The Citizen's United Supreme Court decision may unleash the legal equivalent of Brainiac and Ultron upon our country. We can thwart this by implementing the protections Issac Asimov recommended and applying them to these newly legal persons, the 3 laws of Robotics.
When it comes to a precaution against the human race creating something that is not human, it can not control and is potentially lethal to us, Asimov recommended the 3 laws of robotics to guard against accidentally creating a monster. Why would we, as a species, create something that had more power than we did, that had the potential to kill us and which we did not control?
The 3 Laws of Robotics are, for those unfamiliar with Asimov, as follows-
1.A robot may not kill or injure a human being or through inaction cause a human being to come to harm.
2.A robot must obey orders except when in conflict with the 1st law.
3.A robot must protect it's own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the 1st or 2nd law.
Now if you replace the word robot with the word corporation in the above list, you have a very reasonable approach to dealing with the arch betrayal of the US people and the US Constitution that the Supreme Court committed on the 21st of January of this year. That Constitution, by the way, doesn't start out with "We the Robots" any more than it starts out with "We the Corporations"! And considering that both robots and corporations are creations of human beings, most corporations with considerable more legal power than the average human being, that's a good thing. We, the People of the United States, must keep it that way.
A staple of science fiction has long been the evil robot. SkyNet, Ultron, Bender, Lore, Nomad, and Brainiac are in our collective consciousness and what fantastic villains they do make. Why is it that when we see an inhuman oppressive machine fight, torture, and sometimes kill human beings in science fiction we cheer for their defeat but when it comes to the inhuman oppressive machinery of a health insurance company, a defense contractor, or a coal company in real life some of us hit the streets in an effort to insure this machine's "rights" are not even mildly compromised.
And if this machine is to have the same rights as a human being, doesn't it follow that we should inquire, "What kind of a person is a corporation?" In the film, The Corporation, by Mark Achbar, this question was posed and, using the World Health Organization guidelines, they came up with a personality profile that fits a psychopath.
And that leads to another question, "Wouldn't it be foolhardy of us to let Blackwater, Union Carbide, Halliburton subsidiary Kellog, Brown, and Root and the next Enron enjoy the same legal rights as we enjoy?"
We would not do that for known violators of the 3 Robotic laws- Ultron, Lore, and Brainiac. Unless we all work together and reverse the Citizen's United decision, we embrace a future where inhuman forces with a proven record for causing harm to humans are subjugating us worse that Ultron, Lore, and Brainiac would be if they granted citizenship.
Kellog, Brown, and Root has enjoyed no bid contracts and moved itself offshore to Dubai, a Muslim city, when it's thefts and incompetence at the expense of Iraqi civilians and our troops in post Invasion Iraq proved excessive. Blackwater has literally gotten away with murder. Union Carbide showed a callous disregard for the citizen's of Bophal when that Indian city lost more lives in that accident than we lost on 9/11. And the financial forces that brought about the Enron debacle were never corrected so we wound up with a worse mess in 2008. And now, they are actively lobbying against financial reform. Honestly, we'd be safer with Ultron and Brainiac!
How do we start to defend ourselves against this monstrous creation of ours? If we apply Asimov's three laws to corporations it becomes easy! As a thought experiment, let's explore the consequences
1. A corporation may not kill or injure a human being or through inaction allow a human being to come to harm. That means the current Health Care proposal of doing away with the pre existing conditions would be only the beginning (which is a good thing and long overdue). It also means that DynCorp can't be a shadow military for US State Dept backed genocide and chemical warfare in Columbia anymore. It also means that any corporation that moves jobs oversees so that it doesn't have to comply with OSHA standards can keep those jobs here at home where they belong. And those are just the beginning. That's just 3 examples I can come up with off the top of my head.
2. A corporation must obey orders except when conflicting with the 1st law. Here's where I expect to win over some conservatives. I keep hearing the refrain "Don't pass new laws, just enforce what's already on the books!" when it comes to variety of topics. This may vary state by state so I'll just stick with my own, Nevada Revised Statute 78.060 subsection (f) already provides for Asmovian law #2. It reads- "Any corporation organized under the provisions of this chapter: To make bylaws not inconsistent with the constitution or laws of the United States, or of this state, for the management, regulation and government of its affairs and property, the transfer of its stock, the transaction of its business, and the calling and holding of meetings of its stockholders." It's already there. If a corporation knowingly breaks the law, it sacrifices it's legal standing (at least in Nevada). Now all that has to happen is for some teeth to be put behind this law. That way the next time an executive wants to knowingly implement a policy that will cost human life because settling the lawsuits would be cheaper, he could wind up costing the shareholders everything. They would lose their corporate personhood because of a law that's already on the books.
3. A corporation must protect its own existence as long as such protection doesn't interfere with the 1st or 2nd law. If a corporation knowingly endangers or harms any human life, it may not use its resources to defend itself. It loses the human right of self-defense when it has become a threat. That would mean no think tanks financed by said company could try to spin a positive face on this monster, no elite corporate law firms could obstruct an investigation, no appeals trying to whittle down the sum of a judgment when a jury of humans decided that a punitive damage is in order.
The Citizen's United decision isn't two months old. The effects are not being felt yet. And granted in an atmosphere of Willie Horton ad style politics it is often difficult to imagine how political discourse in this country can sink any lower. But only a few people could imagine the dishonest intellectual sewer that would be opened up by passage of the 1996 Telecommunications bill. And without that bill, we would have no Fox News today.
I don't think that I could find one person who calls himself a libertarian that would advocate that the rights of a robot were equal to or superceded the rights of a human being. Not even the most tortured logic or bastardized quote would be offered to imply that Ultron or any other robot should not even be mildly inconvenienced if he wished to buy airtime during an election to further his nefarious schemes. But change the word robot to corporation and tortured ideological arguments return to assure that something inhuman is not mildly inconvenienced!
Would we let Ultron, Brainiac or Lore devote their considerable resources to interfering in an election? They are not human so of course we wouldn't. But the Citizen's United decision says inhuman corporations have the same rights as human beings and can pour their considerable resources into the election process.
This is a modest proposal to be sure. But in science fiction, the difference between a good robot like Adam Link or a Data and a bad robot like Ultron or Lore is the restraint of the 3 Laws or something like them. The results of elections can be the difference between life and death for many humans. A corporation would be bound not to interfere in any election if we had the wisdom to implement the equivalent of Asimov's 3 laws on our inhuman and dangerous creation.
It gets down to where your loyalty is. Is it with the human race or with Ultron? Which side are you on, boy, which side are you on?
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