Running the show.

Editor,

This article ("On Wall Street, a Protest Matures") comes close to articulating the fundamental issue confronting our society but fails finally to unravel it. Individuals across the planet are dependent on corporations for a dizzying list of essential goods and services as the protesters' trips to the Bank of America ATM mentioned in the article illustrate.

But corporations' practices -- from stripping workers' share of the economic pie, and their rights, to the bone to arrogating enormous political power, by buying it in nominal democracies for their own aggrandizement at everyone else's and the planet's expense -- are harmful to society and must be brought under democratic control.

Ending rule by corporations, by getting their money and their lobbyists out of politics and getting the democratic will of the public into corporate governance, is the defining challenge for capitalism in our epoch.

Fat cats used to running the world and getting filthy rich by ruining it and impoverishing 99% of humanity will squirm and loose their goons to manhandle and murder people to retain the privileges to which they think they are entitled, but ultimately I am confident the human race will win whether the people running the show right now wake up and join humanity or not.

Re: "On Wall Street, a Protest Matures" (10/3/2011)