11 Comments
Jan 15Liked by Michaela McKuen

Yes, corporations are people so they can be liable. They are actually more like a poisonous mushroom that will eventually kill every blade of grass in your yard if you let their grips get in without intervention. For the want of money or in the case of the fungus territory for its fungus network. So if you want to save your own front yard you must root out that ridiculous mushroom so it's spores don't force you to go buy sod.

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I have long championed the idea of discorporating corporations . (Omg. I have wanted to use the word discorporate every since I read Stranger In A Strange Land by Heinlein. Oops focus Donn!)

The fact that corporations have legal protections as people, yet are not, cannot be subject to criminal penalty or facing consequences in any meaningful way is to my mind,

Insane, criminal and, an amazing example of evil genius displayed.

Discorporate Corporations!

End the corporate shield illusion and qualified immunity as well.

Hold those that cause harm directly and personally responsible.

A side note. How many companies would cause pollution, create and distribute harmful products, if, the persons responsible were subject to direct consequences?

There would need not be such things as EPA, FDA etc.

All that would be needed are the courts and a jury.

Doing away with the corporate delusion will probably not ever happen simply because it would strip powerful federal agencies of their excuse for existence.

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I have been charting a path to a better world.

One possible way forward is to just stop using corporation names.

If Shell is really pissing you off, find a name, and write about what "Bob did."

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author

This does remind me of an idea I just had before you wrote this too, which is maybe everyone should own what they did individually. Maybe corporations are like the Nibelungen ring from mythology which is what inspired Tolkien, Wagner, and others. I mean, the whole reason it’s the Nibelungen ring is the Nibelungen gold was something that no one really remembered the origin of, it came from Niflheim also known as Nibelheim, and it was full of ghosts and demons. That’s where the dishonorable dead would go in Norse mythology. Dwarves were originally basically just the evil elves as far as I’ve heard and the dwarves from Nibelheim were the Nibelungen, and anyone who possessed Nibelungen gold was sometimes also called one of them. So it just means things where people don’t know where they originate. Even though ancient Vikings didn’t have corporations sounds like it describes corporations to me.

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Nice.

When I look at the corporations, I see towers full of Empire Necromancers.

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Given that all we have depend quite heavily on the works of the dead, I think it is pretty easy to make the argument that pure ownership makes no sense.

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Instead, we could find some way to send a decreasing dividend to anyone contributing to a given project.

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Since a skilled person and a beginner are both maching to their end at similar rates, I would propose we count only time spent.

No more slaving. We all own all our time.

This would also end the dead short in generational knowledge transfer.

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author

I think pure ownership makes enough sense, as long as it can be split between people. What are the dead going to do with a company? Make decisions for it with the corporate ouija board? That was just supposed to be a joke, man.

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There is nothing that you, or I, anr anyone else can build, or invent, or dream about, or discuss, that does not directly depend on all that came before.

I am not saying the dead should own it.

I am saying that the Corporation stole what our ancestors made.

And now they sell it back to us.

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author

Makes sense! I guess we should really start attributing the dead's ideas to them and attribute living people's labor to them, because corporations are kind of like the cursed ring that people use to hide the origins of their wealth. In the myth it didn't turn you invisible though, but it gave people power that wasn't so described so it makes sense Tolkien crossed it with Ring of Gyges.

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There is another rumor; Tonkiens's ring, is the wedding ring.

Hiding the source of wealth is interesting. Certainly a part of what is going on.

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