Many rights have already been given to corporations that were previously seen as distinctly human rights. I suspect that corporations will press on until they are given the right to vote.
So what, you may say, small corporations would now be seen as the equal of large corporations and this may very well temper some of the extremism of the large corporations.
But large corporations have the best lawyers and will thus game the system. Imagine the threat of a corporation with tens of thousands of employees using a shell game so that it is now officially tens of thousands of corporations. Its votes would go up its hierarchy to the ultimate parent corporation ( or CEO) which would officially release the tens of thousands of votes. Since the CEO has control, a handful of corporate votes might go to the also rans by the CEO’s definition. Tens of thousands of votes would be for the CEO’s pick.
But wait you say, with the vote comes more responsibility. More of a company’s improprieties could be punishable by prison. How about merging with two other companies coming with a charge of bigamy?
Large corporations would game the system so their most lowly employee would be culpable for important but wrong behaviours of the company. There might even be jockeying to be culpable since these lowest paid employees might be able to collect 3 or 4 times their wages while in jail.
Angered by all this, citizens might complain that corporations don’t do all the duties of a human. So next up would be jury duty.
Large corporations would first state that they are a different class of citizen. Worried about the corporate vote the politicians would allow the corporations to pick and choose “relevant” cases. Of course the juror for the corporation would demand 24/7 contact with the CEO.
A still angry citizenry would demand the greedy, powerful corporations perform tours of duty in any wars the country might happen to be in.
Fine, the corporate persons would say. We have always performed in war, just at a fair price. Much like the actual soldier. And that fair price always seems to be steeper during a war.
And that is what my crystal ball tells me will happen if we allow corporations to have more of the rights and duties of a full human.
Maybe humans will one day wise up and demand some of the rights of a corporation.
For example if only 1% of a corporation might be guilty of collusion and only those perpetrators would go to jail, , perhaps a human can say their two fists are the only things guilty in an assault. Since this is only about 5% of their body, they should only spend 5% of the sentence in the actual jail.
How about that embezzler at that mighty corporation? It only took keystrokes and thus fingers to move all that money into his personal account from the corporation. Serving 1% of the sentence seems all too fair.
Weird things happen when we mix up corporations and persons. Be careful corporations or we’ll bite back.
