The Corporation

Imagine...

a corporation that does not need to sell products or services to raise revenue.

With unfailing regularity The Corporation sends you an invoice for services you never signed up for. If you are late in payment, The Corporation can take your home away, even though it isn't mortgaged.

You never asked for its services, but it doesn't care. The Corporation lays a claim to a portion of your income from cradle to the grave, and it unilaterally decides the amounts you owe it, and when you pay it.

You cannot unsubscribe from The Corporation's mailing list. You can only sell all your possessions, abandon your friends and family, and move beyond an arbitrarily designated line on a map, where another corporation will treat you as chattel.

The Corporation writes thousands of pages of rules and regulations that you must obey, even though you do not work for it. The Corporation owns cages in which it can imprison you for years. Your only recourse is a tribunal owned, and a judge paid, by said Corporation. There are no third parties.

Once in a few years, The Corporation gives you a shareholder vote, even though you don't own shares. But your vote carries the weight of one in millions, and is meaningless. Should you choose not to vote, the will of others will be imposed on you anyway.

The Corporation claims to protect you, but it starts aggressive wars and bombs people around the world with Depleted Uranium, that causes untold suffering, and brings upon you the hatred of entire peoples.

The Corporation doesn't send criminals to jail for hurting people, but because they commit crimes that were not sanctioned and mandated by its officers. The Corporation often makes defending against criminals itself a crime.

If you lived in a world where such a Corporation existed, would you sit idly by?

What if The Corporation were named The State?