this country in its present form is beyond redemption

[moondust]

64. It started long ago.

Read my sig line and you'll see that even Jefferson recognized the dangers of corporations 200 years ago. And there were only SIX corporations in the U.S. around the time the Constitution was signed (according to David Cay Johnston a few nights ago on the teevee). Not such a big deal way back then.

But I wonder what the "wise old men" thought would eventually develop when they decided again and again to allow the malignant growth of economic entities whose only mandate was to produce profits with little or no regard for how or what the social or environmental costs might be. Would the impersonal, faceless owners/shareholders with only limited liability even know or care how the profits were obtained? Seems to me a fairly predictable prescription for eventual social disaster as those entities merge, conglomerate, and grow more greedy, manipulative, and predatory over time in the endless pursuit of record profits at almost any cost.