Corporations: Where the Variables of Human Life Mean Something Different
Introducing the ‘middlemen’ between nature and our stomachs.
Economic development since the Second Agricultural Revolution has certainly produced many cultural and technological wonders.
By dramatically expanding how we could use and experience Time, our species’ inner world was undoubtedly enriched.
But it has also brought many secondary effects, where the longer-term impact may be difficult to measure or understand. For example, our species’ consumption of Food has become increasingly disconnected from its production.
Hunter-gatherers knew exactly where their Food was coming from, as well as how it was obtained or produced — they did everything themselves.
Things are very different now.
A growing number of “middlemen” operate in the widening gulf between nature and our stomachs, but they are not usually human.
The primary actors here are corporations.
A corporation is a legally recognized business structure that can operate as a separate legal entity or “person”, meaning that it can engage in Money transactions with other transacting entities.
Corporations must be legally formed by living humans, are usually staffed by living humans, may produce goods and services for which they are paid by living humans, and are ultimately owned and controlled by living humans, but they are not themselves alive.
They do not experience Time, and they do not require Food.
Their “age” may be measured as the number of years since registration, but this is only measured Time. Corporations do not experience their existence any more than a pencil.
Immune to pain, pleasure, or any feeling at all, “corporate” Time is simply Measured Time.
The human owners or managers will require Food to survive, but the corporation itself does not, and the humans can always be replaced.
Corporate existence is very different from human life.
As strictly legal creatures, corporations are not biologically constrained. No matter their “age”, corporations require only Money to continue existing. If a corporation were stranded in a proverbial “desert”, Money really would facilitate survival.
Our earliest ancestors traditionally acquired Food directly from nature to provide life-sustaining nourishment for their extended families.
Most Food today is produced by corporations for an entirely different purpose: to make Money.
This is not necessarily an “evil”, but it certainly complicates things.
Corporate Food products may include labels indicating the country of origin, but the production process is generally kept a secret. The names of many complex, scientific-sounding ingredients may be listed on the packaging, but their effects on our bodies — and ultimately on our Time — are hard to pin down.
Why humans select and eat Food is incomparably different from why corporations produce and sell it, which changes the meaning of this concept for corporations.
Humans have traditionally selected Foods for their nourishment (to enhance their Time), while corporations generally produce Food to maximize profits (to increase their Money).
Humans require Food to physically survive, while corporations require Money to legally survive.
While animal life operates in the “2D” plane of Time and Food, corporate existence is also limited to two “variables”: Money and Measured Time.
If a corporation cannot meet its financial (Money) obligations, it will cease to exist.
But this does not cause any physical harm to human owners.
For humans, Money is a means to facilitate our modern lives — it is not the end. Our accumulation of Money is only peripheral to our experience of Time.
Things are different for corporations.
The end is accumulation itself, imbuing “Money” with a meaning that is wholly divorced from how humans relate to it. How corporations relate to Money has nothing to do with the human concepts of Time or Food.
The situation is this:
Humans require Food to survive.
Most Food is produced by corporations, which require only Money.
Humans exchange their Time for Money (often from corporations).
Then we use it to buy Food (also often from corporations).
But since the goal of a corporation is to accumulate Money, the human and corporate interests in the concepts of Time (Human), Food, and Money may conflict.
For example, to make their Food products taste better and last longer on shelves, large corporations typically add small amounts of certain industrial chemicals — substances that would never be considered “Food” if served alone.
But we eat them anyway.
Health risks to a human are incomparable to financial, legal, or reputational risks to a corporation because human life is incomparable to corporate existence.
It turns out that the most profitable Food products to sell are often the least “profitable” to eat. Consuming Foods that have been engineered to last longer on shelves (measured Time), may shorten and reduce the quality of our lives (Human Time).
The many conflicts of interest between humans and corporations are not all conspiracy theories. They are the natural and expected result when “Time”, “Food”, and “Money” mean different things to corporations than they do for humans.
The Algebra of Life will help you to both detect and protect yourself from such conflicts.