Capitalism Is A Golem Run Amok

We made artificial beings out of corporations and they suck

We've created a golem with capitalism. We breathed life into corporations, gave them personhood, by letter of the law. We had them do work for us, including colonizing, enslaving, and exploiting other human beings. Now they straddle the globe and their emissions are breathing death into us all.

According to the Encyclopedia Judaica, a Golem is a person made in an artificial way.

Since the Roman empire, countries have been creating such artificial persons by official act (indistinguishable from magic anthropologically). This concept of legal personhood is well-established in modern law. Today almost anyone can create these artificial beings and their power spreads over and above any sovereignity. They're called corporations, from the Latin word meaning "embody, make or fashion into a body." Like a golem. Exactly like a golem.

Under the American empire these artificial beings even have political rights, preferential rights in fact. As the US Supreme Court wrote in 2010 "we are convinced that, in the end, this corporation has a constitutional right to speak on this subject." As Justice Scalia wrote, "to exclude or impede corporate speech is to muzzle the principal agents of the modern free economy."

We have truly created a golem, and the story of the golem does not end well. As  the aforementioned Encyclopedia continues "According to these legends, R. Loew [some dude] created the golem so that he would serve him, but was forced to restore him to his dust when the golem began to run amok and endanger people’s lives."

In a modern retelling of the story, a family of Hasidic Jews go to a gangster, Tony Soprano, for a favor. As the son tells the father, "You're creating a Golem, a monster to do your dirty work, like the Rabbi in the story. He'll destroy you."

And destroy they do. As the dissent to that Supreme Court decision notes: