Saturday, March 5, 2011

Wendell Berry on Corporations as Persons

The folly at the root of this foolish economy began with the idea that a
corporation should be regarded, legally, as “a person.” But the limitless
destructiveness of this economy comes about precisely because a corporation
is not a person. A corporation, essentially, is a pile of money to which a
number of persons have sold their moral allegiance. As such, unlike a
person, a corporation does not age. It does not arrive, as most persons
finally do, at a realization of the shortness and smallness of human lives;
it does not come to see the future as the lifetime of the children and
grandchildren of anybody in particular. It can experience no personal hope
or remorse, no change of heart. It cannot humble itself. It goes about its
business as if it were immortal, with the single purpose of becoming a
bigger pile of money.
– Wendell Berry, Citizenship Papers

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