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

Dodge v. Ford still stands for the legal principal that managers and directors have a legal duty to put the shareholders' interests above all others and no legal authority to serve any other interests - what has come to be known as "the best interests of the corporation" principal.

Deregulation freed corporations from legal constraints, and privatization empowered them to govern areas of society from which they had been previously been excluded. By the end of the century, the corporation had become the world's dominant institution. Yet history humbles dominant institutions.

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