Limited liability in a free market society...

[Steven Douglas]

any good historical books for recommendation?

Gangs of America: The Rise of Corporate Power and the Disabling of Democracy

Geared more to appeal to the Occupy people, I think, but a very entertaining read nonetheless--factual and informative.


For a bit more scholarly background history of how the corporate camel got its nose in the legal and political tent, read:

The Corporate Reconstruction of American Capitalism, 1890-1916: The Market, The Law And Politics By Martin J. Sklar

That's a good one because it covers the rise of economic liberalism during the Progressive Era, and how Roosevelt, Taft and Wilson factored into all of it. Just as the Fed gets defended by the political left and right, each for their own non-principled self-interested reasons, a similar story plays out with the rise of corporate powers. My take is that presumably, anything that concentrates and collectivizes wealth/power was also thought to be easier to socially and centrally engineer. That's the madness behind the method, at least, and there's something to that, in a "At least my dog is on a leash and has to obey me" kind of way. It's not nearly as easy to regulate and control a herd of individual Citizen cats with actual rights, but if you give corporations favored status and artificially empower them with greater advantages geared toward concentrating wealth, they are presumably much easier to tax and control ::: snicker :::, as creatures of the state acting as a matter of privilege, and not rights.