We have turned institutions that were created to serve us into monstrous Leviathans. Sixty-nine of the richest one hundred economic entities in the world are not countries. They are corporations.(Global Justice Now) To these Leviathans, we are a human resource like coal or oil or electricity, a human appendage to the cancerous growth of global corporations that have transcended their masters like a Frankenstein monster.
These aberrant mutations to the body politic are immortal. They continue to live through the bylaws of their charter from one generation to another into the indefinite future. On the other hand, you and I are mere mortals who live and die as they go on growing larger and larger. Yet, despite their size and the fact that they dwarf us, they are by law in the United States designated as "legal persons" with all the rights and freedoms of you and me without any of the responsibilities. (Santa Clara v Southern Pacific 188 Us 394, 1886)
However, the notion that corporations are persons like you and me is merely a mask to hide the monster behind a legal fiction. This "person" is not human. It is inhuman, and It has a singular pursuit and only one objective, and that is to maximize profit at any cost. A corporation-as-a-person is incapable of feelings, and it is totally devoid of empath and a sense of responsibility to others. Even the crime of mass murder is irrelevant to this monster if the cost of committing the crime is less than the profit to be made being a murderer on a scale that would horrify us if a single human person did it or even if a country did it in the act of war.
For example, in a law suit in which a car slammed into the rear end of Patricia Anderson's car and caused an explosion. It was revealed that General Motors determined that the cost of correcting the flaw in the design of the vehicle in the following way: (1) They multiplied the 500 fuel-fed-fire fatalities occurring each year because of their faulty design by $200,000 dollars, the estimated cost o General Motors in legal damages for each potential wrongful death suit. (2) They then divide that figure by the 41 million cars that they estimated were on the road with that fatal design and determined that it would cost them $2.40/ fatality if they did nothing and just let people die. However to redesign the cars and correct the flaw in the cars that were on the road, they estimated that it would cost them 8.59/car. This meant that the company saved $6.19/car if they simple allowed people to die year after year, or in other words, it was cost efficient to commit mass murder. (Patricia Anderson et al. v General Motors)
GM is not an isolated case. Corporate crimes dwarf street crime. For example, the Federal Bureau of Investigation estimated that the cost yearly of burglaries and robberies in the United States amounted to $4.5 billion dollars in 2014, bur just the savings and Loan fraud of the 80s alone cost the American taxpayer an estimate $300-$500 billion dollars. Added to that is an estimated $40 billion dollars a year in repair fraud, $15 billion dollars a year in deceptive financial practices, and billions upon billions of dollars stolen and robbed in cheating depositors, overcharging customers, food contamination, adulterated medication, illegal marketing, failure to report safety defects, workplace hazards, sanitation violations, air pollution, ocean dumping, climate denial, price fixing, foreign bribery and wage theft. But, that is not the worst of their crimes.
Corporations commit violent crimes against living human beings that reach a scale of horror compared to the horrors of war. For example, compared o the 14,000 Americans murdered every year in America as estimated by the FBI and the 58,220 Americans killed in the Vietnam War, it is estimated that 54,000 Americans die every year on the job or from occupational diseases, and tens of thousands of Americans fall victim every year to the silent violence of pollution, contaminate food, hazardous consumer products, and hospital malpractice. (Mokhiber)
I repeat. These monsters, by charter, have only one imperative - to maximize profit. All other qualities that we define as human - love of family, a sense of community, national pride, civic responsibility, empathy for the suffering of others, common decency - they are all irrelevant and meaningless to the bottom line. In human terms, corporations as "persons', are certifiably insane psychopaths capable of unspeakable crimes.
Cites:
1. Global Justice Now, "69 of the richest 100 entities on the planet are corporations, not government, figurers show", Wednesday, 17 October, 2018
2. Patricia Anderson et al. v General Motors, Superior Court, Los Angeles County, California
3. Mokhiber, Russell, Corporate Crime and Violence: Big Business Power and the Abuse of the Public Trust, Random House 1988
4. Weinstein, Henry and Eric Melnic, "Ordered to Pay $4.9 Billion in Cash Verdict" Los Angeles Time, July 10, 1997
Author's Note - I have made Learn or Die: The New American Revolution available to you through Smashwords in a Freedom for Free Edition where you can pay what you want for the book or nothing at all. It is free. I'm doing this because after 50 years of research and study I believe I have found the way for all of us.
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