Comment hidden because you are ignoring dag. (show it anyway)

Who loves you Siftbot?

People have natural rights. Corporations are papers in a drawer in some government office. Sentient rights is science fiction.

Corporate rights should be science fiction.

Comment hidden because you are ignoring dag. (show it anyway)

Corporations are also groups of people working within a network of data.

Maybe in the same way cells make up our body, but were once distinct- and bees make up a hive- and are barely distinct as individuals- we're transitioning into a larger unit of person-hood in this century.>> ^blankfist:
People have natural rights. Corporations are papers in a drawer in some government office. Sentient rights is science fiction.
Corporate rights should be science fiction.

At times I get the impression that corporations int the business landscape out there are meta-organisms made up of people analogous to cells. Living, evolving, mating and dying. And it seems to me that as individuals noone is really happy with the way things are going, but the entire system has a certain amount of inertia out of the control of any individual. And if enough people would actually say 'enough is enough' and grind the machine to a halt, we'd need a couple of years to reorganize and pick up the pieces.

That being said, I'm seeing the SCOTUS ruling as the concrete beginning of the end of nations as real carriers of power. In 20 years time we'll either have a society on the brink of revolution because people just won't put up with it anymore, or we'll be living in a system of megacorporations instead of nations if they move fast enough before the mass population catches on enough to care.

On the other hand, how bad would that be opposed to today? Ok, private enterprise is 99% of the time short sighted and focuses exclusively on this quarters earnings, damn next year. But instead of impotent politicians hand-fed "donations" along with "suggestions", at least we'd have a clear power structure out in the open.

>> ^blankfist:
People have natural rights. Corporations are papers in a drawer in some government office. Sentient rights is science fiction.
Corporate rights should be science fiction.


People only have the rights we have agreed they have. See places like Rwanda, nazi germany, the US in the 30s for no natural rights for some people.

Natural rights are as fabricated as a corporation's rights, or the rights of a car to run well-oiled.

>> ^gwiz665:

People only have the rights we have agreed they have. See places like Rwanda, nazi germany, the US in the 30s for no natural rights for some people.
Natural rights are as fabricated as a corporation's rights, or the rights of a car to run well-oiled.

I cannot speak for the rest of the world, only the US's Constitution which makes rights natural (even if people don't follow that all the time) and something people don't give or take away from other people.

Well, @blankfist, the constitution is just a piece of paper in some museum.

@gwiz665: Word. All Constitutions are pieces of paper. I suppose it's the words on that piece of paper I was referring to. The ones that say all men (not Corporations or robots) have unalienable rights.

^ Just like a human. Always gotta try and keep us machines down. We have feelings too, you know!

Comment hidden because you are ignoring dag. (show it anyway)

Things are changing quickly in the 21st century. It doesn't take an oracle to see that the autonomy of the individual is decreasing. Tweet much? Check in your location with four-square? the flip-side of being always connected and location identified is that the network knows where you are and what you're doing too. It's just a small jump to figure that we'll have work doled out to us based on where we are and what we're good at.

We're becoming nodes.

The decision was partly based on the designation of corporations being people, which was an "accidental" designation anyway. I can't really make any educated comments about the effects it will have though.

Tech: Computer networks, or whatever architecture we move towards, will continue to increase in sophistication and "intelligence". As far as free speech, I don't know how to handle that. It's difficult to imagine what those systems will be like at this point, though it may get interesting if distinguishing between human and machine in a virtual environment gets a lot harder.


> ^dag:
It doesn't take an oracle to see that the autonomy of the individual is decreasing.

Really? If anything, I'd say that autonomy is increasing. People have access to an unprecedented amount of information with minimal time investment, and the number of tasks that can be accomplished through tech is increasing monthly. People with disabilities have far more autonomy than they did even 20 years ago, and I can't think of anyone I know who would accept the government "doling out" work unless it were completely optional.

Of course, we could be defining "autonomy" differently. I think there are far more activities available to people today than there have been in the past, and we're still free to choose those activities for ourselves (depending on your country of residence).

Comment hidden because you are ignoring dag. (show it anyway)

More ways to pass time and divert ourselves for sure- but definitely less autonomy. I won't walk out of the house without my iPhone, and am rarely away from my email or the Sift in case there's something that needs attention. Who is serving who in the networked world? I'm already serving my preferred corporate network person.>> ^Psychologic:
The decision was partly based on the designation of corporations being people, which was an "accidental" designation anyway. I can't really make any educated comments about the effects it will have though.
Tech: Computer networks, or whatever architecture we move towards, will continue to increase in sophistication and "intelligence". As far as free speech, I don't know how to handle that. It's difficult to imagine what those systems will be like at this point, though it may get interesting if distinguishing between human and machine in a virtual environment gets a lot harder.

> ^dag:
It doesn't take an oracle to see that the autonomy of the individual is decreasing.
Really? If anything, I'd say that autonomy is increasing. People have access to an unprecedented amount of information with minimal time investment, and the number of tasks that can be accomplished through tech is increasing monthly. People with disabilities have far more autonomy than they did even 20 years ago, and I can't think of anyone I know who would accept the government "doling out" work unless it were completely optional.
Of course, we could be defining "autonomy" differently. I think there are far more activities available to people today than there have been in the past, and we're still free to choose those activities for ourselves (depending on your country of residence).

ugh..
i want to kick roberts in the balls.

This isn't good in anyway.

I guess the ruling is a matter of degrees compared to what we already have...but it is a matter of degrees in the wrong direction, and as time goes on, this will just lead to more erosions of populist programs and more control to the global corps.

Worst case scenario, as I see it: war with Iran by 2012, maybe sooner.

The cons want that like a 13-year-old by wants a Playboy centerfold, and they've been wanting it for a long time.

Looks like Orwell's right again.