When the financial market is god, who pays?
Most religions acknowledge the contingencies and paradoxes of human life. Not this one.
Earlier this spring David Dao was dragged off a United Airlines flight by aviation police in Chicago. When he refused to deplane and wait for a later flight, the police hauled him from his seat and dragged him down the aisle, breaking his nose and leaving him bloody and concussed. The police had sworn to serve and protect, but the person they protected was the corporation that owned the plane, not the human being who had paid that corporation to fly him home.
This incident is an example of the problem Harvey Cox analyzes in his new book, The Market as God. Cox argues that our sacralized market endows corporations with personhood, granting them immunity from double jeopardy, giving them the right to a trial by jury, and allowing their unlimited contributions to political campaigns in the name of protecting their freedom of speech.
With the power to remake itself over time, this new corporate person has attained something that even Adam and Eve did not enjoy: immortality. And, as in the case of Union Carbide, which became part of Dow Chemical after the 1984 disaster in Bhopal, India, this immortal corporate person has been granted another quality that Adam and Eve lacked: blamelessness.
