Corporate Rights

From Tim Cook’s internal email addressing Apple’s 2012 Supplier Responsibility Progress Report:

Our team has built an ambitious training program to educate workers about Apple’s code of conduct, workers’ rights, and occupational health and safety. More than one million people know about these rights because they went to work for an Apple supplier.

In 1791, when the United States ratified the Bill of Rights, the population of “free white males of 16 years and upward” was 807,094. (The total population was more than 3 million more.)

I don’t mean to draw any conclusions about the ascendancy of corporation as a governance institution, but do find it noteworthy that the scale of a single company’s global manufacturing network is comparable to the birth of its nation.