Since the late 18th century American legal decision that the business corporation organizational model is legally a person, it has become a dominant economic, political and social force around the globe. This film takes an in-depth psychological examination of the organization model through various case studies. What the study illustrates is that in the its behaviour, this type of "person" typically acts like a dangerously destructive psychopath without conscience. Furthermore, we see the profound threat this psychopath has for our world and our future, but also how the people with courage, intelligence and determination can do to stop it.
This is interesting, but dated. Back in 2003 the left was still anti-corporation, they didn't support the outsourcing of jobs, they didn't support the accountability that theses institutions had they were fairly unified in their condemnation of it.
Today there is a clear shift and we aren't seeing that much of it, Nike hasn't changed their practices of out-sourcing and sweatshops and are now an iconic brand on one side of the divide. Outsourcing is now supported by the left where "the jobs aren't coming back, deal with it" is a commonly heard phrase there. It wasn't back in 2003.
So, watching it in 2003 as opposed to 2018 it's interesting to see a lot of the same faces that once opposed it speaking on the news in favor of how the corporations work today.
If memory serves, Noam Chomsky is the only political voice that hasn't made an abrupt shift or dialed it back in the decade plus since it's release.
Despite the shift in some of the voices heard in the documentary, it does do an excellent job tracking the evolution of the corporation in the United States, how it started in our earliest days, straight through how it became an individual entity politically, and onto how that identity as a "person" effected our politics.
And, at times, it was moving, given that it did treat people who work for corporations very well, even interviewing them so that they can express that, yes, they too had the same concerns as the people protesting them, but were bound by the law to pursue policies that would generate the most profit for their shareholders, which illustrates an interesting problem that is often ignored with discussing the topic.
It remains educational today, even if there has been a distinct shift on how the topic and some of the corporations highlighted are handled by the people interviewed for the documentary.
