Isaac Asimov, when considering a world where robots had become as functional, intelligent, and more powerful than their human creators, posited three fundamental laws that would determine the behavior of such potentially dangerous human-made creations. His Three Laws of Robotics stipulated that non-living human creations must obey humans yet never behave in a way that would harm humans. Asimov's thinking wasn't altogether original: Thomas Jefferson and James Madison beat him to it by about 200 years. Jefferson and Madison proposed an 11th Amendment to the Constitution that would "ban monopolies in commerce," making it illegal for corporations to own other corporations, banning them from giving money to politicians or trying to influence elections in any way, restricting corporations to a single business purpose, limiting the lifetime of a corporation to something roughly similar to that of productive humans (20 to 40 years back then), and requiring that the first purpose for which all corporations were created be "to serve the public good." The amendment didn't pass because many argued it was unnecessary: Virtually all states already had such laws on the books from the founding of this nation until the Age of the Robber Barons. Now, Nike is arguing that, as a legal person, they should enjoy the same "free speech" right to deceive that individual human citizens have in their personal lives, in this case, to fraudulently claim that Nike no longer uses slave labor to manufacture its shoes. This, and what President Lincoln said of the newly enriched corporate enterprises following the Civil War, and more.... Now Corporations Claim The 'Right To Lie' |