Business as usual | 21 April 2007

Protests against international business are nothing new. Probably the wittiest, and certainly the most brutal, took place long before the first trashing of a Starbucks, way back in the early 1st century BC. This was a period when the Roman Republic, lacking a bureaucracy of its own, had opted to privatise the provincial tax-system — and huge conglomerates, complete with share options, board directors and AGMs, duly reaped spectacular profits. A spectacular whirlwind too, for in 89 BC, the entire province of Asia rose in revolt, and a year later, when the Roman commissioner was taken prisoner, he suffered a memorably hideous fate. ‘The Romans,’ pronounced his judge, ‘have only one abiding motive: greed.’ A ruling perfectly reflected in the sentence: for molten gold was poured down the commissioner’s throat, thereby fittingly serving to choke him to death on his own profits.

Although Stanley Bing, who has written an entire book comparing ancient Rome to a modern-day multinational, does mention this anecdote, the fact that he gives it only a single sentence, and even then manages to get the name of the victim wrong, powerfully indicates where his sympathies lie.