Legally and formally, a corporation is a person, with the same rights (life, liberty, and property) that a human is accorded. Whether this is good is hotly debated.
In theory, I like the corporate veil (protection of personal property, reputation, and liberty in cases of good-faith business failure and bankruptcy) but I don’t see it playing well in practice. If you need $400,000 in bank loans to start your restaurant, you’ll still be expected to take on personal liability, or you won’t get the loan. I don’t see corporate personhood doing what it’s supposed to for the little guys. It seems to work only for those with the most powerful lobbyists. (Prepare for rage.) Health insurance companies cannot be sued, not even for the amount of the claim, if their denial of coverage causes financial hardship, injury, or death. (If a health-insurance executive is sitting next to you, I give you permission to beat the shit out of him.) On the other hand, a restaurant proprietor or software freelancer who makes mistakes on his taxes can get seriously fucked up by the IRS. I’m a huge fan of protecting genuine entrepreneurs from the consequences of good-faith failure. As for cases of bad-faith failure among corrupt, social-climbing, private-sector bureaucrats populating Corporate America’s upper ranks, well… not as much. Unfortunately, the corporate veil in practice seems to protect the rich and well-connected from the consequences of some enormous crimes (environmental degradation, human rights violations abroad, etc.) I can’t stand for that.
On the corporation, it’s clearly not a person like you or me. It can’t be imprisoned. It can be fined heavily (loss of status and belief) but not executed. It has immense power, if for no other reason than its reputation among “real” physical people, but no empirically discernible will, so we must trust its representatives (“executives”) to know it. It tends to operate in ways that are outside of mortal human’s moral limitations, because it is nearly immune from punishment, but a fair deal of bad behavior will be justified. The worst that can happen to it is gradual erosion of status and reputation. A mere mortal who behaved as it does would be called a psychopath, but it somehow enjoys a high degree of moral credibility in spite of its actions. (Might makes right.) Is that a person, a flesh-and-blood human? Nope. That’s a god. Corporations don’t die because they “run out of money”. They die because people stop believing in them. (Financial capitalism accelerates the disbelief process, one that used to require centuries.) Their products and services are no longer valued on divine reputation, and their ability to finance operations fails. It takes a lot of bad behavior for most humans to dare disbelieve in a trusted god. Zeus was a rapist, and the literal Yahweh genocidal, and they still enjoyed belief for thousands of years.
“God” is a loaded word, because some people will think I’m talking about their concept of a god. (This diversion isn’t useful here, but I’m actually not an atheist.) I have no issue with the philosophical concept of a supreme being. I’m actually talking about the historical artifacts, such as Zeus or Ra or Odin or (I won’t pick sides) the ones believed in today. I do have an issue with those, because their political effects on real, physical humans can be devastating. It’s not controversial in 2014 that most of these gods don’t exist– and it probably won’t be controversial in 5014 that the literal Jehovah/Allah doesn’t exist– but people believed in them at a time, and no longer do. When they were believed to be real, they (really, their human mouthpieces) could be more powerful than kings.
The MacLeod model of the organization separates it into three tiers. The Losers (checked-out grunts) are the half-hearted believers who might suspect that their chosen god doesn’t exist, but would never say it at the dinner table. The Clueless (unconditional overperformers who lack strategic vision and are destined for middle-management) are the zealots destined for the low priesthood, who clean the temple bathrooms. Not only do they believe, but they’re the ones who work to make blind faith look like a virtue. At the top are the Sociopaths (executives) who often aren’t believers themselves, but who enjoy the prosperity and comfort of being at the highest levels of the priesthood and, unless their corruption becomes obnoxiously obvious, being trusted to speak for the gods. The fact that this nonexistent being never punishes them for acting badly means there is virtually no check on their increasing abuse of “its” power.
Ever since humans began inventing gods, others have not believed in them. Atheism isn’t a new belief we can pin on (non-atheistic scientist) Charles Darwin. Many of the great Greek philosophers were atheists, to start. Buddha was, arguably, an atheist and Buddhism is theologically agnostic to this day. Socrates may not have thought himself an atheist, but one of his major “crimes” was disbelief in the literal Greek gods. In truth, I would bet that the second human ever to speak on anthropomorphic, supernatural beings said, “You’re full of shit, Asshole”. (Those may, however, have been his last words.) There’s nothing to be ashamed of in disbelief. Many of the high priests (MacLeod Sociopaths) are, themselves, non-believers!
I’m a corporate atheist and a humanist. My stance is radical. From most, these gods (and not the people doing all the damn work) are claimed to be the engines of progress and innovation. People who are not baptized and blessed by them (employment, promotion, good references) are judged to be filthy, and “natural” humans deserve shame (original sin). If you don’t have their titles and accolades, your reputation is shit and you are disenfranchised from the economy. This enables them to act as extortionists, just as religious authorities could extract tribute not because those supernatural beings existed (they never did) but because they possessed the political and social ability to banish and to justify violence.
I’m sorry, but I don’t fucking agree with any of that.
