Business

The latter few centuries have seen the rise of non-human entities – businesses – with their own legal rights, powers and obligations, with some being comparable in stature to states.

Nations and states, as independent entities, separate from their citizens, have been around a long time. Paralleled to their rise has been the idea of businesses having a similar relationship to the people who they employ, or indeed the rest of societies in which they exist.

For democracies, a government has a duty of care to its citizens. In that way, by definition, a democratic government is, to some measure, socialist, just because of its obligations. Of course, dictatorships, pure monarchies, and ideologically-driven states don't necessarilly have such restrictions on their powers.

The big issue for societies is how much power and rights can such non-human business entities have, especially given how much influence and lobbying they can bring to bear, especially compared to individual people.

Of course, businesses, while legally non-human, are run by a few key people, and so can be manipulated by them to fulfil their own political agendas, rather than what is best for the businesses. And what is good for the business, when viewed strictly from their own view, may be at odds with the best interest of the citizens of the countries in which they operate.

People in charge of rich businesses with resources available that can match nations, can, and have, succesfully lobbied to get concessions that directly undermine the ability of a country's citizens to challenge them. This is the real issue that undermines any efforts to achieve some equity in the ability of people having a real choice in what opportunities and life experiences they can engage.

If we are to get to some measure of equity in opportunity, non-human entites have to be considered second-class citizens, with real people first. As it is, it is rich people driving trans-national corporations to put other people second that is leading to the huge disparities in wealth distribution, and consequently huge poverty in the world.

Time to decide what type of world we want for us, and take the hard decisions and steps to make this world a better place for all those that also have consciousness and free will, and not just a body that voraciously feeds itself to the destruction of all else!