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roperty. Moreover, since corporations have far greater power than individuals, companies assumed the status of super-individuals, with rights equal to ordinary human citizens and yet resources and influence far in excess of even the wealthiest or most famous of people. The key section in the fourteenth amendment to the U.S. Constitution. Is below. Subsequent interpretation of this amendment defined corporations, as well as people, as legal persons. “Section 1. All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the state wherein they reside. No state shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any state deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.” c. trademarks and branding Trademark—which is “a name or symbol used to show that a product is made by a particular company and legally registered so that no other manufacturer can use it” (Microsoft Word dictionary)—represents a form of economic fraud in Perelman’s view. Trademarks become commercially lucrative in the U.S. economy in the early twentieth century, notably when goods stopped being offered primarily as bulk commodities (e.g., barrels of biscuits) and assumed idiosyncratic brand identities (e.g. Chips Ahoy!). Trademarks ensured that brands retained their legal integrity, and thus made possible a branded culture of largely artificial and manufactured distinctions between goods. Branding adds an intangible form of value to a good, a form that benefits from an advertising culture committed to ever-greater differentiation between brands of toilet paper or cologne. Brand identities add to the profitability of goods by creating demand (and thus higher prices) for these commodities far in excess of their intrinsic market value. Clothes, shoes, or furniture from a department store like the Bay are probably just as good as those from the Gap or Niketown. Yet, the mark-up on coveted brands like Versace or Hummer is so great that the extra money we pay out to own these things represents a kind of tribute that the poor and middle-class pay to the rich. This is a 2001 list of the top 25 brands in order of their dollar value. All are worth more than one billion dollars; Coca-Cola at the time was worth $15 billion US. (Note how many are for cigarettes, beer, soda pop, and snack food.) The source for this list is Oligopoly Watch, a corporate watchdog linked at the Rogue’s Gallery. Lay’s Coca-Cola Gillette Marlboro Huggies Pepsi Nescafe Budweiser Sprite Campbell’s Tide Kellogg’s Tropicana Pampers Wrigley’s Benson & Hedges Colgate Camel Duracell Danone Heineken Fanta Kodak Friskies L&M d. intellectual property law and its importance to corporate capitalism Even famous conservative economists like the late Friedrich Hayek and Milton Friedman argue that the monopoly powers that patent and copyright give to corporations is a betrayal of neo-liberal faith in free markets. But intellectual property rights have become an indispensable source of profit to American capital, significantly improving what would otherwise be a disastrous balance of trade. That i