A short excerpt from A Brief History of the Corporation: 1600 to 2100 by Venkat on June 8, 2011
If you thought it was bad enough that Dick Cheney used to work for Halliburton before he took office, imagine if he’d worked there while in office, with legitimate authority to use his government power to favor his corporate employer and make as much money on the side as he wanted, and to call in the Army and Navy to enforce his will.
That picture gives you an idea of the position Robert Clive found himself in back in 1757. He made out like a bandit. That was a full 150 years before the American corporate barons earned the appellation robber.
The first Coca-Cola Company incorporated on March 24, 1888 and the first commercial sale of bottled Coca-Cola took place in early 1891 when the bottling was done in Vicksburg, Mississippi at the Biedenharn Candy Company.
The first outdoor wall advertisement that promoted the Coca-Cola drink was painted on the wall of the Young Brothers Pharmacy in 1894 in Cartersville, Georgia. By then Coke concentrate (Coke syrup) was sold separately at pharmacies in small quantities, as an over-the-counter remedy for nausea or a mildly upset stomach.
Vintage ads like the one pictured below suggested that Coca-Cola claimed some of these curative properties. The "Relieves Fatigue" slogan on this Schenectady New York wall dates back to the early 1900's.
It was during this time when the era of the "robber barons" was winding down, and in 1909 the people of the United States imposed its first corporate tax of 1% on companies like Coca-Cola.
Now Coca-Cola, the world’s largest beverage company, is suing a sovereign nation to crush the world’s best recycling program, saying it will hurt their sales.