[thecavemaster]

"A corporation has no heart, no soul, no morals. It cannot feel pain. You cannot argue with it. That's because a corporation is not a living thing, but a process--an efficient way of generating revenue. It takes energy from outside (capital, labor, raw materials) and transforms it in various ways. In order to keep on "living, it needs to meet only one condition: its income must equal its expenditures over the long term. As long as it does that, it can exist indefinitely.

"When a corporation hurts people or damages the environment, it will feel no sorrow or remorse because it is intrinsically unable to do so. It may sometimes apologize, but that's not remorse...it's public relations. Corporations are legal fictions. Their "bodies" are just judicial constructs, and that is why, unchecked by a strong federal government and an engaged populace, they are dangerous.

"When a corporation like General Electric, Exxon, BP, Union Carbide, or Phillip Morris breaks the law, causes an environmental catastrophe or otherwise undermines the public interest, the usual result is that... nothing very much happens....in fact, it's often the public and low-level employeeds who suffer the most when a corporation dies."

...from Kalle Lasn, in Culture Jam: The Uncooling of America