@blankfist, if you're talking about the history presented in Life, Inc., I think you're misrepresenting it a bit. It wasn't "corporate charters" they invented (as in legally recognized business entities that can own property), but charter corporations, as in the nobility picks a company and makes them a state-sanctioned monopoly.

Basically it's a great liberal thesis of history -- corporations were invented to be tools of the aristocracy, but then the aristocracy became their tools (at which point the corporations became the new, real, aristocracy), and the main way they've kept rebellion to a minimum is through the promotion of the ideology of individualism, selfishness, and viewing society through the lens of the market, all while demonizing unions, sharing, community social interaction, and anything that might lead to collective solidarity at all.

Also, his argument against central currency is essentially that it lowered the barriers on long distance trade too much, and removes the strong incentive for people to make purchases of locally produced goods that they had under the barter system.

He's not talking about Ending the Fed and returning to the gold standard, or even returning to gold coins -- he's talking about ending the concept of legal tender itself. Again, this is not because of a general suspicion of government influence, but because he fears that common currency encourages globalization of our economy, which he sees as a cultural illness.

He's also not an authority on either history or economics. His background is in fine arts, and media.

http://videosift.com/video/Life-Inc-The-Movie
http://videosift.com/video/Life-Inc-How-the-World-Became-a-Corporation-dispatches

Watch these two. Seeing how I'm apparently terrible with my "sales pitch" of free markets vs. corporate markets, take it from this guy instead. He does a wonderful job of explaining how Corporations came to exist, how they continue to persist, and briefly how free markets are antithetical to Corporations.

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