  And be sure to see the other movie too.)

This also seems like a good time to remember this:

1. Of the 100 largest economies in the world, 51 are now global corporations; only 49 are countries.
2. The combined sales of the world's Top 200 corporations are far greater than a quarter of the world's economic activity. 
3. The Top 200 corporations' combined sales are bigger than the combined economies of all countries minus the biggest 9; that is they surpass the combined economies of 182 countries.
4. The Top 200 have almost twice the economic clout of the poorest four-fifths of humanity.

That data is from the year 2000; below are some updated stats from 2005:

Of the world's largest 150 economic entities, 95 are corporations (63.3%) according to data released this month by Fortune Magazine and the World Bank. Wal-Mart, BP, Exxon Mobil, and Royal Dutch/Shell Group all rank in the 25 largest entities in the world, above countries that include Indonesia, Saudi Arabia, Norway, Denmark, Poland, South Africa, and Greece.

But even taking all that into account, I'm not particularly bothered by this decision.  It ultimately does little to change the reality of corporate control of our political system, and in a sense it's an improvement because it makes that reality clear and undeniable.  The mask is gone.  Also, this will be the first time many people have heard (or fully understood) that our legal system treats corporations as persons, with all the rights that entails—and that's a good thing, because only the clinically insane believe that it's desirable for immortal and amoral profit-driven entities to have more power over our lives than they already do.  Even hardcore conservatives will usually agree on this point if you talk to them about it one on one, with specific examples.  I would never have imagined at the beginning of this week that by the end of it the phrase "corporate personhood" would be on so many lips, yet here we are.  Thanks, Supreme Thwart!

And the fact that this makes it impossible to pass laws limiting corporate brainwashing is also arguably for the best.  McCain-Feingold was never more than a half-assed palliative that left corporate domination over the system essentially intact—the illusion of reform, not the real thing.  In its breathtaking, overreaching arrogance, this decision forces us toward the only real solution to ending corporate dominance not only of our political system but of every aspect of our lives: passing a constitutional amendment to put an end to the offensively absurd fiction of corporate personhood.

So now that the Supreme Snort has made it illegal to waste our time hacking at the branches of evil, maybe we can finally start striking at the root.

ADDING: Conservative sites have shown an impressive dedication to hypocrisy as they've studiously avoided condemning this decision as "judicial activism", but National Review Online deserves special recognition for choosing yesterday as the perfect day to decry liberal judicial activism.  Way to go, NRO!

Comments

[NomadUK]

Network should be required viewing for all secondary/high school students; it's at least as important as requiring them all to read MacBeth or Huckelberry Finn. It's utter genius; the sad thing is, where once it was satire, it's now barely distinguishable from reality.

It ultimately does little to change the reality of corporate control of our political system, and in a sense it's an improvement because it makes that reality clear and undeniable.

No, it doesn't change it, but the truly depressing aspect is that they clearly no longer see the need to keep things hidden. Shovel trillions from the proles to the masters at the top? Sure, do it in broad daylight. Hand the political system over to corporations? Make it a public Supreme Court decision. Will anyone (of significance) notice? Will anyone (of significance) care? More importantly, can anyone do anything about it?

I think the fact that we're sitting here having to ask these questions about such acts tells us the answer that the perpetrators have already calculated: No.

[Save the Oocytes]

IMDB says Network is up 216% in popularity this week.

[John Caruso]

I don't think there's any calcuation—they just take take whatever they can get away with under the system as it exists. So we need to change that system. And while I agree that it may not look like there's an anti-corporate insurrection in the offing, appearances can be deceiving (especially when you look at the situation globally rather than just focusing on anesthetized Western populations...and even in the West, elites are forgetting that if you don't keep a critical mass of people at a minimum level of comfort, they'll eventually turn on you).

[Bjorn]

"Undeniable" will always be an overstatement in this world, alas, but word.

[Distressed]

Say we do strike down corporate personhood globally. What do we replace profit-driven entities with, I mean legally. I'm not being funny here, I'd like to know.

[NomadUK]

What do we replace profit-driven entities with, I mean legally.

I really don't see much problem with making sure that the executive officers of the business know that their heads will be on pikes if one of their radiation treatment machines burns a hole in someone's chest because the software was shit. Will that do?

[John Caruso]

Striking down corporate personhood doesn't mean outlawing profit-driven entities—it just means being able to keep them on a short leash.