Linked World

Inextricably Intertwined

Traditionally, business and politics have been separable in LinkedIn, but their overlap since November is far too substantive and immediate for that fiction to be further entertained.

And yet there are people on LinkedIn who still loudly complain that they come there to discuss business and are offended to see political discussion, as if it were mere distraction.

I don't know whether such remarks are born of obliviousness or privilege, but in my view these pleas lack grounding in practical reality. If there were a way to speak of business without reference to politics, I would do it out of mere simplicity. Why involve irrelevancies? But the two are just far too intertwined. US politics is no longer some minor detail, distinct from business. It is central to US business right now.

Some will see this shift as positive. Others will see it as negative. I'm one of those seeing consistent negatives. But whatever your leaning, it seems inescapable that politics is suddenly visibly intertwined with markets and products in new ways. Not every discussion must factor it in, but when it happens, it's not mere rudeness that has broken the traditional wall of separation. It's just no longer practical to maintain the polite fiction that there's no overlap.

Practical Examples

I find it impossible to see how a seismic shift like the US is undergoing could fail to affect funding sources and trends, individual business success, entire markets, and indeed whether the US is a good place for people to invest in, go to school in, or vacation in.

Nor are the sweeping effects of DOGE, Musk's Department of Government Efficiency, an issue of pure politics. Its actions have clear business impact. As Musk wields this mysterious and unaccountable force to slash through the heart of government agencies with reckless abandon, there are many clear effects that will profoundly affect business.

• Scientists at the US Centers for Disease Control (CDC) and elsewhere have warned about the possibility of a bird flu or other pandemic. The CDC tracks and seeks ways to prevent pandemics, but that work is now under threat by an anti-science administration. As the Covid experience tells us, there is a business impact to pandemics if we allow them to just happen. A report in the National Institutes of Health (NIH)'s National Library of Medicine places that cost at about $16 trillion dollars.

• The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) is important to keeping planes in the air and having them not crash into one another. Business people do a lot of flying, so their needless deaths in the aftermath of FAA layoffs can presumably affect business. And it won't help people if the public develops a fear of flying.

• The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is in charge of making sure the food we eat does not poison us or that the drugs we take have at least a bounded degree of risk. It's the kind of thing you don't think might be business related until we enter a world where employees might go home any old day and just die because we are edging toward a society where you can't take food and drug safety for granted as a stable quantity any more.

• The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) is responsible for tracking storms so that damage, injury, or death can be minimized. And then and the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) helps the recovery afterward. It is hard to see how a major storm could affect people, cities, or geographic regions without affecting the employees, customers, and products of businesses. Do I really have to say that? If people think there is a separation between business and politics, I guess I do.

  And then of course NOAA does work to study Climate Change, too. Not only has such study suggested that Climate Change is an existential threat to civilized society, perhaps to all humankind, but it turns out that if human society falls or humans go extinct, that will affect business, too. And maybe soon enough that people still alive now, even if they have no care about future humans, still need to care because it could affect them or those they love.

It used to be that business did not have to worry about such things as much exactly because government used to see it as its job to invisibly take care of these many things. But this change in politics is not just a change in spending, but a shift of responsibility from the government to businesses and individuals. They'll have to look out for themselves now. That is a big deal thing that will affect businesses—their products, employees, and customers in profound ways. All the more so because the present administration changes its mind daily in ways that seem to have no plan, so uncertainty abounds. Business hates uncertainty.

Unemployment

Additionally, the many layoffs in government mean additional unemployment, which itself has business effect. Perhaps some will rejoice at a plentiful supply of potential workers or the fact that they may accept lower wages. But, meanwhile, those unemployed were also the customer base of other businesses who will be less happy. Those people aren't in a position to buy as many things—not just luxuries but essentials like food and rent and healthcare. Perhaps others in their families will pitch in to help them survive, but then those people won't be in a position to buy as many things either.

Mass layoffs do not happen in a vacuum. Those political choices will show up on the bottom lines of businesses. Some businesses may not survive that loss of business, creating a cascade effect.

Racism and Xenophobia

Racism and xenophobia are on the rise. Recent ICE actions seem designed to send the message that we purposefully treat some humans like vermin. “Stay away,” it screams to a large swath of the global population, some of whom we might like to sell to or have invest in us.

It began by going after the undocumented, surely because they are easy targets. That circle is expanding, and it seems unlikely to stop any time soon. The goal seems to be to end any sense that anyone has rights at all. That creates a lot of uncertainty about what is allowed in the way of both speech and action. Such uncertainty makes it hard to plan and manage anything from the selection of an appropriate employee base to how products will be positioned and marketed.

Also, it's an ugly truth that the US relies on already-terrified undocumented employees to accept very low wages, sometimes perhaps skirting wage regulation. Many US businesses will lose access to such cheap labor. The ethics of having relied on this population in this way are certainly tangled and I don't want to defend this practice. But for purposes of this discussion I simply observe that this change will have business effects that may affect both prices and product availability.

It is as if the administration's answer to immigration concerns is to make the US seem as utterly hostile to anyone who is not a native-born, white, Christian male. These trends already affect who feels safe coming to the US to trade, to study, to do research, and to found companies. It's going to be hard to unring that bell.

Rule of Law

In addition, this process seems to be having the side-effect of diminishing rule of law generally. By asserting that due process is not required, when plainly it is, a test of wills is set up between the executive and the rest of the government as to whether the President can, by mere force of will, ignore the Constitution entirely.

The clear intent is to establish us as a bully power, to say that worrying about whether foreigners like the people of the US showed weakness, and that we must make the world fear us. That shift cannot help but affect who will do business with us and how.

We cannot expect our global peers, already horrified by the recent shift in our choice of which foreign entities to fund or ally ourselves with, to shrug these matters off in business with a casual "oh, that's just politics."

Education

Also, higher education is under assault. There is a complex ecology here because people from around the world have revered our universities as places they could send people to acquire a world class education. But with research funds being cut, that may no longer be so.

That the US Government seems intent on snatching foreign students off the street does not make this picture any better. It becomes a reason for international investment dollars to go to other countries where it is safe to walk the streets.

International Investment

The education system is not cleanly separated from the business community. There is a complex ecology in which many businesses locate themselves near universities to have access to the best human talent and research the world has to offer. As US educational institutions are undercut, and the administrations anti-science agenda is pursued, foreign businesses that take education and science more seriously may look elsewhere for leadership.

These capricious changes—the sense that nothing is promised or certain—may affect the reputation of the United States and trust in the US dollar. The present administration wants more control of the Federal Reserve, which has traditionally operated independently. If that happens, it could worsen faith in the US dollar.

The US has also weakened enforcement of anti-bribery laws for dealing with foreign governments. Perhaps some will regard this relaxation of ethics good for business, but whether you do or not, it is most certainly a major change.

And the US is demonstrating on-its-face incompetence at every level of government because everyone with a brain is deferring to someone who plainly lacks either understanding or caring about the damage he is doing. Foreign businesses and governments used to look to the US as a place that had something to teach, but as this incompetence continues unchecked, it cannot help but hurt our reputation internationally.

Philosophy of Government

There is a definite push to “run government like a business.” I think that's a terrible plan, as my recent essay Government is not a Business explains.

But whether you think running government that way is good or bad, it marks a profound shift. More privatization and, with that, probably more corruption. These are things that will profoundly affect not just the US political landscape, but also its business landscape.

Not Separable

Hopefully these examples make it clear that politics and business are no longer separable. It is simply impossible to discuss business in a way that neglects politics. All business in the US is now conducted in the shadow of a certain GOP Elephant that manages to insinuate itself into every room.

 

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Author's Notes:

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Some parts of this post originated as a comment by me on LinkedIn. Other parts were written separately with the intent of being yet another comment, but I finally went back and unified the two and pulled this out to a separate post where I was not space-limited.

The vague approximation to the LinkedIn logo was created by me from scratch in Gimp by looking at the LinkedIn logo and doing something suggestive of the same look. A globe image was obtained from publicdomainpictures.net under cc0 license, and post-processed by me in Gimp to work in this space. I just made guesses about sizes, proportions, fonts, and colors. At no time were any of actual logos used for any part of the creation.

AI Users Bill of Rights

We are surrounded by too much helpful AI trying to insinuate itself into our lives. I would like the option of leaving “AI” tech turned off and invisible, though that's getting harder and harder.

I've drafted a draft version 1 of a bill of rights for humans who want the option to stay in control. Text in green is not part of the proposal. It is instead rationale or other metadata.

AI Users Bill of Rights
DRAFT, Version 1

1. All use of “AI” features must be opt-in. No operating system or application may be delivered with “AI” defaultly enabled. Users must be allowed to select the option if they want it, but not penalized if they do not.

   Rationale:

   1. Part of human dignity is being allowed freedom of choice. An opt-out system is paternalistic.
   2. Some “AI” systems are not privacy friendly. If such systems are on by default until disabled, the privacy damage may be done by the time of opt-out.
   3. If the system is on by default, it's possible to claim that everyone has at least tried it and hence to over-hype the size of a user base, even to the point of fraudulently claiming users that are not real users.

2. Enabling an “AI” requires a confirmation step. The options must be a simple “yes” or “no”.

   Rationale:

   1. It's easy to hit a button by accident that one does not understand, or to typo a command sequence. Asking explicitly means no user ends up in this new mode without realizing what has happened.
   2. It follows that the “no” may not be something like “not now” or any other variation that might seem to invite later system-initiated inquiry. Answering “no” should put the system or application back into the state of awaiting a user-initiated request.

3. Giving permission to use an AI is not the same as giving permission to share the conversation or use it as training data. Each of these requires separate, affirmative, opt-in permissions.

   Rationale:

   1. If the metaphor is one of a private conversation among friends, one is entitled to exactly that—privacy and behavior on the part of the other party that is not exploitative.
   2. Not all “AI” agents in fact do violate privacy. By making these approvals explicit, there is a user-facing reminder for the ones that are more extractive that more use will be made of data than one may want.

4. All buttons or command-sequences to enable “AI” must themselve be possible to disable or remove.

   Rationale:

   1. It may be possible for someone to enable “AI” without realizing it.
   2. It is too easy to enable “AI” as a typo. Providers of “AI” might even be tempted to place controls in places that encourage such typos.

5. No application or system may put “AI” on the path to basic functionality. This is intended to be a layer above functionality that allows easier access to functionality in order to automate or speed up certain functions that might be slow or tedious to do manually.

   Rationale:

   1. Building this in to the basic functionality makes it hard to remove.
   2. Integrating it with basic functionality makes the basic functionality hard to test.
   3. If an “AI” is running erratically, it should be possible to isolate it for the purposes of debugging or testing.
   4. When analyzing situations forensically, this allows crisper attribution of blame.

With this, I hope those of us who choose to live in the ordinary human way, holding “AI” at bay, can do so comfortably.

Other relevant writings by me about AI:

Sentience Structure
Green AI
Pretty Messed Up
Technology's Ethical Two-Step

 

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Author's Notes:

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The graphic was created at Abacus.ai using Claude Sonnet 3.7 and Flux 1.1 Ultra Pro, then cropped and scaled using Gimp.

Common Ground on Reproductive Health

I want to bookmark and celebrate a particular interchange in the conversation from a recent town hall that featured Kamala Harris and Liz Cheney together. The remarks by Cheney capture what I think could be an important shift the political dialog on reproductive health, trigged by the anger and revulsion of many women to the Dobbs decision, the recent Supreme Court ruling in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization that overturned Roe v. Wade

I suspect this is why, traditionally, the pro-choice community has said it's about “choice,” not “abortion.” Still, it was enormously encouraging to watch Cheney put this into plain and heartfelt terms of her own.

Harris: And then, of course, I feel very strongly the government should not be telling any woman what to do with her body. And when Congress passes a law reinstating the reproductive freedoms of women, I will gladly and proudly sign it into law because I strongly believe one does not have to give up or abandon their own faith or beliefs to agree that—not the Government telling her what to do. If she chooses she will consult with her priest, her pastor, her rabbi or imam, but not the government. We have seen too much harm, real harm, happen to women and the people who love them around our country since that decision came down, including women who have died. And I don't think that most people who, before the Dobbs decision came down who had strong opinions about this I don't think most people intended that the harm we've seen would have actually happened.

Cheney: Can I add to this? Just to—Because I think it's such an important point. And I think there are many of us, around the country, who have been pro-life, but who have watched what's going on in our states since the Dobbs decision, and have watched the state legislatures put in place laws that are resulting in women not getting the care they need, and so I think this is not an issue that we're seeing break down across party lines, but I think we're seeing people come together to say what has happened to women, when women are facing situations where they can't get the care they need, where in places like Texas, for example, the attorney general is talking about suing—is suing—to get access to women's medical records, that's not sustainable for us as a country, and it has to change.

Author's Notes:

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Vote Today. Vote Democratic.

Rights are more fragile than we wish. Operationally, they are little more than laws that require a supermajority to change ... or a majority of SCOTUS to ignore.

Our nation is more fragile than we wish. We imagine there will be other elections, other chances to win. But that is not the GOP plan. Their plan is to occupy the treehouse and to pull up the ladder behind them, to undermine those elements of democracy that would permit others to challenge their complete authority.

Our planet is more fragile than we wish. We imagine the climate debate is something we might ultimately win, but physics doesn't work that way. It will quickly become uninhabitable due to Climate Change, and the race is not against each other but against an unyielding clock. It matters to act now, and every bit of delay is a nail in humanity's collective coffin.

If you are not voting today, if you are not voting for all Democrats today, you are by implication agreeing that the GOP should continue dismantling rights, dismantling democracy, and dismantling the habitability of the planet.

Vote Today. Vote Democratic. The GOP have shown themselves poor stewards of our rights, of our nation, of our ecosystem. It is important to stop them before they rob the US and all humanity of a future in their ugly, selfish, reckless quest for power at the expense of all else.

—Kent Pitman, November 6, 2018

I am not Pro-Slavery. Are you?

Senator David Vitter (R-LA), in Senate debate today, said in support of denying abortion coverage to women, “This should not be of any great controversy. abortion is a deeply divisive issue in this country, but taxpayer dollars being used to pay for abortion is not.”

He is simply wrong on this point.

“There are no political answers,
   only political questions.”

  —Kent Pitman
(in a technical forum, 2001,
    and Open Salon post “Rule of Law”)

It cannot be the case that a question exists such that one possible answer to the question is political and another possible answer is not political. If one answer to a question is political, then all are. And if all are, then the question is.

And so if it's political to spend money, it's political to withhold money.

Not divisive? We are divided regardless of how you frame the question. That's a fact.

Senators were sounding hot under the collar this morning about their tax dollars going to abortion. Well, I've written already explaining how this slicing up of the pie is wrong. It is not their tax dollars going to this, it is mine. I'm not getting pregnant, but my tax dollars still go willingly to the support of women who get pregnant. Many of us want that. The Republican Party already brought us an immoral war in Iraq, so let's have no further indignant talk about people's tax dollars being spent unfairly.

But beyond that, I want to make one more point of substance:

Opposition to abortion goes far beyond the mere issue of who pays for it. This issue of tax dollars is a tactic, not an end. Even if there were no tax dollars involved, these same people—people who allege to be all about personal liberty and small non-invasive government—are all about expansive government and removal of individual liberty in this case.

If they had their way, they would deny all access to abortion. And they think they have the moral high ground.

But to deny access to abortion is to force pregnancy.

Having sex is not consent to have a baby any more than driving is consent to be killed in a car accident. Whatever fiction the Religious Right may want to spin, there is more sex being had in the world than for the purpose of procreating—even by Christians.

Nor is getting pregant proof of lack of birth control. Even if it were, to suggest that the penalty for such a simple mistake should be months or years of servitude is disproportionate.

Birth control methods fail. Abstenance would avoid birth control, but again it's out of the bounds of appropriateness to be telling people they should abstain just because other birth control methods are not perfect. The Pope's proscription of the use of “artificial” birth control notwithstanding, it is essential that people be allowed and even encouraged use birth control. There's a population explosion ongoing, if you didn't know. Even married people need birth control to keep from having babies at a time they're not prepared for, to keep from bankrupting their families, and to keep our finite world from being overpopulated. But birth control fails and the penalty must not be slavery.

So let's sum up, shall we? Sex is a human need. Having sex, even with birth control, risks pregnancy but is not consent to have a child. And yet some would insist women carry even unwanted pregnancies againt their will.

Well, we can talk until the cows come home about whether a fetus is “a life” or “a person.” It is to some, it isn't to others. The fundamental morality underlying this differs person to person. To me, an abortion is not murder because a fetus is not a person. But while we're wasting our breath pretending it's worth debating that issue, another argument goes overlooked:

Forced pregnancy is enslavement. We often speak of it in the polite terminology of “choice” but that apparently doesn't help the pro-Life community to understand the passion in reverse. They seem only to be able to imagine some bloodthirsty passion for killing little babies and so they see the argument as one-sided. But there is another side, a side involving a very personal choice that is simply not the business of lawmakers to do anything other than unconditionally support in the name of personal liberty.

We speak sometimes in shorthand, referring to the time of back alley abortions, using coat hangers. We say we don't want to go back to that. Perhaps that possibility seems abstract and unlikely to some people. Perhaps they think not everyone will be driven to that. But so what? Does that make it ok? A woman was forced to consider whether to find a guy in a back alley and risk her life to stop a pregnancy, but she decided no, she'd rather be enslaved against her will. Is that really what we're saying is ok? No muss no fuss? As long as the coat hanger remains on the rack, there was no trauma involved?

Or are we saying maybe, like Patty Hearst, she'll get used to it—perhaps come to like it? Does that make it any less enslavement? That given time she comes to accept the choice that was made for her, the fate that was scripted out for her?

Forced pregnancy is brutal whether one goes along with it or not, just as sure as rape is brutal whether one goes along with it or not. And let's be frank: If you support removing the right of a woman to make this decision for herself, then you should understand that you support a policy that is nothing less than brutal to women. Forced pregnancy is not a kind loving act that you're thrusting upon a woman with an unwanted pregnancy. It is enslavement, nothing less. And to many women this choice has been seen to be so horrendous that they will risk their very life to get out of it. What right is it of yours to make such a decision for her?

I'll say it again: Forced pregnancy is enslavement.

Forced pregnancy co-opts a woman's body against her will. Forced pregnancy subjugates a woman to a term of imprisonment within her own body, forced to do the bidding of others, creating a child she has not elected, in order to satisfy the morality of another. Forced pregnancy insists that a woman yield her basic right of self-determination to powers beyond her control.

Forced pregnancy means risk of medical harm with no input from the woman. There are conflicting claims as to whether a woman is safer having a baby or having an abortion. Naturally I have a belief about that, but let's not get side-tracked by that because it doesn't matter. Forced pregnancy means she doesn't get to make that decision, so she has no choice of how to navigate that risk.

Forced pregnancy reduces the status of a pregnant woman “autonomous adult citizen” to “lesser person.” It says she is not worthy of the full rights of an ordinary citizen.

Forced pregnancy is a verdict or judgment, but without due process of law. The crime is sex—it was done in a manner not authorized by some Church, in many cases not the Church that the woman herself attends. The judgment is automatically one of “guilty” Individual circumstances are not considered. Matters of personal individual faith are not considered. The lack of due process, on its face, is immoral.

Self-determination is about the woman electing her fate, and if she's forced to carry a pregnancy, her fate has not been elected.

Held to a fate against her will. Deprived of the right to get out of the situation. Unable to refuse the work involved. Receiving no compensation. That's the very essence of slavery.

Call it involuntary servitude if you prefer a more sanitized phrase. It makes no difference. It's still wrong. And it's not just wrong—it's unconstitutional and violates the United Nations' Universal Declaration of Human Rights (to which the United States has signed).

I'll close by casting Senator Vitter's remarks quoted above into a point of view that reflects my own feelings on the matter: This should not be of any great controversy. We are indeed divided over how we would handle the very personal choice of abortion in this country, but withholding taxpayer dollars that might free women from slavery or involuntary servitude should not be something we are divided over. No one is requiring any given woman to to get an abortion, but denying those who choose one the means to make a difficult but responsible choice is not a morally neutral position. Denying access to safe and legal abortions amounts to leaving a woman trapped by circumstance into a life not of her own choosing—in short, in favor of slavery.

Stop asking your Senators if they are pro-choice. Ask if they are anti-slavery instead, and insist they vote that way.

Section 1. Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.

Section 2. Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.

  —The Thirteenth Amendment to the US Constitution

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Originally published December 8, 2009 at Open Salon, where I wrote under my own name, Kent Pitman.

Tags (from Open Salon): clash of absolutes, divisive, political answers, political questions, anti-slavery, anti-enslavement, pro-slavery, pro-enslavement, pro-abortion, pro-life, pro-choice, choice, risk, health, medical, service, servitude, involuntary, voluntary, enslavement, slavery, abortion, politics

Fiduciary Duty vs. The Three Laws of Robotics

In our society, those entrusted with control of a corporation are bound by a fiduciary duty to the stockholders. This duty is paramount and cannot be ignored to suit the personal morals or conscience of those who exercise the control; any attempt to follow personal conscience over stockholder rights might potentially be regarded as a breach of fiduciary responsibility.

“A fiduciary must not put himself in a position where his interest and duty conflict.”
   —Wikipedia

As a consequence of this rule, corporations often behave in a way that favors the survival of the company at the expense of individuals. (Although, as Greenspan alluded to in his shocked near-apology in October 2008, there are nuances even within attempts to do well by the company, since issues like short term vs. long term success can matter.) But no matter how you slice it, employees are necessarily way down on the list of concerns that a company has, because a company is worried about its own survival first, not about its employees’ survival. Corporations, by design, care primarily about one thing: themselves and their own survival; all other considerations are secondary.

It’s a curious and controversial aspect of law that corporations are also permitted to operate as legal persons This gives them some of the rights of human beings, sometimes called natural persons to distinguish themselves from—well,—other kinds of persons. For example, legal persons are able to own property, enter into contracts, and be involved as parties to lawsuits.

It seems like almost the stuff of science fiction, having people who are not really people. Humans often express a reasonable and well-placed concern about the concept of human-like entities moving in and among us, but without ethics, morals, or scruples. It’s the reason Isaac Asimov suggested his Three Laws of Robotics, a set of rules he felt should be incorporated (pardon the pun) at a low level in all robots, assuring their ethical participation in society.

The Three Laws of Robotics

1. A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.

2. A robot must obey orders given to it by human beings, except where such orders would conflict with the First Law.

3. A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Law.

   —Isaac Asimov

But, unfortunately, corporations are just very clever robots (with full access to human intelligence but explicitly forbidding the application of human ethics). And there is no notion of Three Laws that applies to corporations.

Indeed, corporations seem in many way more analogous to human sociopaths, that is, persons exhibiting dissocial personality disorder. Perhaps we could borrow from the metaphor of legal persons and say they are legal sociopaths. Among humans, we generally fear and revile sociopathic behavior. But for some reason we tolerate it in corporations.

According to Wikipedia, the World Health Organization maintains a classification of diseases that describes the disorder this way:

Dissocial Personality Disorder

1. Callous unconcern for the feelings of others and lack of the capacity for empathy.

2. Gross and persistent attitude of irresponsibility and disregard for social norms, rules, and obligations.

3. Incapacity to maintain enduring relationships.

4. Very low tolerance to frustration and a low threshold for discharge of aggression, including violence.

5. Incapacity to experience guilt and to profit from experience, particularly punishment.

6. Marked proneness to blame others or to offer plausible rationalizations for the behavior bringing the subject into conflict.

7. Persistent irritability.

The WHO’s ICD-10 description notes that this includes amoral, antisocial, asocial, psychopathic, and sociopathic disorders, but not conduct disorders or emotionally unstable personality disorder.

Now I’m not medically trained, but it wouldn’t matter anyway. We’re talking metaphors, and the metaphor is going to be imperfect. I think the high level point is that this is the set of disorders that isn’t about being compulsively unable to control oneself, but is instead is about thoughtfully (some might even say rationally) planning and executing on actions that prevailing social norms would normally forbid.

The usual explanation one might expect from a corporation is that the so-called prohibition is in fact not legally forbidden, and therefore is allowed, perhaps even encouraged. (For more on this disturbing line of reasoning, see my essay, “Whatever Should Be, Should Be,” about the perils of the world “should” as a term of specificational requirement.) This fits in perfectly with the item “Gross and persistent attitude of irresponsibility and disregard for social norms, rules, and obligations.” After all, if you don’t believe that social norms are a rule or obligation, it’s easy to see how “incapacity to experience guilt and to profit from experience” can result.

I sometimes find myself wondering how the world would be different if there were a Three Laws safeguard built into corporations. Something like:

The Three Laws of Corporations

1. A corporation may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.

2. A corporation must obey orders given to it by human beings, except where such orders would conflict with the First Law.

3. A corporation must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Law.

It sounds a bit harsh, and in fact I doubt all possible consequences of every action could be so thoroughly worked out. Even a modest start, replacing “human beings” with “its employees” would be a big improvement. That wouldn’t fix everything, but it would be a big step forward over what we have now. Among other things, that would mean that employees could freely contribute to the success of their company knowing that that company had their best interests at heart. In the modern world, that’s not the case. It’s not just that it’s unlikely. It’s that it’s not even allowed by law.

Of course, the more pragmatic among us might suggest the even simpler idea of removing the notion of “legal personhood” from the law in the first place.

Author's Note: Originally published February 2, 2009 at Open Salon, where I wrote under my own name, Kent Pitman.

The graphic was added in June, 2025. It was created at abacus.ai using Claud Opus 4 and GPT Image and substantial post-processing to rearrange parts of the resulting image using Gimp.

See also my related posts: Losing the War in a Quiet Room and Rethinking Mega-Corporations.

Tags (from Open Salon): fiduciary duty, fiduciary responsibility, sociopath, three laws, three laws of robotics, three laws of corporations, corporation, liability, rights, responsibility, legal person, legal people, natural person, natural people, legal personhood, natural personhood