A century ago ... corporations were granted the rights of persons by radical judicial activism, an extreme violation of classical liberal principles... They were also freed from earlier obligations to keep to specific activities for which they were chartered... Furthermore, in an important move, the courts shifted power upwards, from the stockholders in a partnership to the central management, which was identified with the immortal corporate person."

"An array of mega-corporations, often linked to one another by strategic alliances, administering a global economy which is in fact a kind of a corporate mercantilism tending toward oligopoly in most sectors, heavily reliant on state power to socialize risk and cost and to subdue recalcitrant elements."

"One striking example (there are many) has to do with the international economic order -- what are called trade agreements. The general population, as polls make very clear, is strongly opposed to most of what's going on but the issues don't arise. It's not an issue in the elections because the centers of power, the minority of the opulent, are unified in support of instituting a particular kind of socio-economic order. So therefore, the issue doesn't arise. The things that are discussed are things that they don't much care about. Like questions of character or questions of reform which they know that aren't going to be implemented. So that's what discussed. Not what people care about. And that's pretty typical and it makes sense on the assumption that the role of the public as the ignorant and meddlesome outsiders is just to be spectators."