Saturday, December 14, 2002

Supreme Court ruling of the 19th and the power of US corporations
"As the father of the Constitution, President James Madison, wrote, "There is an evil which ought to be guarded against in the indefinite accumulation of property from the capacity of holding it in perpetuity by... corporations. The power of all corporations ought to be limited in this respect. The growing wealth acquired by them never fails to be a source of abuses."

Comment: The "accumulation of property" into fewer and fewer hands, whether these be corporations, churches, families, individuals, warlords etc, is a recurring problem in all societies. Direct taxation (ie, land value taxation) goes to the heart of these problems, although land reform, death duties, dissolutions and revolutions are also responses that occur repeatedly.

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