Bear Flag Blog

If you'd like a good quick burst of indignation, check out this story. In its essentials: A woman passes away, and her son is wrapping up her estate. She has effectively no real assets, and a small (less than $1000) credit card debt. He calls Bank of America out of courtesy to inform them that she has died.

Paul Kelleher: Yes, I'm calling to inform you that my mom died on the 24th of January.

Bank of America Estates representative: I'm sorry. Oh, it looks like she never even missed a payment. That's too bad. Well, how are you planning to take care of her balance?

PK: I'm not going to. She has no estate to speak of, but you should feel free to just go through the standard probate procedure. I'm certainly not legally obligated to pay for her.

BOA: You mean you're not going to help her out?

PK: I wouldn't be helping her out -- she's dead. I'd be helping you out.

BOA: Oh, that's really not the way to look at it. I know that if it were my mother, I'd pay it. That's why we're in the banking crisis we're in: banks having to write off defaulted loans.

Now here's the thing - this isn't some insensitive jerk. This is a BofA employee doing exactly what they are supposed to do. And BofA itself is also doing what it's supposed to do. Everything in this scenario is the way it should be. At least according to our current rulesystem.

Once again I would like to point out the heretical truth that corporations are unnatural, and our embrace of them as the most powerful entities in our socioeconomic world is bizarre and ultimately foolish.

Capitalism is good, markets work, and the limited liability corporation is an awesome and useful tool.

But corporations are *not* people, and our obsequious treatment of them is wrong and bad. Just as we look back at medicinal bloodletting with a sense of quizzical superiority, humans 500 years from now will wonder what the hell we were thinking, creating artificial entities whose sole goal is to make profit and then endowing them with all the rights of actual people, in addition to immortality and wealth beyond the reach of any individual.

Anyhow, this is one small example of the unnatural nature of our corporatist system peeking out around the edges of the "normality" we've all gotten used to.