As institutional psychopaths, corporations are wont to remove obstacles that get into their way.

By leveraging their freedom from the bonds of location, corporations could now dictate the economic policy of governments.

The corporation is not an independent "person" with its own rights, needs, and desires that regulators must respect. It is a state created tool for advancing social and economic policy.

The corporation, like the psychopathic personality it resembles, is programmed to exploit others for profit.

The whole difficulty I think that that we're facing now is the question of who is going to ensure that corporations are accountable. The problem with leaving it to activists and non-governmental organizations-even with the tool of the Internet at their disposal-is that those organizations and those people don't have the legal right to compel corporations to disclose information, and that is something that governments can do.

The notion that business and government are and should be partners is ubiquitous, unremarkable, and repeated like a mantra by leaders in both domains. It seems a compelling and innocuous idea - until you think about what it really means.

These are the elements of an emerging order that may prove to be as dangerous as any fundamentalism that history has produced. For in a world where anything or anyone can be owned, manipulated, and exploited for profit, everything and everyone will be.