Corporations and their puppet institutions, often called governments.

Corporations came to rule the world slowly and the nature of their power is still evolving. A major step was when the US Supreme Court in the 1886 case Santa Clara County v. Southern Pacific Railroad cited the 14th ammendment, designed to guarantee rights to former slaves, in declaring that corporations were 'fictional persons' entitled to all the protections and rights under law of real people. This is ridiculous because corporations, due to the fact that they have legions of people working for them and wield incredible amounts of wealth and resources, are already in a class other than mere human people. The ruling was made more galling by the fact that the court in that era refused to use the 14th ammendment for its actual intended purpose.

The next major step in corporate hegemony was the emergence of media, such as radio and television under a corporate framework, which allowed them unparalleled access to the very nervous systems of their human subjects, making bombardment with frontal lobe dulling mind control the primary leisure time activity for human persons in the developed world.

A gradual usurption and co-optation of the powers of government has been a characteristic of increasing corporate rule. The latest incarnation of this is the adoption of trade agreements that cede national soverignty to international bodies unaccountable to the electorate and that further guarantee the 'rights' of these fictional persons.