Immortal engines

I liked this from David Runciman's book How Democracy Ends:

“Many of the things that we fret about when we imagine a future world of Als are the same worries that have been harboured about corporations for centuries.

“Corporations are man-made monsters. They have no conscience because they have no soul. They are able to live longer than people do. Some of them almost appear to be immortal. Corporations, like robots, can emerge unscathed from the wreckage of human affairs.

“During the first half of the twentieth century, German society underwent a near-death experience. The scale of the human destruction was mind-blowing. Yet some German corporations came through it all as if it had never happened. Some of the biggest German companies created in the nineteenth century are still among the biggest today - Allianz, Daimler, Deutsche Bank, Siemens. It is as though the madness of human beings is nothing to do with them.”