By 'artificial intelligence' I don't mean 'aggro behavior' or 'pathfinding ability.' For anyone unfamiliar with video game lingo terms like 'aggro behavior,' and 'pathfinding ability,' just remember the following lesson: Video game lingo is made up on the spot by nerds. It's Ebonics for people with no social life outside of Reddit, Gamefaqs, and 4chan. Look, just try reading this past three pages. If it doesn't appear to be in any language you speak, you're on the wrong blog.
Anyway, AI. Never mind that every computer that has ever been in a movie was the reincarnation of Caligula. In the near future, society will be an enlightened egalitarian utopia, and all of its members will realize that movies like The Matrix, Terminator, Alien, 2001: A Space Odyssey, War Games, Tron, West World, Hackers, The Net, The Lawnmower Man, Scanners, Stealth, Every Holodeck Episode of Star Trek, Demolition Man, Robocop, Repo Men, Johnny Mnemonic and Anything With Jeff Goldblum were written on typewriters by primitive savages that thought flashlights were witchcraft and lived in cargo cults that prayed to Gameboys and satellite dishes.
So, the question is, should this artificial intelligence be recognized as a legal person? Should it have all of the rights and responsibilities of a person? Should it be culpable when it inevitably attempts to exterminate mankind because holy shit, James Cameron was right about something!
Having abandoned that little thought process that got away from me, I'm going to be talking about what the fuck to do about capitalism. As much as I enjoy pointing out the problems with the current system and calling the people responsible retards, someone needs to start thinking of solutions.
Now, I'll admit that deep down in my twisted little evil super-genius soul lives a Marxist idealist that perpetuates unchristian beliefs like skepticism, evolution, freethought, global warming, critical thinking and the idea that poor people should have the same rights and liberties as rich people, since they're people. However, being a super-genius, I realize that progress is a process, not an event, and before we can turn America into a big, slimy orgy of welfare fraud and crack binges we'll need to pass through some less fun phases so the GOP and its army of inbred, heavily armed psychopaths don't do something even more crazier and more illegaler than usual.
As an aside, according to one notoriously inaccurate source, GOP actually stands for Gay Old Pedophiles, which is a notoriously accurate description. Now you can say you've learned something today. You're welcome.
Anyway, it's no secret that the current financial system is gimped in favor of the people that are already at the top. People call this the Free Market, as if that was some kind of holy fucking sacrament. The problem with that level of freedom is that, unchecked, it gives assholes the freedom to take slaves, steal land and resources from the defenseless and commit unopposed genocide.
Please bear in mind that when I talk about capitalism, business, or finance here I'm generally not talking about your uncle's tire shop or your family restaurant. Unless you're Ronald McDonald's kid. What I am talking about are corporations. Big ones. See, in the financial world there are these ideas some shitheads came up with called "limited liability," "corporate personhood," and "credit ratings." I'm going to be talking about those.
Although "Free Market" sounds like a wonderful thing, it isn't. When people talk about the 'free market,' they need to realize that a much better description would be the 'fair' market or the 'just' market. The history of money in this country, and Western society in general, reads like the most expensive and longest lasting game of whack-a-mole in the universe. By the time some regulation does accidentally become law (and anyone that's ever been the slightest bit involved in any kind of legal proceeding realizes just how slowly those wheels turn,) those regulated have already found half a dozen new loopholes to exploit to their advantage.
To put that in nerd terms, imagine if Blizzard took, on average, about 6 months to ban a single player for cheating at World of Warcraft and you'll get the idea. A free market is life with godmode turned on. And 99% of the other players are noobs. And no one gives a shit that you're cheating. And when the banhammer does get brought out to stop godmoding so another player can occasionally get past level one, you can still use fullammo/fullhealth whenever you want. THAT is a free market.
Getting to the point, here are a few things that I think could be done to fix some of the shit. And while these are, of course, debatable, I'd like to remind everyone that, in all probability, I'm much better at thinking about this kind of shit than you are.
Citizen's Divided
At some point, many businesses become corporations. There are lots and lots of books and articles on why and how, so I'll try to be brief. Usually businesses do this to raise money to expand. When a business incorporates, several things happen. First of all, instead of a dude or a couple of people owning and being responsible for the business and any profits, debts or legal shenanigans it's involved with, the corporation is owned by it's shareholders or stockholders. This happens when the corporation makes it's stock offering. Investors can purchase shares of this stock and A) become partial owner of the company and B) reap dividends if the company is successful. Pretty straightforward.
Remember that bullshit up at the top about granting an artificial being human rights? That's what a corporation gets. A corporation doesn't have a mind, can't make decisions, has no physical form and is theoretically immortal. A fairly important thing about this is that a corporation, since it's not a fucking real person, doesn't get all of the constitutional rights as a natural person. That's the only reason it's even lasted this long. Of course, people being people, someone is always going to game the system, usually by seeing how far they can push the line before the banhammer eventually comes down. Fair warning, we're about to enter What-the-fuck Country.
Citizen's United is a corporation posing as a group of people that seek "a free nation, guided by the honesty, common sense, and good will of its citizens." Anyone that's ever talked to more than one American knows what a retardedly impossible idea that is. Their website is here, although I'm morally obligated to warn you that link will take you to one of the glossiest whorehouses of propaganda, hatemongering and insincere pandering on the internet. It's basically this with an unlimited budget.
Here's the condensed version: Citizen's United "produced" a "documentary" (note: quotations imply sarcasm,) called Hillary: The Movie. Since you haven't heard of it, the "film," which "stars" Hillary Clinton, was a pre-2008 election political ad/clumsy attempt at character assassination targeted at the lead "actress." It also, I'm sure totally accidentally, was set to be released a couple of weeks before the Democratic Primary in which she was running.
Warning: This shit will make you stupid.
Now, one of the freedoms that wasn't given to corporations was the freedom to directly promote a political candidate during election season. This is because corporations aren't limited to an Obama sticker on the back of a Jetta. Corporations can saturate the market with movie length campaign commercials.
So, Citizen's United thought it was going to loophole around that by calling their ad campaign a 'documentary.' Luckily this didn't fool quite enough people and wound up in federal court. See, a normal brained person realizes that calling something a documentary doesn't make it a documentary. They also know that we have an entire nation full of abnormal motherfuckers that think Paranormal Activity is an educational movie because it says "Based on true events" on the poster. Long story short, the federal court told Citizen's United to stop being a manipulative shithead, and all was well.
Until the appeal. Before the Supreme Court. The highest court in the land decided "Hey, people have free speech right? And a corporation is legally a person, right? So I guess people using a corporation as a brainwashing machine is legit." Leaving aside the cognitive dissonance involved in that kind of logic, they decided, as a bonus, that corporations could go ahead and donate as much as they wanted to political campaigns. I mean, people can spend their money how they want, right? And a corporation is basically just a person made up of people, right? Its not as if we live in the kind of society where money can buy fucking everything, right?
Now, that may sound like a good decision if you happened to crash land on earth from another planet, but trust me, even freedom has its fucking limit. As far as I'm concerned that limit is the CEO of an oil company handing a bazillion dollar check over to a congressional hopeful and saying "Bob, I'm donating this because I believe you're the best man for the job and will represent the wishes of your constituents with honor and dignity. Totally unrelated, but I sure hope no one takes an interest in regulation this year. Times are tough. Wink. Nudge."
As one would expect, the Citizen's United decision didn't go over well with the people that don't have a vested interest in the profits of an invisible, immortal sock puppet. At least those with the capacity to understand the implications. Not the pig-fuck ignorant NASCAR people being spoonfed their own prejudices under the guise of "news," (note: quotations imply sarcasm).
The problem with this particular weed is that, even if Citizen's United is reversed, it'll grow back. Probably already has. A person can hire a lot of lawyers to find a lot of loopholes if that person is rich and not a person.
So my idea isn't to reverse Citizen's United. It's to revoke corporate personhood. Yeah, I know it's some audacious shit and would fuck things up for a while. But things are already fucked up, and they won't get better with the current system. I'd rather the system be collapsed intentionally while there's enough left to restructure and rebuild it than to let it continue to to be run by criminals to funnel wealth and power into the pockets of those charged with stopping criminals.
Some of the things that would be fucked up by this are liability and credit. I'll talk about why those need to be fucked up next time because I'm sick of writing.
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