Yesterday, my son observed that the continued confusion of corporations with actual people in order to grant them human rights was part of a broader move back to a feudal social structure.
I thought about his analogy, and after I wrote the post about Hobby Lobby-– the latest manifestation of this phenomenon, after Citizens United and its progeny–I googled feudalism and found the following definition:“Classical feudalism” (before the rise of strong feudal monarchies in which kings claimed the role of liege lords) is characterized by the fragmentation of political authority and the passage of public power into many different private hands.
The Supreme Court’s corporatism is anything but market friendly capitalism; it’s all about privatizing power and eviscerating government’s authority to create a level playing field. It’s about making government (the monarch) more responsive to the oligarchs and less attentive to the polity. It’s about undercutting democratic decision-making and further empowering the wealthy and well-connected.
And then I found a visual….
