corporate personhood

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pages: 581 words: 162,518

We the Corporations: How American Businesses Won Their Civil Rights by Adam Winkler

"Friedman doctrine" OR "shareholder theory", 1960s counterculture, affirmative action, Affordable Care Act / Obamacare, anti-communist, Bernie Sanders, British Empire, Cass Sunstein, clean water, collective bargaining, company town, Cornelius Vanderbilt, corporate governance, corporate personhood, corporate social responsibility, desegregation, Donald Trump, financial innovation, Ford Model T, glass ceiling, income inequality, invisible hand, joint-stock company, laissez-faire capitalism, land reform, obamacare, offshore financial centre, plutocrats, Powell Memorandum, profit maximization, profit motive, race to the bottom, Ralph Nader, Ralph Waldo Emerson, refrigerator car, Robert Bork, Ronald Reagan, Rosa Parks, shareholder value, Social Responsibility of Business Is to Increase Its Profits, South Sea Bubble, the scientific method, too big to fail, trade route, transcontinental railway, Unsafe at Any Speed, Upton Sinclair, vertical integration, yellow journalism

Beginning with Bank of the United States v. Deveaux, and for most of American history, corporate personhood has been deployed in precisely the opposite way from how today’s critics of Citizens United imagine. Counterintutively, it has usually been populist opponents of corporations who have argued in favor of corporate personhood. For them, treating corporations as people was a way to limit the rights of corporations. And many of the most important Supreme Court decisions extending rights to corporations did not rely on corporate personhood at all. More commonly, the Supreme Court rejected the idea that a corporation was an independent, legal person with rights and duties all its own, and instead allowed the corporation to claim the rights of its members.

Ironically, it was the famously liberal New Deal and Warren courts of the mid-twentieth century that first extended liberty rights to corporations. This long view also illuminates the nuanced role of corporate personhood in the story of corporate rights. Many critics of Citizens United believe that corporations have the same rights as individuals because the Supreme Court defines them as people. The proposed constitutional amendment to overturn Citizens United is based on this idea, declaring that only human beings are people under the terms of the Constitution. Yet corporate personhood has played only a secondary role in the corporate rights movement. While the Supreme Court has on occasion said that corporations are people, the justices have more often relied upon a very different conception of the corporation, one that views it as an association capable of asserting the rights of its members.

Another issue on which corporationalists and populists disagreed was corporate personhood. From the start, the Supreme Court has wrestled with whether corporations should be considered “people” under the Constitution and what exactly that might mean. Some critics of Citizens United argue that the reason corporations have constitutional rights today is that the Supreme Court has said that corporations are people. Indeed, one proposed response to Citizens United has been a constitutional amendment to clarify that corporations are not people under the language of the Constitution and do not have the rights of people. Yet, as we will see, corporate personhood has played only a small role in the expansion of constitutional rights to corporations.


pages: 75 words: 22,220

Occupy by Noam Chomsky

Alan Greenspan, corporate governance, corporate personhood, deindustrialization, high-speed rail, Howard Zinn, income inequality, invisible hand, Martin Wolf, Nate Silver, Occupy movement, Plutonomy: Buying Luxury, Explaining Global Imbalances, precariat, Ralph Nader, Ronald Reagan, too big to fail, union organizing

Van de Water, “Romney Budget Proposals Would Require Massive Cuts in Medicare, Medicaid, and Other Nondefense Spending,” Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, revised February 16, 2012. ** Allison Kilkenny, “Report: 26 Arrested at Occupy Foreclosure Auction Blockade January 27, 2012, In These Times. †† Bailey McCann, “Cities, states pass resolutions against corporate personhood,” January 4, 2012, CivSource. http://civsourceonline.com/2012/01/04/cities-states-pass-resolutions-against-corporate-personhood/ ‡‡ Emily Ramshaw and Jay Root, “A New Rick Perry Shows Up to GOP Debate,” The Texas Tribune, October 18, 2011. Occupy Howard Zinn Memorial Lecture Occupy Boston, MA, Dewey Square, October 22, 2011 It’s a little hard to give a Howard Zinn memorial lecture at an Occupy meeting.

Chomsky speaks to the many options and opportunities that exist to change the system, and he points to examples in which the movement’s vision has already impacted city council proposals, debates and resolutions, such as the case of New York City Council Resolution 1172, which formally opposes corporate personhood and calls for an amendment to the U.S. Constitution to permanently ban it. The resolution creates clear dividing lines between the rights of corporations and the rights of citizens, and it adds to the momentum produced by a growing list of cities—including Los Angeles, Oakland, Albany and Boulder— that have passed similar resolutions.†† Underling Occupy’s success has been its focus on the daily details of organizing.

But unless the process that is taking place here and elsewhere in the country and around the world, unless that continues to grow and to become a major force in the social and political world, the chances for a decent future are not very high. QUESTIONS FROM OCCUPY BOSTON Regarding fixing political dysfunction in this country, what about enacting a Constitutional amendment to abolish corporate personhood or to get corporate money out of politics? These would be very good things to do, but you can’t do this or anything else unless there is a large, active, popular base. If the Occupy movement was the leading force in the country, you could push many things forward. But remember, most people don’t know that this is happening.


pages: 470 words: 107,074

California Burning: The Fall of Pacific Gas and Electric--And What It Means for America's Power Grid by Katherine Blunt

An Inconvenient Truth, benefit corporation, buy low sell high, California energy crisis, call centre, commoditize, confounding variable, coronavirus, corporate personhood, COVID-19, electricity market, Elon Musk, forensic accounting, Google Earth, high-speed rail, junk bonds, lock screen, market clearing, market design, off-the-grid, price stability, rolling blackouts, Silicon Valley, vertical integration

In eighteenth-century England, amid the rise of the East India Company and other aggressive multinationals, Lord Chancellor Edward Thurlow felt hamstrung in considering whether a corporation could be convicted of a crime. “Corporations have neither bodies to be punished, nor souls to be condemned; they therefore do as they like,” he said. In the United States, where corporations have wielded power since the charter of the British colonies, the concept of corporate personhood is rooted in a United States Supreme Court case heard three decades after the ratification of the Constitution. The 1809 decision, involving Alexander Hamilton’s Bank of the United States, determined that corporations have the constitutional right to sue in federal court. The precedent set the stage first for the recognition of corporations as people under the Fourteenth Amendment, and then for the expansion of their civil rights to include many of those afforded to individual citizens.

The precedent set the stage first for the recognition of corporations as people under the Fourteenth Amendment, and then for the expansion of their civil rights to include many of those afforded to individual citizens. It remains an evolving subject, with two recent Supreme Court cases—Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission and Burwell v. Hobby Lobby Stores—thrusting the controversial idea of corporate personhood into the public consciousness. The idea of corporate liability, meanwhile, is almost as old as PG&E, stemming from a 1909 Supreme Court case involving a New York railroad company. The court’s decision set a significant precedent: A corporation could be criminally prosecuted for the actions of a single employee.

It would have been almost impossible to miss. Another cloud hung over the defense. America was awash in anti-corporate sentiment. Anger at big banks and businesses had crested after the recession and plateaued during the plodding recovery. Citizens United and Hobby Lobby, the Supreme Court cases that took expansive views on corporate personhood, had been decided in the middle of it all, fanning the flames of mistrust. Overturning Citizens United became part of the rallying cry of the Occupy Wall Street movement, the nationwide protest against inequality and corporate influence that began in 2011 when several hundred activists descended on New York’s financial district.


pages: 306 words: 82,909

A Hacker's Mind: How the Powerful Bend Society's Rules, and How to Bend Them Back by Bruce Schneier

4chan, Airbnb, airport security, algorithmic trading, Alignment Problem, AlphaGo, Automated Insights, banking crisis, Big Tech, bitcoin, blockchain, Boeing 737 MAX, Brian Krebs, Capital in the Twenty-First Century by Thomas Piketty, cloud computing, computerized trading, coronavirus, corporate personhood, COVID-19, cryptocurrency, dark pattern, deepfake, defense in depth, disinformation, Donald Trump, Double Irish / Dutch Sandwich, driverless car, Edward Thorp, Elon Musk, fake news, financial innovation, Financial Instability Hypothesis, first-past-the-post, Flash crash, full employment, gig economy, global pandemic, Goodhart's law, GPT-3, Greensill Capital, high net worth, Hyman Minsky, income inequality, independent contractor, index fund, information security, intangible asset, Internet of things, Isaac Newton, Jeff Bezos, job automation, late capitalism, lockdown, Lyft, Mark Zuckerberg, money market fund, moral hazard, move fast and break things, Nate Silver, offshore financial centre, OpenAI, payday loans, Peter Thiel, precautionary principle, Ralph Nader, recommendation engine, ride hailing / ride sharing, self-driving car, sentiment analysis, Skype, smart cities, SoftBank, supply chain finance, supply-chain attack, surveillance capitalism, systems thinking, TaskRabbit, technological determinism, TED Talk, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, theory of mind, TikTok, too big to fail, Turing test, Uber and Lyft, uber lyft, ubercab, UNCLOS, union organizing, web application, WeWork, When a measure becomes a target, WikiLeaks, zero day

This disruptive power can also be harnessed by those at the bottom of our power structure and serve as an engine for social change. It’s how revolutions happen. Hacking is one of the weapons of the weak, and an important one at that. Here’s one example: people are hacking the notion of corporate personhood in attempts to win rights for nature, or great apes, or rivers. The very concept of corporate personhood is a hack of the Fourteenth Amendment, which lays out the rules of citizenship and the rights of citizens. In Darwinian evolution, Mother Nature decides which hacks stay and which hacks go. She can be cold and brutal, but she doesn’t play favorites.

Uri Friedman (14 Jun 2017), “Why conservative parties are central to democracy,” Atlantic, https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2017/06/ziblatt-democracy-conservative-parties/530118. David Frum (20 Jun 2017), “Why do democracies fail?” Atlantic, https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2017/06/why-do-democracies-fail/530949. 141concept of corporate personhood: Adam Winkler (5 Mar 2018), “ ‘Corporations are people’ is built on an incredible 19th-century lie,” Atlantic, https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2018/03/corporations-people-adam-winkler/554852. 35. HIDDEN PROVISIONS IN LEGISLATION 145intercepting network equipment: S. Silbert (16 May 2014), “Latest Snowden leak reveals the NSA intercepted and bugged Cisco routers,” Engadget, https://www.engadget.com/2014-05-16-nsa-bugged-cisco-routers.html. 146lobbied for by Starbucks: Ben Hallman and Chris Kirkham (15 Feb 2013), “As Obama confronts corporate tax reform, past lessons suggest lobbyists will fight for loopholes,” Huffington Post, https://www.huffpost.com/entry/obama-corporate-tax-reform_n_2680880. 146exemptions for “natural monopolies”: Leah Farzin (1 Jan 2015), “On the antitrust exemption for professional sports in the United States and Europe,” Jeffrey S.

See market hacks Cappiello, Leonetto, 184 card counting, 36–37 CARES Act (2020), 147, 149 cartoon characters, 218 casino hacks, 35–37, 46, 51 category errors, 222 Cato the Younger, 155 certificates of deposit (CDs), 75 chatbots, 188, 210 Chatmost, 190 Chéret, Jules, 184 children as hackers, 3, 25–26 Citizens United, 169 claims-authorization decisions, 210 Clinton, Bill, 151, 196 cloture rule, 155 Club Penguin, 25–26, 46, 47 cognitive hacks, 179–82 addiction as, 185–87 AI hacking and, 181–82, 201–2, 216, 218–19 attention and, 183–87 defenses against, 53–54, 182, 185, 198–99 disinformation as, 81, 181 fear and, 195–97 general nature of, 181 hacking hierarchy and, 201–2 persuasion, 188–90, 218–19, 220–23 trust and, 191–94, 218 Cohen, Julie, 121, 248 Collingridge dilemma, 246 colonialism, 197 Combined Reporting Systems for State Corporate Income Tax, 128–29 Commodities Futures Trading Commission, 76–77 common law hacks, 135–38 compartmentalization, 60 complexity design process and, 59 as system characteristic, 17, 20 in tax and computer codes, 13–14 vulnerabilities and, 28 computational propaganda, 222 computer code, 13–14, 15 Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (1986), 18, 65 computerization, 224–27, 242–43 context, 157–60, 237 corporate personhood, 141 COVID-19 pandemic, 27, 45, 110–11, 196 creative hackers, 22 credit cards, 39 customer reviews, 194 dark patterns, 182, 189–90 Darling, Kate, 222 DARPA Cyber Grand Challenge, 228–29 de minimis rule, 249 debt financing, 101–2 decoy prices, 189 deep-fake technology, 192–93, 221 Deep Patient, 213 defense in depth, 59–60 Delaware Loophole, 130 DeSantis, Ron, 132–33 design process, 58–61 financial exchange hacks and, 85 simplicity in, 59, 80 threat modeling, 62–63, 64 destruction as result of hacking, 172–75 disinformation, 80–81, 181 Doctorow, Cory, 181 Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act (2010), 76–77, 80, 82, 97, 98 dolls, 218 domestic production activities deduction, 157–58 Donotpay.com, 225 DoorDash, 99, 124, 125 dot-com bubble (2001), 99–100 “Double Irish with a Dutch Sandwich” tax loophole, 15–16, 22, 128 drip pricing, 189 dry sea loans, 91 due process, 213 election hacks, 164–67 advertising and, 185 AI and, 220, 221 authoritarian governments and, 174–75 fear and, 197 “independent spoiler,” 169–70 trust and, 193 voter eligibility and, 161–63 wealth and, 168–71 ELIZA, 217 emissions control tests, 234 emotional lock-in, 223 Entick, John, 135–36 Equifax, 49–50 equitable ownership, 138 EternalBlue, 21–22 Eurodollar accounts, 75 Evans v.


Hopes and Prospects by Noam Chomsky

air traffic controllers' union, Alan Greenspan, Albert Einstein, banking crisis, Bear Stearns, Berlin Wall, Bretton Woods, British Empire, capital controls, colonial rule, corporate personhood, Credit Default Swap, cuban missile crisis, David Ricardo: comparative advantage, deskilling, en.wikipedia.org, energy security, failed state, Fall of the Berlin Wall, financial deregulation, Firefox, Glass-Steagall Act, high-speed rail, Howard Zinn, Hyman Minsky, invisible hand, liberation theology, market fundamentalism, Martin Wolf, Mikhail Gorbachev, Monroe Doctrine, moral hazard, Nelson Mandela, new economy, nuremberg principles, one-state solution, open borders, Plutonomy: Buying Luxury, Explaining Global Imbalances, public intellectual, Ralph Waldo Emerson, RAND corporation, Robert Solow, Ronald Reagan, Savings and loan crisis, Seymour Hersh, structural adjustment programs, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, too big to fail, total factor productivity, trade liberalization, uranium enrichment, Washington Consensus

As noted above, by the early twentieth century legal theorists and courts were coming consistently to adopt and implement the Court’s 1886 (Santa Clara) principle that these “collectivist legal entities” have the same rights as persons of flesh and blood,50 rights since expanded far beyond those of persons, notably by the mislabeled “free trade agreements.” The conception of corporate personhood evolved alongside the shift of power from shareholders to managers, and finally to the doctrine that “the powers of the board of directors…are identical with the powers of the corporation.”51 As corporate personhood and managerial independence were becoming established in law, the control of corporate management of the economy had reached the stage that elicited Woodrow Wilson’s description of the “very different America” that was taking shape, cited above.

., 12, 45 Afghanistan and, 263–64 Arabs and, 192–93 Axis of Evil speech, 138 “democracy promotion” and, 42, 44–46, 66, 143, 144 economic policies, 64 Europe and, 170 expansion of military capacity under, 136 Hamas and, 147 Iraq and, 23, 24, 42–44, 140, 141 North Korea and, 138, 139 on “Palestinian state,” 178, 186 preventive war doctrine, 23 (See also Bush doctrine) Syria and, 144 Tony Blair and, 170 torture and, 260 Venezuela and, 66 “vision,” 203 Bush doctrine, 23, 24, 42, 51, 239 Butler, Lee, 165 Calderón, Felipe, 216 Cambodia, 312n15 Camp David 2000 Summit, 179, 225 Canada, 69, 243 Canova, Tim, 221 capital investment and productivity, 76 Carothers, Thomas, 45, 270–71 Carriles, Luis Posada, 51 Carter, Jimmy, 41, 62, 254, 302n23 Castro, Fidel, 51–53 Caterpillar, 217–18 Catholic Church, history of, 272–74 Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) “torture paradigm,” 260, 262, 264 Chang, Ha-Joon, 72, 91 Chávez, Hugo, 98, 100, 141, 142 Chellaney, Brahma, 167–68 Cheney, Dick, 259, 260, 266 Chile, 92–93, 116 China, 69, 78, 114 Christianity, history of, 272–74 Cirincione, Joseph, 135 Citigroup/Citicorp, 219–20 civilians, responsibility to protect, 20 climate change, 95, 111, 217, 232 Clinton, Bill, 24, 168, 171, 179, 180, 187, 223 Haiti and, 11 Iraq and, 128, 129 NATO and, 136 Operation Gatekeeper, 29 torture and, 262 Clinton, Hillary Rodham, 186, 189, 225, 226 Clinton doctrine, 24 Clive, Robert, 14 cocaine, 215 Cochabamba, 104 Cohen, Roger, 21 Cold War, 37 Colombia, 58–59, 215 colonialism, 14–15, 17, 22. See also imperialism; specific topics Columbus, Christopher, 3, 18–19 “Convergence program” and “Convergence plus,” 180–81, 203 Cooper, Helene, 137 cooperative security location (CSL), 58–59 corporate law, 30–31 corporate personhood debate, 31–35 corporations, nature of, 30–31 Correa, Rafael, 57 “crisis of democracy,” 98 Crocker, Ryan, 132 Cuba, 14, 22, 49–53 economic warfare against, 51–53, 55 Guantánamo Bay and, 31 Haiti and, 14 Henry Cabot Lodge and, 22 Spain and, 14, 22, 50 U.S. diplomacy with, 136 U.S. intervention in 1898, 14, 22–23, 50, 136 Cuban Five, 51 Cuba-Venezuela relations, 69–70 Cumings, Bruce, 138, 139 Dahlan, Muhammad, 147, 148 Davidson, Basil, 81 Day of Mourning in Panama, 134 Dayan, Moshe, 148–49, 160, 186 Dayton, Keith, 201, 202 Declaration of Principles for U.S. and Iraqi governments, 140 “defense industrial base,” 277.

See “American exceptionalism” Fall, Bernard, 122 Fayyad, Salam, 253–54 Federal Reserve Board, 113 Feldman, Noah, 52 Felix, David, 71, 83, 107, 219 Ferguson, Thomas, 32, 108, 208 financial crises, 93, 107, 108, 207, 228 deregulation and, 219 financial liberalization and, 105, 108 recent and current, 63, 73, 109, 110, 212–13, 217, 221–22, 226 Savings & Loan crisis, 211 See also housing bubble financial institutions, 92, 107–11, 113, 209, 228 Charles Schumer and, 221 China as model for, 114 Glass-Steagall Act and, 219 globalization and, 35, 73 Haiti and, 10 recent bailouts of, 105, 219–21 Timothy Geithner and, 221 financial instruments, 220, 221 financial liberalization, 72, 93, 97–98, 105, 107, 108, 111, 114 financial sector, 93, 107, 110–11 financial liberalization and the power of, 212 Iran and, 174 Joe Biden and, 216 Obama and, 212, 228–29 Patriot Act and, 174 financialization of the economy, 34, 79, 93, 94, 97, 231 Fites, Donald, 218 Florida, 23, 24, 49, 51 Fourteen Points (Woodrow Wilson), 48 Framework Agreement of 1994, 138 France, 80 Franklin, Bruce, 56 Franks, Tommy, 57 Fraser, Doug, 218 free speech, corporate personhood and, 32–34 “free trade,” 6, 37, 78, 93 criticism of the term, 90 drug trade and, 78–79 “free circulation of labor” and, 29 vs. protectionism, 6, 76–78, 80, 81, 89, 211 Reagan and, 12 slavery and, 78, 79 See also neoliberalism “free trade agreements,” 31, 90–91, 93, 103–4 monopoly pricing rights in, 86 national security exemptions in, 86 See also North American Free Trade Agreement freedom of association, 208 Freeman, Chas, 171 French colonies, 7.


pages: 537 words: 99,778

Dreaming in Public: Building the Occupy Movement by Amy Lang, Daniel Lang/levitsky

activist lawyer, Bay Area Rapid Transit, bonus culture, British Empire, capitalist realism, clean water, cognitive dissonance, collective bargaining, corporate governance, corporate personhood, crowdsourcing, David Graeber, deindustrialization, different worldview, facts on the ground, gentrification, glass ceiling, housing crisis, housing justice, Kibera, late capitalism, lolcat, mass incarceration, military-industrial complex, Naomi Klein, Nelson Mandela, Occupy movement, oil shale / tar sands, out of africa, plutocrats, Port of Oakland, Rosa Parks, Saturday Night Live, Slavoj Žižek, social contagion, structural adjustment programs, the medium is the message, too big to fail, trade liberalization, union organizing, upwardly mobile, urban renewal, War on Poverty, We are Anonymous. We are Legion, We are the 99%, white flight, working poor

If, on the other hand, as the movement has grown, GA has become so hyper-bureaucratic that it has effectively stalled effective organization, the Spokes Council model claims to remedy that by giving those who determine where and how we eat or receive mail a separate decision-making structure through which to work, enabling the rest to use GA to consider ‘larger’ ideas, for instance, the constitutional amendment abolishing corporate personhood and overthrowing Citizens United. Regardless, on Friday 28 October a 9/10ths vote (note: not consensus) passed the Spokes Council Model, and there will no longer be nightly GAs at 7pm in Liberty Park. The Bureaucracies of Anarchy Part 2: People Before Process 14 December 2011 Some time in early October I showed up to an OWS organizers’ meeting at 16 Beaver Street. 16 Beaver, like 56 Walker or Charlotte’s Place, is one of these magically anachronistic spaces in lower Manhattan that feel like something out of Patti Smith’s Just Kids – free space for art, activism and organizing, embedded in some of the most expensive real estate in the world.

He, like many, feels being broke, struggling with cashflow and financial uncertainty, as being a different identity than that of being poor. As Occupy Wall Street and then the local Occupy Boston began to gain their legs and solidify their place in the public discourse, so too did an analysis. Corporate personhood, bank bailouts, executive bonuses and general Wall Street excess at the expense of democracy were at the top of the list of grievances. Personal stories have been told: stories of unemployment lasting two or more years, home foreclosures, bankruptcy due to medical expenses, untenable student loan debts and more.

Moving beyond individual interests to a collective understanding of shared interests for economic justice. Protecting and improving social safety net and entitlement programs such as unemployment insurance, food stamps, foreclosure protection and other social safety net programs, needs to be the context in which other demands such as financial industry regulation and an end to corporate personhood are placed. Messaging and tactics deployed against direct attacks to the social safety net that hit poor communities the hardest, with that distinctive Occupy analysis that ties economic hardship to big finance, could be powerful. A move in this direction would also create an opening for solutions to immediate needs of people now and in the long term.


pages: 284 words: 92,387

The Democracy Project: A History, a Crisis, a Movement by David Graeber

Bretton Woods, British Empire, company town, corporate personhood, David Graeber, deindustrialization, dumpster diving, East Village, feminist movement, financial innovation, George Gilder, John Markoff, Kim Stanley Robinson, land bank, Lao Tzu, late fees, Money creation, Murray Bookchin, Occupy movement, Paul Volcker talking about ATMs, payday loans, planetary scale, plutocrats, radical decentralization, Ralph Nader, reserve currency, Ronald Reagan, Savings and loan crisis, seigniorage, too big to fail, trickle-down economics, unpaid internship, We are the 99%, working poor

If there was going to be an assembly, it was going to be beforehand, to determine what exactly that demand was: that Obama establish a committee to reinstate Glass-Steagall (the Depression-era law that had once prevented commercial banks from engaging in market speculation) or a constitutional amendment abolishing corporate personhood, or something else. Colleen pointed out that Adbusters was basically founded by marketing people and their strategy made perfect sense from a marketing perspective: get a catchy slogan, make sure it expresses precisely what you want, then keep hammering away at it. But, she added, is that kind of legibility always a virtue for a social movement?

By the next day the listserv for our little group was up and all the people who had been at the original meeting started trying to figure out who we were, what we should call ourselves, what we were actually trying to do. Once again, it all started with the question of the one single demand. After throwing out a few initial ideas—Debt cancellation? Abolishing permit laws to legalize freedom of assembly? Abolish corporate personhood?—Matt Presto, who had been with Chris among the first to rally to us at Bowling Green, pretty much put the matter to rest when he pointed out there were really two different sorts of demands. Some were actually achievable, like Adbusters’ suggestion—which had appeared in one of their initial publicity calls—of demanding a commission to consider restoring Glass-Steagall.

It’s interesting to think about what a parallel strategy might look like for Occupy Wall Street: that is, a mode of engagement with the existing political structure that rather than compromising its directly democratic process would actually help foster and develop it. One obvious approach might be an attempt to promote one or more constitutional amendments, which has already been proposed in some quarters: for example, for eliminating money from political campaigns, or an abolition of corporate personhood. There are parallels to that, too: in Ecuador, for example, indigenous groups that mobilized to put a moderate left-of-center economist named Rafael Correa in power insisted, as their expected payback, that they play a major role in writing a new constitution. One could anticipate a lot of problems here, particularly since one is working within the confines of a constitutional structure that was, as noted in the last chapter, largely designed to prevent direct democracy, but if nothing else, it would be far easier to create firewalls in this sort of process than if one was dealing directly with elected officials


The Corporation: The Pathological Pursuit of Profit and Power by Joel Bakan

"World Economic Forum" Davos, Alan Greenspan, benefit corporation, Berlin Wall, business logic, Cass Sunstein, corporate governance, corporate personhood, corporate social responsibility, creative destruction, electricity market, energy security, Exxon Valdez, Ford Model T, IBM and the Holocaust, joint-stock company, laissez-faire capitalism, market fundamentalism, Naomi Klein, new economy, precautionary principle, race to the bottom, Ralph Nader, Ronald Reagan, shareholder value, South Sea Bubble, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, Triangle Shirtwaist Factory, urban sprawl

With shareholders, real people, effectively gone from corporations , the law had to find someone else, some other person, to assume the legal rights and duties firms needed to operate in the economy. That "person" turned out to be the corporation itself. As early as 1793, one corporate scholar outlined the logic of corporate personhood when he defined the corporation as a collection of many individuals united into one body, under a special denomination, having perpetual succession under an artificial form, and vested, by the policy of law, with the capacity of acting, in several respects, as an individual, particularly of taking and granting property, of contracting obligations, and of suing and being sued, of enjoying privileges and immunities in common."

.: First Amendment of, 103 Fourteenth Amendment of, 16 consumer democracy, 143-44, 145-47, 151 consumers, 24, 45-46, 60, 72, 102, 119, 144, 150, 162, 163, 166 children as, 112, 122, 127, 129; see also children's marketing environmental issues and, 146 unsafe products and, 61-65, 73-74, 149 corporate laws, 1-2, 6-16, 28 "best interests of the corporation" principle in, 35-36 charter revocation, 156-58, 161 constituency statutes, 159 corporate "personhood" in, 15-16, 17, 28, 79, 154, 158 English, 6-8, 9, 13, 38-39 limited liability in, 11-13, 79, 154 social responsibility vs., 35-39, 41, 46,57 see also regulatory laws corporate mascots, 26 corporations: amorality of, 53-59, 69, 79, 88-89, 110,134 backlash against, 25-27, 140-43 benevolent, 18-19, 151 church replaced by, 134 definition of, 3 democracy corrupted by, 101-2 devastation as opportunity for, 111, 124-25 dominance of, 5, 21-27, 134, 139-40,153,159 elimination of, 159-60 English banning of, 6-8, 9 exploitation by, 74, 112, 118, 122, 123, 138, 139, 140, 148, 149, 163 as "Frankenstein monsters," 19, 149 as government creations, 153-58, 164 grant theory of, 16 historical development of, 5-21, 153,156 as institutions, 1-3, 28, 50, 56-57, 59,64 as instruments of destruction, 71-73,110 natural entity theory of, 16, 154-55 Nazis assisted by, 87-89 no accountability of, 152 nonprofit, 166 philanthropy of, 30, 31, 45, 47-49 political systems as viewed by, 88-89 profits and, 31, 34, 36, 41, 45, 48, 49, 50,51,52,53,55,57,58,62,69, 88-89 profits and, 31, 34, 36, 41, 45, 48, 49, 50,51,52,53,55,57,58,62,69, 73,82,88-89,101,103,105, 113,117,122,126-27,138,154, 165 psychopathy of, 28, 56-59, 60, 69, 79, 85, 110, 122, 134, 158, 161 public good and, 156, 158 public-purpose, 160-61 "rising tide lifts all boats" principle of, 142-43 and self-interest as human nature, 116-17,134-35,138 self-interest of, 1-2, 28, 37-39, 44-50,58-59,60,61,80,101-2, 105,109-10,117-18,134,142, 149, 156, 160, 161, 167 cost-benefit analysis, 62-65, 79-80, 149-50,152 in oil industry, 82-83 costs: externalized, 61, 62-65, 71-73, 149-50 of social responsibility, 45, 47-48, 49 'creative destruction" toys, 126-27 Croix de Feu, 91 Back Matter Page 1 70 2 NOTES 6.


pages: 196 words: 54,339

Team Human by Douglas Rushkoff

1960s counterculture, Abraham Maslow, Adam Curtis, autonomous vehicles, basic income, Berlin Wall, big-box store, bitcoin, blockchain, Burning Man, carbon footprint, circular economy, clean water, clockwork universe, cloud computing, collective bargaining, Computing Machinery and Intelligence, corporate personhood, digital capitalism, disintermediation, Donald Trump, drone strike, European colonialism, fake news, Filter Bubble, full employment, future of work, game design, gamification, gig economy, Google bus, Gödel, Escher, Bach, hockey-stick growth, Internet of things, invention of the printing press, invention of writing, invisible hand, iterative process, John Perry Barlow, Kevin Kelly, Kevin Roose, knowledge economy, Larry Ellison, Lewis Mumford, life extension, lifelogging, Mark Zuckerberg, Marshall McLuhan, means of production, mirror neurons, multilevel marketing, new economy, patient HM, pattern recognition, peer-to-peer, Peter Thiel, planned obsolescence, power law, prosperity theology / prosperity gospel / gospel of success, Ray Kurzweil, recommendation engine, ride hailing / ride sharing, Ronald Reagan, Ronald Reagan: Tear down this wall, shareholder value, sharing economy, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley billionaire, social intelligence, sovereign wealth fund, Steve Jobs, Steven Pinker, Stewart Brand, tech billionaire, technoutopianism, TED Talk, theory of mind, trade route, Travis Kalanick, Turing test, universal basic income, Vannevar Bush, We are as Gods, winner-take-all economy, zero-sum game

As they have already discovered, the more they can trigger our social instincts and tug on our heartstrings, the more likely we are to engage with them as if they were human. Would you disobey an AI that feels like your parent, or disconnect one that seems like your child? Eerily echoing the rationale behind corporate personhood, some computer scientists are already arguing that AIs should be granted the rights of living beings rather than being treated as mere instruments or slaves. Our science fiction movies depict races of robots taking revenge on their human overlords—as if this problem is somehow more relevant than the unacknowledged legacy of slavery still driving racism in America, or the twenty-first-century slavery on which today’s technological infrastructure depends.

Schor, The Overworked American: The Unexpected Decline of Leisure (New York: Basic Books, 1993). They came up with two main innovations Douglas Rushkoff, Life, Inc.: How the World Became a Corporation and How to Take It Back (New York: Random House, 2011). 46. human beings now strive to brand themselves in the style of corporations Taylor Holden, “Give Me Liberty or Give Me Corporate Personhood,” Harvard Law and Policy Review, November 13, 2017. the New York Stock Exchange was actually purchased by its derivatives exchange in 2013 Nina Mehta and Nandini Sukumar, “Intercontinental Exchange to Acquire NYSE for $8.2 Billion,” Bloomberg, December 20, 2012. 47. digital technology came to the rescue, providing virtual territory for capital’s expansion Joel Hyatt, Peter Leyden, and Peter Schwartz, The Long Boom: A Vision for the Coming Age of Prosperity (New York: Basic Books, 2000).


pages: 427 words: 112,549

Freedom by Daniel Suarez

augmented reality, big-box store, British Empire, Burning Man, business intelligence, call centre, cloud computing, corporate personhood, digital map, game design, global supply chain, illegal immigration, Naomi Klein, new economy, Pearl River Delta, plutocrats, private military company, RFID, Shenzhen special economic zone , special economic zone, speech recognition, Stewart Brand, telemarketer, the scientific method, young professional

NSA: "Sixteen lawsuits were filed by Daemon-infected multinationals yesterday in federal district courts." Now the corporate side of the table fell into stunned silence for a moment. BCM: "Which companies?" NSA (handing over a list): "They're filing suit against the U.S. government. Its lawyers claim that the Daemon has a constitutional right to exist under the precedent of corporate personhood." CSC: "Holy hell . . ." BCM: "The Daemon has lawyers?" NSA: "And it's retained lobbyists. We're negotiating with the courts to keep these cases classified; however, we can't be certain what the judicial branch is going to do about them." BCM: "This is insane. The Daemon is a computer virus, not a corporation."

Or maybe the attorneys are just following instructions from the corner office. We don't know yet. Either way, we should be able to get the courts to close a nineteenth-century loop-hole that has unanticipated twenty-first-century consequences." BCM: "Wait. Let's just wait a second. There are complex considerations relating to an entire body of legal precedents on corporate personhood, and the rights of free speech to corporate interests have a necessary and guiding effect on policy. Let's not do anything rash. We should let these cases run their course. We'll have neutralized the Daemon before they get their day in court, and then these companies will be back in the fold."

CIA (writing notes): "What was the name of that case again?" BCM: "This is a perfect example of why government isn't nimble enough to deal with the Daemon. It's using our own laws and government institutions against us. To divide us. We should be helping one another." NSA: "Wait a minute. Nobody's dividing anyone. Does corporate personhood expose us to danger?" BCM: "That's not the point. What I'm saying is that we can't follow legal niceties in dealing with this thing. We cannot demonstrate weakness. Ever." FBI: "Our laws demonstrate weakness?" The corporate side of the table conferred for a moment, and then the lobbyist turned to face the intelligence directors again.


pages: 286 words: 87,168

Less Is More: How Degrowth Will Save the World by Jason Hickel

air freight, Airbnb, Anthropocene, basic income, Bernie Sanders, Big bang: deregulation of the City of London, biodiversity loss, Boris Johnson, Bretton Woods, British Empire, capital controls, circular economy, cognitive dissonance, coronavirus, corporate governance, corporate personhood, cotton gin, COVID-19, David Graeber, decarbonisation, declining real wages, degrowth, deindustrialization, dematerialisation, disinformation, Elon Musk, energy transition, Extinction Rebellion, extractivism, Fairphone, Fellow of the Royal Society, flying shuttle, Fractional reserve banking, Francis Fukuyama: the end of history, full employment, gender pay gap, green new deal, Greta Thunberg, income inequality, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), invention of the steam engine, James Watt: steam engine, Jeff Bezos, Jevons paradox, John Maynard Keynes: Economic Possibilities for our Grandchildren, land reform, liberal capitalism, lockdown, longitudinal study, low interest rates, Mahatma Gandhi, Mark Zuckerberg, McMansion, means of production, meta-analysis, microbiome, Money creation, moral hazard, mortgage debt, Murray Bookchin, Naomi Klein, negative emissions, new economy, ocean acidification, offshore financial centre, oil shale / tar sands, opioid epidemic / opioid crisis, out of africa, passive income, planetary scale, planned obsolescence, plutocrats, Post-Keynesian economics, quantitative easing, rent control, rent-seeking, retail therapy, Ronald Reagan, Rupert Read, Scramble for Africa, secular stagnation, shareholder value, sharing economy, Simon Kuznets, structural adjustment programs, the scientific method, The Spirit Level, transatlantic slave trade, trickle-down economics, universal basic income

It’s what is driving the pharmaceutical companies behind the opioid crisis in the United States; the beef companies that are burning down the Amazon; the arms companies that lobby against gun control; the oil companies that bankroll climate denialism; and the retail firms that are invading our lives with ever-more sophisticated advertising techniques to get us to buy things we don’t actually want. These are not ‘bad apples’ – they are obeying the iron law of capital. Over the past 500 years, an entire infrastructure has been created to facilitate the expansion of capital: limited liability, corporate personhood, stock markets, shareholder value rules, fractional reserve banking, credit ratings – we live in a world that’s increasingly organised around the imperatives of accumulation. From private imperative to public obsession But understanding the inner dynamics of capital only partly explains the growth imperative.

The preferences of the majority who want to sustain our planet’s ecology for future generations are trumped by a minority of elites who are quite happy to liquidate everything. If our struggle for a more ecological economy is to succeed, we must seek to expand democracy wherever possible. That means kicking big money out of politics; it means radical media reform; strict campaign finance laws; reversing corporate personhood; dismantling monopolies; shifting to co-operative ownership structures; putting workers on company boards; democratising shareholder votes; democratising institutions of global governance; and managing collective resources as commons wherever possible.63 I opened this book by pointing out that large majorities of people across the world are questioning capitalism and yearning for something better.


pages: 332 words: 89,668

Two Nations, Indivisible: A History of Inequality in America: A History of Inequality in America by Jamie Bronstein

Affordable Care Act / Obamacare, back-to-the-land, barriers to entry, basic income, Bernie Sanders, big-box store, Black Lives Matter, blue-collar work, Branko Milanovic, British Empire, Capital in the Twenty-First Century by Thomas Piketty, clean water, cognitive dissonance, collateralized debt obligation, collective bargaining, Community Supported Agriculture, corporate personhood, crony capitalism, deindustrialization, desegregation, Donald Trump, ending welfare as we know it, Frederick Winslow Taylor, full employment, Gini coefficient, Glass-Steagall Act, income inequality, interchangeable parts, invisible hand, job automation, John Maynard Keynes: technological unemployment, labor-force participation, land reform, land tenure, longitudinal study, low skilled workers, low-wage service sector, mandatory minimum, mass incarceration, minimum wage unemployment, moral hazard, moral panic, mortgage debt, New Urbanism, non-tariff barriers, obamacare, occupational segregation, Occupy movement, oil shock, plutocrats, price discrimination, race to the bottom, rent control, road to serfdom, Ronald Reagan, Sam Peltzman, scientific management, Scientific racism, Simon Kuznets, single-payer health, Strategic Defense Initiative, strikebreaker, the long tail, too big to fail, trade route, transcontinental railway, Triangle Shirtwaist Factory, trickle-down economics, universal basic income, Upton Sinclair, upwardly mobile, urban renewal, vertical integration, W. E. B. Du Bois, wage slave, War on Poverty, women in the workforce, working poor, Works Progress Administration

Journal of Supreme Court History vol. 24 no. 3 (2011): 269–281. 9. Santa Clara County v. Southern Pacific Railroad Company 118 US 394, decided May 10, 1886, available online at https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/118/394/case.html, accessed April 7, 2016. 10. Ciara Torres-Spelliscy, “The History of Corporate Personhood,” Brennan Center for Justice, April 7, 2014, available online at https://www.brennancenter.org/blog/hobby-lobby-argument, accessed April 7, 2016. 11. Jacqueline Jones, “Southern Diaspora: Roots of the Northern ‘Underclass,’ ” in Michael B. Katz, ed., The Underclass Debate (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1993), 29. 12.

., 117, 124, 134–135 Calhoun, John, 32 California Life Pension movement, 87–88 Caliver, Ambrose, 84 Carnegie, Andrew, 45–46, 50 Carter, Jimmy, 111–112 Caudill, Harry, 103, 107 Child labor, 64–65 Childcare, 65–66, 103, 110, 115, 125–126 Children, 25, 52, 58–59, 64–66, 102, 115 Christianity, 29, 44, 65, 116, 134–135 Citizens United (2010), 134, 143–144, 147 Civil Rights Act of 1964, 104, 114 Civil War, 33–35, 152 Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC), 82, 94 Clay, Henry, 15 Clayton Anti-Trust Act, 62 Clinton, Bill, xvii, 117, 124–130, 132, 135 Clinton, Hillary, 117, 127 Cold War, 97–98, 119, 123, 142, 153 Collectivism, 147–148 Colored Farmers’ Alliance and Cooperative, 43 Community Action Agencies, 105 Congress of Industrial Organizations, 90 Constitution, 2, 8, 37, 114–115, 129 Contract with America, 117, 125 Cook, Noah, 22 Cooke, Jay, 40 Coolidge, Calvin, 75 Cooper, Anna Julia, 66 Corporate personhood, 37, 42, 55, 134, 143–144, 147 Coughlin, Father Charles, 89 Council of Economic Advisers (CEA), 98, 105 Coxey, Jacob Sechler, 54–55 Crummell, Alexander, 71 Croly, Herbert, 67–69 De Tocqueville, Alexis, 19 Debs, Eugene V., 63–64, 74 Declaration of Independence, 2, 5, 16 Deindustrialization, 120–121, 142 Dew, Thomas, 32 Dewey, John, 69, 84–85, 88 Disraeli, Benjamin, ix, 154 Distributive justice, 112–114, 123 Donnelly, Ignatius, 44 Drugs, War on, 117–118, 128–130, 132 Drury, Victor, 50 DuBois, W.


pages: 326 words: 88,905

Days of Destruction, Days of Revolt by Chris Hedges, Joe Sacco

Berlin Wall, Bernie Sanders, clean water, collective bargaining, company town, corporate personhood, dumpster diving, Easter island, Exxon Valdez, food desert, Goldman Sachs: Vampire Squid, Howard Zinn, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), invisible hand, laissez-faire capitalism, Mahatma Gandhi, mass immigration, mass incarceration, Naomi Klein, Nelson Mandela, Occupy movement, oil shale / tar sands, race to the bottom, Ralph Nader, Silicon Valley, Steve Jobs, strikebreaker, union organizing, urban decay, wage slave, white flight, women in the workforce

I saw this man talking in short phrases and people were repeating them. I don’t know whose idea it was, but that started on the first night. The first general assembly was a little chaotic because people had no idea . . . “a general assembly, what is this for?” At first it was kind of grandstanding about what were our demands. Ending corporate personhood is one that has come up again and again as a favorite and. . . . What ended up happening was, they said, “OK, we’re going to break into work groups.” “People were worried we were going to get kicked out of the park at 10 P.M.,” she goes on, speaking of the first night. “This was a major concern.

., 20, 51 Collier County, 203 Collier County Sheriff’s Department, 179, 197, 202 Commerce Bank of Toronto-Dominion Bank, Norcross and, 91 Communist Party, 230, 240, 241 Complaint Investigation and Resolution Process, 222 Cone, James, 102 Conner Strong & Buckelew, 88 Connor, “Bull,” 263 Convict labor, 64, 196 Cooper Medical School, 91 Cooper University Hospital, 91, 94 Cordero, Angel: on Norcross, 94 Coriolanus (Shakespeare), 267 Cornu, Sharon, 242 Corporate culture, 238, 242, 267, 269 Corporate personhood, ending, 253 Corporate power, 236, 237, 238, 242 Corporate state, 233–234, 244, 263 decay of, 232 suffering/rage of, 237 Corporations, 264 assault by, 174 more and, 265 workers and, 219–220 Corruption, 72–73, 90, 229, 230, 240–241 Coyotes, smuggling by, 187 Crazy Horse, 16, 24 death of, 41, 43, 44 resistance by, 13, 41 Crazy Horse Memorial Highway, 41 Crazy Horse Ride, 41, 43–44 illustration of, 42–43 Crew leaders, 187, 199, 210 Crips gang, 64 Cross and the Lynching Tree, The (Cone), 102 Crow Dog, Leonard, 47–48, 52, 56 illustration of, 47 Crum, Matt, 164 Culture, 4, 46, 130, 239, 255, 256 corporate, 238, 242, 267, 269 dominant, 40 Custer, George Armstrong, 8, 9, 10, 11, 23, 41 D&S Pioneer Service, 3 Daniels, Destry, 133 Davis, Lallois (Lolly), 102–103 on poor, 101 story of, 103–108 (illus.)


pages: 128 words: 38,847

The Curse of Bigness: Antitrust in the New Gilded Age by Tim Wu

AltaVista, AOL-Time Warner, barriers to entry, Big Tech, collective bargaining, corporate personhood, corporate raider, creative destruction, Donald Trump, Ida Tarbell, income inequality, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, John Perry Barlow, Joseph Schumpeter, Kickstarter, move fast and break things, new economy, open economy, Peter Thiel, Plato's cave, price discrimination, road to serfdom, Robert Bork, Silicon Valley, Snapchat, The Chicago School

There is an unfortunate tendency within enforcement agencies to portray breakups and dissolutions as off the table or only for extremely rare cases. There is no legal reason for that presumption: Indeed, the original practice favored dissolution as the default remedy—implied in the very word “antitrust.” Too much of the resistance to dissolution comes from taking too seriously the legal fiction of corporate personhood. In reality, a large corporation is made up of sub-units, whether functional or regional, or independent operations that have been previously acquired. It is not “impossible” to administer a breakup as is sometimes claimed. Many breakups are akin to the spinoffs or dissolutions that are not uncommon in business practice as it stands, such as AOL-Time-Warner’s decision to break itself up into multiple units in the early 2000s.


pages: 396 words: 113,613

Chokepoint Capitalism by Rebecca Giblin, Cory Doctorow

Aaron Swartz, AltaVista, barriers to entry, Berlin Wall, Bernie Sanders, Big Tech, big-box store, Black Lives Matter, book value, collective bargaining, commoditize, coronavirus, corporate personhood, corporate raider, COVID-19, disintermediation, distributed generation, Fairchild Semiconductor, fake news, Filter Bubble, financial engineering, Firefox, forensic accounting, full employment, gender pay gap, George Akerlof, George Floyd, gig economy, Golden age of television, Google bus, greed is good, green new deal, high-speed rail, Hush-A-Phone, independent contractor, index fund, information asymmetry, Jeff Bezos, John Gruber, Kickstarter, laissez-faire capitalism, low interest rates, Lyft, Mark Zuckerberg, means of production, microplastics / micro fibres, Modern Monetary Theory, moral hazard, multi-sided market, Naomi Klein, Network effects, New Journalism, passive income, peak TV, Peter Thiel, precision agriculture, regulatory arbitrage, remote working, rent-seeking, ride hailing / ride sharing, Robert Bork, Saturday Night Live, shareholder value, sharing economy, Silicon Valley, SoftBank, sovereign wealth fund, Steve Jobs, Steven Levy, stock buybacks, surveillance capitalism, Susan Wojcicki, tech bro, tech worker, The Chicago School, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, TikTok, time value of money, transaction costs, trickle-down economics, Turing complete, Uber and Lyft, uber lyft, union organizing, Vanguard fund, vertical integration, WeWork

Perhaps because it was too complex to limit this to Japan, Apple announced that this change would apply globally.33 Although this is a relatively small concession, and much more needs to be done, it demonstrates the power of change in one country to influence what happens elsewhere. And of course, pro-creator policies don’t have to take the form of regulation. Revolutionary arts funding programs and new investments in collectively owned public infrastructure can be powerfully contagious too. Corporations rely on the illusion of corporate personhood, using expensively crafted “brand identities” to present themselves to us as having personalities aimed at making us feel an emotional connection—and like we’re all in this together. But firms have no intrinsic virtues. They are not our friends. If a corporation is a “person,” it’s an immortal colony organism that treats human beings as inconvenient gut flora.

See radio broadcast industry Brook, Becky, 227 Buckmaster, Jim, 39 Buffet, Warren, 6 Burgess, Jean, 124 Burgess, Richard, 54, 82, 90, 171 Caldas, Charles, 72 California tech industry, 165, 249 Canada, 189, 236 capital, 246–47 capitalism, 4–5, 13 Carstensen, Peter, 10, 23, 148 Carter, Jimmy, 102 Chance the Rapper, 62 Chapel Hill, NC, 239–41 Checkm8, 120 Chen, Steve, 124 Chicago school of economics, 3–4, 5, 92–93, 146–47, 213 chickenization, 96 Childish Gambino, 73 China, 122–23 chokepoint capitalism, 9–10 cinema, 242 Citizens United case, 152 class action lawsuits, 248 Clear Channel, 90, 94 Coker, Mark, 22 Cold Case (TV series), 105 Coldrick, Annabella, 225 Cole, Henderson, 243–44 collective action: antitrust barriers to, 171–72; arbitration, 166–67; atomization of labor and, 31; collective ownership, 229–30; creator visibility and power, 169–70; importance of, 246–47, 256; job guarantees, 251–56; organizing, 178–79; private coordination and, 171–72; Writers Guild of America (WGA), 173–77 college tuition, 249 Comcast, 5 command economy, 13 Compaq, 201 comparison, 170 competition, 3–6, 13, 173 competitive compatibility (comcom), 202–4, 206–11 Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (CFAA), 200, 209 computer universality, 197–99 conduct remedies, 148 Conger, 183 consent decrees, 100 consumer debt, 249 consumer harm standard, 117, 146, 173, 250 consumer rights movement, 145–46 consumer welfare, 4, 147 Content ID, 129–35 contextual ads, 231–32 contract labor, 173 cookies, 44 copyright: about, 63–65, 246; anticircumvention laws and infringement, 209; freedom of contract, 184; industrial aggregation of, 57–58, 60–61, 181–82; orphan works, 189, 192–94; registration, 192; reversion proposals, 189–95; reversion rights, 183–89; Statute of Anne (1710), 182–83; term extension, 257; termination law, 186–88; US Copyright Act (1976), 183–84; use-it-or-lose-it rights, 194–95; works for hire, 185–86; and YouTube, 125–29 corporate mergers, 5 corporate personhood, 258 cost moats, 6 COVI D-19, 97, 101, 254 Craigslist, 39–42 Creative Artists Agency, 104, 107, 176 Creative Commons licensing, 151 creative workers: about, 3, 5, 14–19; interoperability and, 203; pay and wages, 16–17 Cross, Colleen, 156 culture, 14 Culture Crash (Timberg), 110–11 culture markets, 3, 13, 14–15 Cumulus Media, 94 data moats, 6 Dayen, David, 94 The Death of the Artist (Deresiewicz), 10 Deezer, 68, 73, 163 The Deficit Myth (Kelten), 255 Dell, 201 Deresiewicz, William, 10 device manufacturers, 43 diapers.com, 37 Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), 25, 26, 28, 38, 128, 134, 199–200, 208–9 digital rights management (DRM), 25–28, 33–34, 37–38, 202 Dinielli, David C., 50 Discovery Network, 215 Disney, 2, 161–62, 172, 212–13 Doctorow, Cory, 34, 116, 227 domain spoofing, 49 DoorDash, 166–67 DOS, 201 DRM (digital rights management), 25–28, 33–34, 37–38, 119, 120, 121 Drummond, David, 127 Dryhurst, Mat, 67, 220, 238 eBay, 40 ebooks market, 24–33, 37–38, 238 ecology movement, 251 economic rents, 118–21 The Economics of Imperfect Competition (Robinson), 10 Ek, Daniel, 84 Electronic Frontier Foundation, 202, 209 Epic Games, 115–18, 119–20 Epidemic Sound, 81–82 European Union: App Drivers and Couriers Union, 171; competition regulation, 233–34; Copyright Directive (2019), 195; dispute resolution, 166–67; General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), 136–39, 144, 171, 231; payment data disclosure, 162, 164; press publishers’ right, 233–34; pro-creator policies, 257; remuneration legislation, 214 The Everything Store (Stone), 21 Excel, 201 Facebook, 2, 18, 45–51 Fairchild Semiconductor, 165–66 Fair Labor Standards Act, 150 fair use/dealing, 130, 189 film scoring, 215 Forbes, 47 Fortnite Battle Royale, 115–18 Foster, Alan Dean, 161–62, 212–13, 215 France, 233 freedom of contract, 184 free market, 118–21 Freire, Paulo, 237 Friedman, Milton, 152, 153, 252 Frisch, Kevin, 48 Game Workers Unite (GWU), 239 gaming industry, 115–18, 239 Gates, Rebecca, 3 Gateway, 201 Gaye, Marvin, 63–64 Gazelle Project, 21 General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), 136–39, 144, 231 geography, and labor market, 15–16 Germany, 214 Getty Images, 229 Gibbs, Melvin, 3 Giblin, Rebecca, 186, 187, 193, 194 gig economy companies, 249 Gilded Age, 178–79 Gioia, Ted, 64 Glatt, Zoë, 133 Glazier, Mitch, 186 Goldenfein, Jake, 235 Goodman, David, 106, 175, 176 Google: about, 2, 7, 10, 15, 18; in Australia, 235; Content ID system, 129–35; and Epic Games, 116, 117; and General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), 136–39; news and advertising, 42–45; News Showcase, 234; streaming share, 83; third-party cookies, 232; YouTube acquisition, 125–29, 134 Google Classroom, 210 Green, Joshua, 124 Green, Matthew, 209 Hachette, 23, 28 Haggard, Merle, 166 Harcourt, Amanda, 70, 83 hate, and profits, 95 health insurance, 249, 256 Herndon, Holly, 66–67 Hind, Dan, 244 hip-hop, 61 horizontal integration, 45, 46, 57, 69–70, 97 Howard, George, 82 HP, 199 Huang, Andrew, 209 Hundt, Reed, 90 Hurley, Chad, 124, 128 Hwang, Tim, 46, 50 IBM, 149, 201 ICM Partners, 104 iHeartMedia, 18, 56, 90, 91, 94 Imeem, 133 independent cinema, 242 indyreads, 241–42 information, 14 Intel, 166 International Confederation of Authors and Composers Society, 67 interoperability: adversarial, 201–3; competitive compatibility (comcom), 202–4, 206–11; computer universality, 197–99; digital lock-in, 196–97; DMCA and, 199; as essential, 120; interoperator’s defense, 210; mandated, 204–6; physical lock-in, 196; video streaming, 198; virtual machines, 198; voluntary, 200–201 iWork, 202 Japan Fair Trade Commission, 258 Jay-Z, 2, 160 Jennings, Tom, 201 Jensen, Rich, 237 job guarantees, 251–56 Johannessen, Chip, 105 Johnson, Dennis, 21–22 Johnson, Paul, 78 Kanopy, 242 Kanter, Jonathan, 147 Karim, Jawed, 124 Karp, Irwin, 184 Kates, Mark, 62 Keating, Zoë, 66, 68 Kelten, Stephanie, 255 Khan, Lina, 6, 147 Kindle ebook store, 26–34, 37–38 Kindle Unlimited, 159–60 Kirkwood, John, 173 Klein, Naomi, 152, 254 Knowledge Ecology International, 153 Kobalt, 73 Kowal, Mary Robinette, 212–13 Kun, Josh, 59 labor, 5–6, 253–54 labor, job guarantees, 251–56 labor market and geography, 15–16 LaPolt, Dina, 61 lending right, public, 242–44 Leonard, Christopher, 96 leveraged buyouts, 91–93 libraries, 35–36, 241–44 Linda, Solomon, 188 “The Lion Sleeps Tonight” (song), 188 literary agents, 23 litigation costs, 166–67 live music industry: grind and difficulties of, 97–98; Live Nation consolidation of, 98–103; scalping, 98, 100 Live Nation: about, 2, 18, 56; antitrust remedies, 148; domination of industry, 97–103 Livingstone, Bruce, 229 local public ownership models, 239–42 location data, 50 Lofgren, Zoe, 209 Lotus 1-2-3, 201 Love, Courtney, 53 Love, James, 153 Lovett, Lyle, 53 Lyft, 249 Lynn, Barry, 22 Lynskey, Orla, 15 Macmillan, 30 Maker Studios, 133 Malamud, Carl, 130 mandated interoperability, 204–6 Manne Seminars, 103 market power, 13–14 Marrakesh Treaty to Facilitate Access to Published Works for Persons Who Are Blind, Visually Impaired or Otherwise Print Disabled, 153 Marshall, Josh, 43 Marx, Paris, 239 May, Susan, 154, 156, 158–59 Medicare for All, 256 Meese, James, 232, 235 Melville House Publishing, 21–22 Merlin, 71–72, 77 # Me Too, 47 Microchip Technology, 166 Microsoft, 201 middlemen, 46 Mills, Martin, 59 Minogue, Kylie, 3 moats, corporate, 6–7, 136 monopolies, 3–6, 9–10, 11–12, 118–19, 146, 256–59; maintenance of monopoly, 58 Monopolized!


pages: 538 words: 121,670

Republic, Lost: How Money Corrupts Congress--And a Plan to Stop It by Lawrence Lessig

air traffic controllers' union, Alan Greenspan, asset-backed security, banking crisis, carbon tax, carried interest, circulation of elites, cognitive dissonance, corporate personhood, correlation does not imply causation, crony capitalism, David Brooks, Edward Glaeser, Filter Bubble, financial deregulation, financial innovation, financial intermediation, Glass-Steagall Act, Greenspan put, invisible hand, jimmy wales, low interest rates, Martin Wolf, meta-analysis, Mikhail Gorbachev, moral hazard, Pareto efficiency, place-making, profit maximization, public intellectual, Ralph Nader, regulatory arbitrage, rent-seeking, Ronald Reagan, Sam Peltzman, Savings and loan crisis, Silicon Valley, single-payer health, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, too big to fail, TSMC, Tyler Cowen, upwardly mobile, WikiLeaks, Yochai Benkler, Zipcar

Just four years prior, in 2006, independent expenditures totaled $37,394,589). 43. It is for this reason that I am skeptical of the utility of efforts to try to “reverse” Citizens United by denying corporate personhood. The root problem is an influence that drives representatives away from a focus on “th cocutp:e People alone.” Even if a reform were to achieve the reversal of corporate personhood, that wouldn’t by itself change the existing skew of influence. 44. Of course not all courts are this enlightened. In Miles v. City of Augusta, 710 F.2d 1542 (11th Cir. 1983), the Court refused “to hear a claim that” a talking cat’s First Amendment rights had been infringed, finding the cat not a “person” under the Fourteenth Amendment. 45. 494 US 652, 660 (1990). 46.


Power Systems: Conversations on Global Democratic Uprisings and the New Challenges to U.S. Empire by Noam Chomsky, David Barsamian

"World Economic Forum" Davos, affirmative action, Affordable Care Act / Obamacare, Albert Einstein, American ideology, Chelsea Manning, collective bargaining, colonial rule, corporate personhood, David Brooks, discovery of DNA, double helix, drone strike, failed state, Great Leap Forward, Herbert Marcuse, high-speed rail, Howard Zinn, hydraulic fracturing, income inequality, inflation targeting, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), Julian Assange, land reform, language acquisition, Martin Wolf, Mohammed Bouazizi, Naomi Klein, Nelson Mandela, new economy, no-fly zone, obamacare, Occupy movement, oil shale / tar sands, pattern recognition, Powell Memorandum, public intellectual, quantitative easing, Ralph Nader, Ralph Waldo Emerson, single-payer health, sovereign wealth fund, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, theory of mind, Tobin tax, union organizing, Upton Sinclair, uranium enrichment, WikiLeaks

That’s independent of how long it might take to ratify something like that. If enough people get interested in the issue, they may turn to more radical goals and, I think, more principled ones. Which takes us to the principled issue. I think Citizens United is a very bad decision. However, it’s kind of the icing on the cake. The idea of corporate personhood goes back a century. It wasn’t instituted by Citizens United. And we should be thinking about that. Why should corporations be granted personal rights? By now corporations have rights way beyond persons of flesh and blood. They are immortal, they are protected by state power. In fact, the basis of a corporation is limited liability, meaning as a participant in a corporation you’re not personally liable if it, say, murders tens of thousands of people at Bhopal.


pages: 172 words: 48,747

The View From Flyover Country: Dispatches From the Forgotten America by Sarah Kendzior

Aaron Swartz, Affordable Care Act / Obamacare, Alan Greenspan, American ideology, barriers to entry, clean water, corporate personhood, crowdsourcing, David Brooks, David Graeber, disinformation, Donald Trump, Edward Snowden, gentrification, George Santayana, glass ceiling, income inequality, independent contractor, low skilled workers, Lyft, Marshall McLuhan, Mohammed Bouazizi, new economy, obamacare, Occupy movement, Oklahoma City bombing, payday loans, pink-collar, post-work, public intellectual, publish or perish, Richard Florida, ride hailing / ride sharing, Sheryl Sandberg, side hustle, Silicon Valley, the medium is the message, trickle-down economics, Uber and Lyft, uber lyft, unpaid internship, Upton Sinclair, urban decay, War on Poverty, WikiLeaks, women in the workforce

More attention was paid to the shutdown of the Panda Cam, a livestream of a bear cub, than to the suffering of America’s poorest citizens. Water is a human right, but who is a human being? Corporations, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in June, as the parched citizens of Detroit started filling up at water fountains. “In its last day in session, the high court not only affirmed corporate personhood but expanded the human rights of corporations, who by some measures enjoy more protections than mortals—or ‘natural persons,’” wrote Dana Milbank at the Washington Post. The mortals of Detroit enjoy no such protection. Perhaps that is why the city’s corporate venues—like its high-end golf club, hockey arena, football stadium, and over half of the city’s commercial and industrial users—still have their water running despite owing over $30 million, while its most impoverished residents have their water, and their rights, taken away.


pages: 207 words: 52,716

Capitalism 3.0: A Guide to Reclaiming the Commons by Peter Barnes

Albert Einstein, car-free, carbon tax, clean water, collective bargaining, corporate governance, corporate personhood, corporate raider, corporate social responsibility, cotton gin, dark matter, digital divide, diversified portfolio, do well by doing good, Easter island, en.wikipedia.org, Garrett Hardin, gentrification, hypertext link, Isaac Newton, James Watt: steam engine, jitney, junk bonds, Michael Milken, military-industrial complex, money market fund, new economy, patent troll, precautionary principle, profit maximization, Ronald Coase, telemarketer, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, Tragedy of the Commons, transaction costs, War on Poverty, Yogi Berra

.”: Walter Hickel, Crisis in the Commons: The Alaska Solution (Oakland, Calif.: ICS Press, 2002), p. 217. 120 a handful of corporations: Adam Smith, The Wealth of Nations (London: Penguin Books, 1982 [originally published 1776]). 121 corporations were persons”: The Supreme Court decision that established corporate personhood was Santa Clara County v. Southern Pacific Railroad, 118 U.S. 394 (1886). 122 Fortune 500 sales: I computed the annual sales of Fortune 500 corporations from data available (for a fee) on Fortune magazine’s website. See http:// money.cnn.com/magazines/fortune/fortune500_archive/full/1955/index.htm. 123 “So great has been the change . . .”: John Kenneth Galbraith, The Affluent Society (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1958), p. 2. 124 scarce factor is trees: See www.worldchanging.com/archives/004143.html. 125 capitalism’s stages: I’m pleased to note that ecological economist Herman Daly has a two-stage schema similar to mine.


pages: 258 words: 63,367

Making the Future: The Unipolar Imperial Moment by Noam Chomsky

Alan Greenspan, Albert Einstein, Berlin Wall, Bretton Woods, British Empire, capital controls, collective bargaining, corporate governance, corporate personhood, creative destruction, deindustrialization, energy security, failed state, Fall of the Berlin Wall, financial deregulation, Frank Gehry, full employment, Glass-Steagall Act, Howard Zinn, Joseph Schumpeter, kremlinology, liberation theology, Long Term Capital Management, market fundamentalism, Mikhail Gorbachev, Nelson Mandela, no-fly zone, Occupy movement, oil shale / tar sands, precariat, public intellectual, RAND corporation, Robert Solow, Ronald Reagan, Seymour Hersh, structural adjustment programs, The Great Moderation, too big to fail, uranium enrichment, Washington Consensus, WikiLeaks, working poor

This attack on classical liberalism was sharply condemned by the vanishing breed of conservatives. Christopher G. Tiedeman described the principle as “a menace to the liberty of the individual, and to the stability of the American states as popular governments.” In his standard legal history, Morton Horwitz writes that the concept of corporate personhood evolved alongside the shift of power from shareholders to managers, and finally to the doctrine that “the powers of the board of directors . . . are identical with the powers of the corporation.” In later years, corporate rights were expanded far beyond those of persons, notably by the mislabeled “free trade agreements.”


pages: 366 words: 94,209

Throwing Rocks at the Google Bus: How Growth Became the Enemy of Prosperity by Douglas Rushkoff

activist fund / activist shareholder / activist investor, Airbnb, Alan Greenspan, algorithmic trading, Amazon Mechanical Turk, Andrew Keen, bank run, banking crisis, barriers to entry, benefit corporation, bitcoin, blockchain, Burning Man, business process, buy and hold, buy low sell high, California gold rush, Capital in the Twenty-First Century by Thomas Piketty, carbon footprint, centralized clearinghouse, citizen journalism, clean water, cloud computing, collaborative economy, collective bargaining, colonial exploitation, Community Supported Agriculture, corporate personhood, corporate raider, creative destruction, crowdsourcing, cryptocurrency, data science, deep learning, disintermediation, diversified portfolio, Dutch auction, Elon Musk, Erik Brynjolfsson, Ethereum, ethereum blockchain, fiat currency, Firefox, Flash crash, full employment, future of work, gamification, Garrett Hardin, gentrification, gig economy, Gini coefficient, global supply chain, global village, Google bus, Howard Rheingold, IBM and the Holocaust, impulse control, income inequality, independent contractor, index fund, iterative process, Jaron Lanier, Jeff Bezos, jimmy wales, job automation, Joseph Schumpeter, Kickstarter, Large Hadron Collider, loss aversion, low interest rates, Lyft, Marc Andreessen, Mark Zuckerberg, market bubble, market fundamentalism, Marshall McLuhan, means of production, medical bankruptcy, minimum viable product, Mitch Kapor, Naomi Klein, Network effects, new economy, Norbert Wiener, Oculus Rift, passive investing, payday loans, peer-to-peer lending, Peter Thiel, post-industrial society, power law, profit motive, quantitative easing, race to the bottom, recommendation engine, reserve currency, RFID, Richard Stallman, ride hailing / ride sharing, Ronald Reagan, Russell Brand, Satoshi Nakamoto, Second Machine Age, shareholder value, sharing economy, Silicon Valley, Snapchat, social graph, software patent, Steve Jobs, stock buybacks, TaskRabbit, the Cathedral and the Bazaar, The Future of Employment, the long tail, trade route, Tragedy of the Commons, transportation-network company, Turing test, Uber and Lyft, Uber for X, uber lyft, unpaid internship, Vitalik Buterin, warehouse robotics, Wayback Machine, Y Combinator, young professional, zero-sum game, Zipcar

That’s the basis of the recent Hobby Lobby case before the Supreme Court, which decided that a corporation’s personhood entitles it to deny aspects of a health plan with which it morally disagrees.5 It’s also the driving force behind the Citizens United case, in which corporations were granted the right to free speech formerly reserved for humans—but not the corresponding limitations on campaign donations. And these cases all trace back to the most hard-fought battle of all, won during Lincoln’s era, of corporate “personhood” itself.6 The objective, true to the corporation’s three other core commands, was to give railway corporations the same rights to land as that of its local human inhabitants. This way, people would no longer be able to object to railways’ seeking right of passage through their towns or property.


pages: 273 words: 93,419

Let them eat junk: how capitalism creates hunger and obesity by Robert Albritton

"RICO laws" OR "Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations", Bretton Woods, California gold rush, carbon tax, clean water, collective bargaining, computer age, corporate personhood, creative destruction, deindustrialization, Food sovereignty, Haber-Bosch Process, illegal immigration, immigration reform, invisible hand, joint-stock company, joint-stock limited liability company, Kickstarter, land reform, late capitalism, means of production, military-industrial complex, offshore financial centre, oil shale / tar sands, peak oil, planned obsolescence, price stability, profit maximization, profit motive, South Sea Bubble, the built environment, union organizing, Unsafe at Any Speed, upwardly mobile

Economist (1993) “A survey of the food industry”, December 4. Economist (1994) “A survey of television”, February 12. Economist (1996) “A survey of living with the car”, June 22. Economist (2000) “A survey of agriculture and technology”, March 25. Economist (2003) “A survey of food”, December 13. Edwards, J. and Morgan, M. (2004) “Abolish corporate personhood”, [online] <www.reclaimdemocracy.org/personhood/edwards_morgan_corporate.html>. Eisenitz, G. (1997) Slaughterhouse, New York: Prometheus. Ellis, H. (2007) Planet Chicken, London: Sceptre. Ellwood, W. (2001) The No-Nonsense Guide to Globalization, Toronto: New Internationalist Publications.


Who Rules the World? by Noam Chomsky

Able Archer 83, Alan Greenspan, Albert Einstein, anti-communist, Ayatollah Khomeini, Berlin Wall, Bretton Woods, British Empire, capital controls, classic study, corporate governance, corporate personhood, cuban missile crisis, deindustrialization, Donald Trump, Doomsday Clock, Edward Snowden, en.wikipedia.org, facts on the ground, failed state, Fall of the Berlin Wall, Garrett Hardin, high-speed rail, Howard Zinn, illegal immigration, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), invisible hand, liberation theology, Malacca Straits, Martin Wolf, Mikhail Gorbachev, Monroe Doctrine, Nelson Mandela, nuclear winter, Occupy movement, oil shale / tar sands, one-state solution, Plutonomy: Buying Luxury, Explaining Global Imbalances, precariat, public intellectual, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Robert Solow, Ronald Reagan, South China Sea, Stanislav Petrov, Strategic Defense Initiative, structural adjustment programs, The Theory of the Leisure Class by Thorstein Veblen, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, Thorstein Veblen, too big to fail, trade route, Tragedy of the Commons, union organizing, uranium enrichment, wage slave, WikiLeaks, working-age population

Collingwood, Charles Colombia Colombian Permanent Committee for Human Rights colonialism Columbia Journalism Review Columbus, Christopher Command and Control (Schlosser) Committee on Public Information commons communism Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (CELAC) Congo consent, manufacture of Constantine, Emperor Contras Copenhagen Global Climate Change Summit Corcoran, Paul corporations personhood and Costs of War Project counterinsurgency Counterterrorism Security Group Creveld, Martin van Crimea Crisis of Democracy, The (Crozier) Cruickshank, Paul Cruz, Ted Cuba Bay of Pigs and missile crisis and Cyprus Daily Mail (London) Damascus, Syria Danger and Survival (Bundy) Darwish, Mahmoud Davar Dayan, Moshe Debs, Eugene debt Declaration of Independence defense spending deindustrialization democracy Democratic Party Dempsey, Martin Depression deregulation Dewey, John Dhanapala, Jayantha Diem, Ngo Dinh Diskin, Yuval Dobbs, Michael Dole, Bob Domínguez, Jorge Dorman, William Dostum, Abdul Rashid Dower, John Dreazen, Yochi Dreyfus, Alfred drones Duarte, Sergio due process Dulles, John Foster E1 project East Asia Eastern Europe East Timor Ebadi, Shirin Economic Charter of the Americas economic crises crash of 2008 Economic Policy Institute Ecuador education efficient market hypothesis Egypt Israeli treaty with Israeli war of 1967 Einstein, Albert Eisenhower, Dwight D.


pages: 341 words: 98,954

Owning the Sun by Alexander Zaitchik

"World Economic Forum" Davos, American Legislative Exchange Council, anti-communist, back-to-the-land, Berlin Wall, business cycle, classic study, colonial rule, coronavirus, corporate personhood, COVID-19, crowdsourcing, desegregation, Donald Trump, energy transition, informal economy, invisible hand, It's morning again in America, knowledge economy, lone genius, Louis Pasteur, Mahatma Gandhi, Menlo Park, Mont Pelerin Society, Nelson Mandela, oil shock, Philip Mirowski, placebo effect, Potemkin village, profit motive, proprietary trading, Ralph Nader, rent-seeking, road to serfdom, Robert Bork, Ronald Reagan, shareholder value, Silicon Valley, Stewart Brand, supercomputer in your pocket, The Chicago School, Unsafe at Any Speed, Upton Sinclair, Whole Earth Catalog

The basic idea was that the myths of American individualism, self-reliance, and autonomy had become mismatched with the facts of modern industrial society, resulting in policies and outdated thinking that ranked among “the most unrealistic in the world.” Among the ideas he considered fonts of magical thinking, bad policy, and undemocratic concentrations of power: corporate personhood and an outdated, idealistic attachment to the patent as a sensible reward for plucky “lone inventors.” Arnold’s long preoccupation with the myths and modern realities of intellectual property prepared him to continue Jackson’s project to liberate wartime production from the suffocating grips of corporate patent strategies.


pages: 370 words: 107,983

Rage Inside the Machine: The Prejudice of Algorithms, and How to Stop the Internet Making Bigots of Us All by Robert Elliott Smith

"World Economic Forum" Davos, Ada Lovelace, adjacent possible, affirmative action, AI winter, Alfred Russel Wallace, algorithmic bias, algorithmic management, AlphaGo, Amazon Mechanical Turk, animal electricity, autonomous vehicles, behavioural economics, Black Swan, Brexit referendum, British Empire, Cambridge Analytica, cellular automata, Charles Babbage, citizen journalism, Claude Shannon: information theory, combinatorial explosion, Computing Machinery and Intelligence, corporate personhood, correlation coefficient, crowdsourcing, Daniel Kahneman / Amos Tversky, data science, deep learning, DeepMind, desegregation, discovery of DNA, disinformation, Douglas Hofstadter, Elon Musk, fake news, Fellow of the Royal Society, feminist movement, Filter Bubble, Flash crash, Geoffrey Hinton, Gerolamo Cardano, gig economy, Gödel, Escher, Bach, invention of the wheel, invisible hand, Jacquard loom, Jacques de Vaucanson, John Harrison: Longitude, John von Neumann, Kenneth Arrow, Linda problem, low skilled workers, Mark Zuckerberg, mass immigration, meta-analysis, mutually assured destruction, natural language processing, new economy, Northpointe / Correctional Offender Management Profiling for Alternative Sanctions, On the Economy of Machinery and Manufactures, p-value, pattern recognition, Paul Samuelson, performance metric, Pierre-Simon Laplace, post-truth, precariat, profit maximization, profit motive, Silicon Valley, social intelligence, statistical model, Stephen Hawking, stochastic process, Stuart Kauffman, telemarketer, The Bell Curve by Richard Herrnstein and Charles Murray, The Future of Employment, the scientific method, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, The Wisdom of Crowds, theory of mind, Thomas Bayes, Thomas Malthus, traveling salesman, Turing machine, Turing test, twin studies, Vilfredo Pareto, Von Neumann architecture, warehouse robotics, women in the workforce, Yochai Benkler

Hayek’s neoliberal theories, which gained widespread acceptance in the 1980s and 1990s, were based on the idea that the pursuit of individual, economic self-interest leads to the creation of greater value, which inevitably benefits society and results in the improvement of humankind and their general lot in life. The individual self-interest being pursued in this case is that of Facebook, a legal person (thanks to the notion of ‘corporate personhood’), whose board and directors are mandated to deliver the maximum value to the company’s shareholders. Facebook’s algorithms are the virtual limbs of this corporate body, tasked with reaching out into the marketplace and finding the best financial returns. In such a situation, where only a single agenda is present, the optimization algorithms involved are the ultimate realization of the rational agents at the centre of two centuries of economic theory.


pages: 481 words: 125,946

What to Think About Machines That Think: Today's Leading Thinkers on the Age of Machine Intelligence by John Brockman

Adam Curtis, agricultural Revolution, AI winter, Alan Turing: On Computable Numbers, with an Application to the Entscheidungsproblem, algorithmic trading, Anthropocene, artificial general intelligence, augmented reality, autism spectrum disorder, autonomous vehicles, backpropagation, basic income, behavioural economics, bitcoin, blockchain, bread and circuses, Charles Babbage, clean water, cognitive dissonance, Colonization of Mars, complexity theory, computer age, computer vision, constrained optimization, corporate personhood, cosmological principle, cryptocurrency, cuban missile crisis, Danny Hillis, dark matter, data science, deep learning, DeepMind, Demis Hassabis, digital capitalism, digital divide, digital rights, discrete time, Douglas Engelbart, driverless car, Elon Musk, Emanuel Derman, endowment effect, epigenetics, Ernest Rutherford, experimental economics, financial engineering, Flash crash, friendly AI, functional fixedness, global pandemic, Google Glasses, Great Leap Forward, Hans Moravec, hive mind, Ian Bogost, income inequality, information trail, Internet of things, invention of writing, iterative process, James Webb Space Telescope, Jaron Lanier, job automation, Johannes Kepler, John Markoff, John von Neumann, Kevin Kelly, knowledge worker, Large Hadron Collider, lolcat, loose coupling, machine translation, microbiome, mirror neurons, Moneyball by Michael Lewis explains big data, Mustafa Suleyman, natural language processing, Network effects, Nick Bostrom, Norbert Wiener, paperclip maximiser, pattern recognition, Peter Singer: altruism, phenotype, planetary scale, Ray Kurzweil, Recombinant DNA, recommendation engine, Republic of Letters, RFID, Richard Thaler, Rory Sutherland, Satyajit Das, Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence, self-driving car, sharing economy, Silicon Valley, Skype, smart contracts, social intelligence, speech recognition, statistical model, stem cell, Stephen Hawking, Steve Jobs, Steven Pinker, Stewart Brand, strong AI, Stuxnet, superintelligent machines, supervolcano, synthetic biology, systems thinking, tacit knowledge, TED Talk, the scientific method, The Wisdom of Crowds, theory of mind, Thorstein Veblen, too big to fail, Turing machine, Turing test, Von Neumann architecture, Watson beat the top human players on Jeopardy!, We are as Gods, Y2K

In addition to passing the maturity/sanity/humanity test, perhaps the copy needs to pass a reverse Turing Test (a Church-Turing Test?). Rather than demonstrating behavior indistinguishable from that of a human, the goal would be to show behavior distinct from human individuals. (Would the current U.S. two-party system pass such a test?) Perhaps the day of corporate personhood (Dartmouth College v. Woodward, 1819) has finally arrived. We already vote with our wallets. Shifts in purchasing trends result in differential wealth, lobbying, R&D priorities, etc. Perhaps more copies of specific memes, minds, and brains will come to represent the will of We the (hybrid) People of the world.


pages: 497 words: 123,718

A Game as Old as Empire: The Secret World of Economic Hit Men and the Web of Global Corruption by Steven Hiatt; John Perkins

"RICO laws" OR "Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations", "World Economic Forum" Davos, accelerated depreciation, addicted to oil, airline deregulation, Andrei Shleifer, Asian financial crisis, Berlin Wall, big-box store, Bob Geldof, book value, Bretton Woods, British Empire, capital controls, centre right, clean water, colonial rule, corporate governance, corporate personhood, deglobalization, deindustrialization, disinformation, Doha Development Round, energy security, European colonialism, export processing zone, financial deregulation, financial independence, full employment, global village, high net worth, land bank, land reform, large denomination, liberal capitalism, Long Term Capital Management, Mexican peso crisis / tequila crisis, Mikhail Gorbachev, military-industrial complex, moral hazard, Naomi Klein, new economy, North Sea oil, offshore financial centre, oil shock, Ponzi scheme, race to the bottom, reserve currency, Ronald Reagan, Scramble for Africa, Seymour Hersh, statistical model, structural adjustment programs, Suez crisis 1956, Tax Reform Act of 1986, too big to fail, trade liberalization, transatlantic slave trade, transfer pricing, union organizing, Washington Consensus, working-age population, Yom Kippur War

Four years later, another Pennsylvania township, Porter, challenged the constitutional rights of corporations with passage of an ordinance stating, “Corporations shall not be considered to be ‘persons’ protected by the Constitution of the United States or the Constitution of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania.” In June 2006, California’s Humboldt County took this legislation one step farther, passing a resolution that not only directly challenged corporate personhood but also banned all out-of-county corporations from making political contributions in local campaigns. In 2005, Charlevoix Township in Michigan was one of dozens of cities to approve ordinances giving local government the authority to limit the size of big-box stores. That same year, Maryland passed legislation requiring organizations with more than 10,000 employees in the state to spend at least 8 percent of their payroll on health benefits.


pages: 1,261 words: 294,715

Behave: The Biology of Humans at Our Best and Worst by Robert M. Sapolsky

autism spectrum disorder, autonomous vehicles, behavioural economics, Bernie Madoff, biofilm, blood diamond, British Empire, Broken windows theory, Brownian motion, car-free, classic study, clean water, cognitive dissonance, cognitive load, corporate personhood, corporate social responsibility, Daniel Kahneman / Amos Tversky, delayed gratification, desegregation, different worldview, domesticated silver fox, double helix, Drosophila, Edward Snowden, en.wikipedia.org, epigenetics, Flynn Effect, framing effect, fudge factor, George Santayana, global pandemic, Golden arches theory, Great Leap Forward, hiring and firing, illegal immigration, impulse control, income inequality, intentional community, John von Neumann, Loma Prieta earthquake, long peace, longitudinal study, loss aversion, Mahatma Gandhi, meta-analysis, microaggression, mirror neurons, Mohammed Bouazizi, Monkeys Reject Unequal Pay, mouse model, mutually assured destruction, Nelson Mandela, Network effects, nocebo, out of africa, Peter Singer: altruism, phenotype, Philippa Foot, placebo effect, publication bias, RAND corporation, risk tolerance, Rosa Parks, selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor (SSRI), self-driving car, Silicon Valley, Skinner box, social contagion, social distancing, social intelligence, Stanford marshmallow experiment, Stanford prison experiment, stem cell, Steven Pinker, strikebreaker, theory of mind, Tragedy of the Commons, transatlantic slave trade, traveling salesman, trickle-down economics, trolley problem, twin studies, ultimatum game, Walter Mischel, wikimedia commons, zero-sum game, zoonotic diseases

Cheese’s, 342n Churchland, Patricia, 541 Cinderella effect, 367 cities, 296, 298–99 civilizing process, 617 Civil War, 409, 662 Battle of Gettysburg, 554, 644 Clark, Kenneth and Mamie, 415 class, see socioeconomic status Clay, Henry, 285 cleanliness, 564–65 climate, 302–3 Clinton, Bill, 640 cognition, 617–18 adolescence and, 159 cognitive load, 49–50, 416–17, 546 empathy fatigue, 534–35 emotion and, 54–58 empathy and, 528, 531–35, 552 frontal cortex and, 47–50, 159 stages of cognitive development, 176–79 cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT), 61 Cohen, Dov, 285, 286, 287 Cohen, Jonathan, 47, 58, 609 Cohn, Alain, 491 Cohn, Roy, 396 Colburn, Lawrence, 657, 658n, 658, 660, 670 Coles, Robert, 181n Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed (Diamond), 302 collectivist cultures, 97, 156, 206–7, 273–82, 474, 501–3 Coming of Age in Samoa (Mead), 122 compassion, 15, 522, 523, 542 acts of, 542–45, 551, 614 effective, 545–46 in animals, 523–26 in children, 527–28 self-interest in, 547–50, 642 wealthy people and, 533–34 see also empathy compatibilism, 586 competition, 2–4, 15, 16 moral judgment and, 495–500 COMT (catechol-O-methyltransferase), 256–58 conditioned place preference, 103 confidence, 102–3, 237 confirmation biases, 403 conflict monitoring, 528–29 conflict resolution, sacred values in, 575–79, 643–44 conformity, see obedience and conformity congenital adrenal hyperplasia (CAH), 215–18 consequentialism, 504–7, 520 consolation behavior, 525–26 contact theory, 420, 626–30 cooperation, 3, 4, 15, 547, 633–35 moral judgment and, 495–500, 508–9 optimal strategy for, 345–53 punishment used to promote, 635 starting, 353–54, 508–9 corporate personhood, 411n, 503 Correll, Joshua, 86 corruption, 267 Corry, Stephen, 315 cortex, 29 Cotton, Ronald, 641–42 Craddock, Sandie, 124 CRH (corticotropin-releasing hormone), 125, 129, 132, 708–9 Crick, Francis, 714 crime: abortion and, 190–91 broken window theory of, 95–96 income inequality and, 295 in 1970s and 1980s, 311 organized, 395–96 urbanization and, 296 Crimean War, 662 criminal justice system, 171, 253, 398, 502–3, 580–600, 608–12 adolescents and, 170–71, 589–90, 592–93 brain damage and, 590–91, 597, 598, 601–2, 609 and causation vs. compulsion, 593 cognitive biases in jurors, 582 and diminished responsibility for actions, 587 free will and, see free will judicial decisions, 448, 449, 483, 583, 643 neuroimaging data and, 582, 599 and starting a behavior vs. halting it, 594–95 and time course of decision making for action, 592–93 crises, cultural, 301–3 culture(s), 7, 11, 21, 266–327 adolescence and, 155–56 changes in, over time, 276–77 childhood and, 202–10 collectivist, 97, 156, 206–7, 273–82, 474, 501–3 crises and, 301–3 definitions of, 269–71 differences in, 271–73 gender-related, 272 diffusion and, 621 egalitarian, 291–96 of honor, 207, 283, 284, 501 American South, 207, 284–88, 501 honor killings in, 288–91, 290 human universals in, 271–72 hunter-gatherer, 291, 315–25, 318, 372–73, 407, 499, 616–17, 620 gods in, 297 Hadza, 317–19, 318, 498, 620 violence in, 319–25, 322 individualistic, 97, 156, 206–7, 273–82, 474, 501–3 learning in, 457 long-lasting effects of, 267 math skills and, 266–67, 406 moral judgments and, 275, 493–503 pastoral, 282–83, 288, 379 religion and, 283, 304 prehistoric and contemporary indigenous, 305–26, 307, 310, 318, 320, 322 religion in, see religion sensory processing and, 276 similarities in, 271–72 stratified, 291–96 stress responses and, 274–75 violence and, 272 Cushing’s syndrome, 151n Cyberball, 165–66, 529–30, 559 Dalai Lama, 544 Dale, Henry, 692 Dalton, Katharina, 123 Daly, Martin, 367 Damasio, Antonio, 28, 56, 61, 97, 507, 538 Darden, Chris, 396 Darkness in El Dorado: How Scientists and Journalists Devastated the Amazon (Tierney), 312n Darwin, Charles, 230n Darwin’s finches, 379 Das, Gopal, 147 Davidson, Richard, 544 Davis, Richard, 574–75 Dawkins, Richard, 330, 333, 361, 362 DeCasper, Anthony, 210–11 deception, 512–17 Decety, Jean, 180, 532 decision making, 38–39, 46–47 De Dreu, Carsten, 116–17 De Kock, Eugene, 629–30 Demonic Males: Apes and the Origins of Human Violence (Wrangham and Peterson), 316, 317 Dennett, Daniel, 607, 668–69 deontology, 504, 505, 520 depression, 143, 437, 602–3 childhood adversity and, 196–97 5HTT variant and, 246 Descarte, René, 28 Descartes’ Error (Damasio), 28 despotism, avoidance of, 324 DeVore, Irven, 384, 427, 651 De Waal, Frans, 271, 444, 457, 484–87, 525, 526 diabetes, 379–80 gestational, 359n dichotomizing, 392 see also Us/Them dichotomies Dictator Game, 497, 498 Diallo, Amadou, 86 Diamond, Jared, 302 Diana, Princess of Wales, 401n–2n disgust, 411, 560–65 adolescents and, 160n insular cortex and, 41, 46, 69, 398–99, 454, 560–61 interpersonal, 399 moral, 398, 454, 561–65 political orientation and, 453–55 Us/Them and, 398–99 dishonesty, 512–17 Disney, Walt, 84 DNA, 108, 147, 223, 225–33, 261–62 as blueprint for constructing proteins, 712–14 exons and introns and, 230–31 mutations and polymorphisms and, 714–17 noncoding, 226 Dobzhansky, Theodosius, 328 dog(s), 112 deception in, 513 dog-meat market and, 510, 510 feral Moscow, 378, 379 scenario of saving person vs., 368, 371 doll studies, 415 Donohue, John, 190 dopamine (mesolimbic/mesocortical dopamine system), 30, 64–77, 84, 103, 151, 275, 390, 555–56, 692 in adolescence, 162–64, 163 arbitrary signals and, 391 charitable acts and, 548–50 childhood adversity and, 196 D4 receptor, gene for (DRD4), 256, 258, 260, 261, 279 7R variant, 256, 279–81 empathy and, 534, 545, 546 genes and, 255–58, 264, 279–81, 280 L-DOPA and, 693 DRD4 gene, 256, 258, 260, 261, 279 7R variant of, 256, 279–81 drone pilots, 645–46 drought, 303 drugs, 65, 76, 196 neuropharmacology, 693–94 Drummond, Edward, 586 Dunbar, Robin, 429 Dunbar’s number, 430 Dweck, Carol, 595 Dylan, Bob, 184 Eakin, John, 554 East Asia, 277–78 Eckford, Elizabeth, 640 E. coli, 343, 380 economic games and game theory, 18, 55, 66, 77, 89, 93, 104, 112, 116, 255, 272, 292, 345, 393, 398, 497–500, 609, 610, 624 Dictator Game, 497, 498 hunger and, 92, 449 language effects on, 92–93, 491 Prisoner’s Dilemma (PD), 92, 116, 345–46, 372, 393, 557, 633, 634 public good, 495–96 third-party punishment, 497 Tit for Tat, 346–53, 363, 634, 666 Contrite, 350 Forgiving, 350, 351 Ultimatum Game, 38–39, 106, 486, 497, 498, 500, 610, 635 educational attainment, 263 egalitarian cultures, 291–96 egalitarianism, 167, 180–81 Eichmann, Adolf, 464, 475 Eisenberger, Naomi, 165 Eisenegger, Christoph, 106 Eldredge, Niles, 374–75, 385 Elias, Norbert, 617 Ellsberg, Daniel, 652 El Niños, 302 Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church, 641 Ember, Carol, 319, 321 Emerson, Ralph Waldo, 520 emotional contagion, 522 in animals, 523–26, 569 in children, 527–58 brain and, 22–28 cognition and, 54–58 eyes and, 89, 97 and frontal cortical changes in adolescence, 160 reappraisal and, 60–61, 160, 453 empathy, 3, 4, 15, 18, 46, 169, 454, 521–52, 617 in adolescence, 167–69 affective side of, 528–31, 552 cognitive load and, 534–35, 546 cognitive side of, 528, 531–35, 552 compassionate acts and, 542–45, 551, 614 effectiveness in, 545–46 emotional contagion, 522 in animals, 523–26, 569 in children, 527–28 group loyalty and, 395 mimicry and, 102, 522–24 mirror neurons and supposed role in, 540–41 pain and, 86, 133, 169, 180, 395, 522, 523, 527, 532, 533, 540, 545–47, 550–52, 560, 568 self-interest in, 547–50, 642 stress and, 133 Us/Them and, 532–35 wealthy people and, 533–34 in young children, 179–81 endocrinology, 7 basics of, 707–10 see also hormones Enlightenment, 615, 617 environmental degradation, 302 envy, 15, 67 epilepsy, 605–6, 610, 611 epinephrine, 27, 126 equality, 395 Escherichia coli, 343, 380 estrogen, 117, 118, 144, 158 genes and, 260 prenatal, 211–13 ethology, 10, 81–84 Evans, Robert, 294–95 evolution, 7, 15, 21, 328–86 adaptation in, 380–85 basics of, 328–31 behavior and, 331–32 continuous and gradual, 374–80 evidence for, 329–30 exaptation in, 381, 569 fossil record and, 329, 330, 375, 376 founder populations and, 353–54, 633 genes and, 328–29, 373–74 genotype vs. phenotype in, 360–62 group selection in, 332–33, 426 human, 365–73 individual selection in, 366–68 kin selection in, 368–72, 499 and reciprocal altruism and neo-group selectionism, 372–73 as tournament vs. pair-bonded, 365–66 individual selection in, 333–36, 366–68 intersexual genetic conflict and, 359–60 kin selection in, 336–42, 368–72, 499, 570 cousins and, 339–40 green-beard effect and, 341–42, 353, 390, 409, 633, 637 and recognizing relatedness, 340–41, 570 misconceptions about, 328–29 multilevel selection in, 360–65 natural selection in, 330–31 neo-group selection in, 360, 363–65, 372–73 observed in real time, 379–80 and pair-bonding vs. tournament species, 354–58, 360, 365–66, 383 parent-offspring conflict and, 358–59 punctuated equilibrium in, 374–80, 384–85 reciprocal altruism and, 342–54, 372–73 optimal cooperation strategy and, 345–53 starting cooperation and, 353–54 selection for complexity and, 329 selection for preadaptation and, 329 sexual selection in, 330–31 sociobiology and, 331–33, 374–76, 380–84 spandrels and, 381–82, 382 survival of the fittest and, 328–29 tinkering and improvisation in, 381, 568–69 evolutionary psychology, 331–32 executions, 170–71, 472, 582 firing squads, 471–72 executive function, 48 sustained stress and, 130–31 see also cognition; frontal cortex executive stress syndrome, 436 eyes, social impact of, 89, 97, 623 Facebook, 164, 667 faces, 85–89, 129, 275 amygdala and, 85, 89, 388, 395, 408–9, 416, 418 beauty in, and confusion with goodness, 88, 443 disgust and, 411 dominant, 432, 433 eyes, social impact of, 89, 97, 623 fear and, 85, 395, 411 fusiform response to, 80, 85–86, 88, 114, 122n, 388, 402 gender of, 88 infants and, 391–92 race of, 85–87, 89, 391–92, 398, 408–9, 418–19, 614, 628–29 testosterone and, 102, 104 voting and, 442–44 FADS2 gene, 246 Fail-Safe (Burdick and Wheeler), 349n–50n Fairbanks, Lynn, 337 fairness and justice, 323–24, 449, 450 children’s sense of, 181, 483–84 see also morality and moral decisions Farah, Martha, 195 fascism, 202, 308, 401 fear: aggression and, 44 amygdala and, 34, 36–40, 42, 44, 85, 87–90, 97, 129 faces and, 85, 395, 411 innate vs. learned, 36 pheromones and, 90 sustained stress and, 128–30 Fehr, Ernst, 55, 106, 517 Felt, W.

The dying Armistead asked after Hancock’s well-being and requested that Bingham send his warm greetings to his old friend. * The punch line here is how such individuals barely register with us as people—as we’ll see, neuroimaging supports this. A recent finding highlights the opposite concerning the weird American legal notion of “corporate personhood”—when people contemplate the morality of corporate actions, they activate Theory of Mind networks, just as when contemplating the morality of actions of fellow humans. * With the reminder that “competence” is used not in the everyday sense where “low competence” would seem pejorative but simply as a measure of agency


pages: 504 words: 129,087

The Ones We've Been Waiting For: How a New Generation of Leaders Will Transform America by Charlotte Alter

"Hurricane Katrina" Superdome, "World Economic Forum" Davos, 4chan, affirmative action, Affordable Care Act / Obamacare, basic income, Berlin Wall, Bernie Sanders, Big Tech, Black Lives Matter, carbon footprint, carbon tax, clean water, collective bargaining, Columbine, corporate personhood, correlation does not imply causation, Credit Default Swap, crowdsourcing, data science, David Brooks, deepfake, deplatforming, disinformation, Donald Trump, double helix, East Village, ending welfare as we know it, fake news, Fall of the Berlin Wall, feminist movement, Ferguson, Missouri, financial deregulation, Francis Fukuyama: the end of history, gentrification, gig economy, glass ceiling, Glass-Steagall Act, Google Hangouts, green new deal, Greta Thunberg, housing crisis, illegal immigration, immigration reform, income inequality, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), job-hopping, Kevin Kelly, knowledge economy, Lyft, mandatory minimum, Marc Andreessen, Mark Zuckerberg, mass incarceration, McMansion, medical bankruptcy, microaggression, move fast and break things, Nate Silver, obamacare, Occupy movement, opioid epidemic / opioid crisis, passive income, pre–internet, race to the bottom, RAND corporation, Ronald Reagan, sexual politics, Sheryl Sandberg, side hustle, Silicon Valley, single-payer health, Snapchat, Social Justice Warrior, Steve Bannon, TaskRabbit, tech bro, too big to fail, Uber and Lyft, uber lyft, universal basic income, unpaid internship, We are the 99%, white picket fence, working poor, Works Progress Administration

Occupiers felt no need to sharpen their collective demands to a single concrete point, because any one demand might exclude hundreds of other priorities. There was no single objective but dozens, hundreds, or none, depending on whom you asked. Occupy Seattle held votes on its website over demands such as “end corporate personhood” and “universal education,” but a nationwide, officially sanctioned list of demands never emerged, partly because there was never a unifying governing body authorized to decide what Occupy stood for and what it didn’t—which was just the way the activists wanted it. The press couldn’t understand this.


Stacy Mitchell by Big-Box Swindle The True Cost of Mega-Retailers, the Fight for America's Independent Businesses (2006)

accelerated depreciation, big-box store, business climate, business cycle, clean water, collective bargaining, corporate personhood, drop ship, European colonialism, Haight Ashbury, income inequality, independent contractor, inventory management, invisible hand, Jane Jacobs, low skilled workers, Maui Hawaii, Menlo Park, new economy, New Urbanism, price discrimination, race to the bottom, Ray Oldenburg, RFID, Ronald Reagan, The Chicago School, The Death and Life of Great American Cities, The Great Good Place, the long tail, union organizing, urban planning, women in the workforce, zero-sum game

See also downtowns Penjajawoc Marsh, 108 Penn, Felicia, 219 Pennsylvania: Carlisle, 33; East Lampeter, 67; Lancaster, 89; Philadelphia, 15, 87; Whitpain, 89 Penofin Performance Coatings, 55 Perrette, Virginie-Alvine, 96 Peskin, Aaron, 217 Petrocelli, Bill, 176, 177 PetSmart, 158 pet stores, 158–59, 232 pharmacies: consolidation among, 11; and consumer choice, 154–56; cooperatives in, 247; destruction of historical landmarks, 89–90; health insurance discrimination against independent, 155–56, 190; increase in independents, 226–27; level of service, local vs. chain 154–56; market share for corporate retailers, xii, 11; pricing, 134–35; trade association, 226–27 place, sense of, 79–80, 83–85, 92–96, 105, 124. See also community life police expenses from chain retail, 67–68 politics: and consumer vs. citizen identity, 4, 205, 209–210; and corporate personhood, 208, 218; corporate retail clout in, 164, 171, 175, 177, 182, 201–2; and power of citizen groups, 205; and public spaces’ value, 83–85, 92–96; and quality of community life, 77, 81; and restrictions on megaretail, 192–93. See also campaigns, grassroots pollution, 88, 106, 114–19, 218 Pomp, Richard, 174 Popelars, Craig, 143 Portland Development Corporation (PDC), 203–4 poverty, xiv, 57–58, 59, 64–65, 69–70 Powell Mercantile, 235–37 predatory expansion strategies of corporate retailers, 7, 8, 36–37, 102–3, 135 predatory pricing, xi, 178–83 INDEX Presser, Steve, 102, 105 Price, Sol, 9, 60 Price Club, 9, 10 price discrimination, 183–190 price flexing, 134–35 pricing: corporate retail strategies for, xvii, 54–55, 127–37, 185–87; loss leader, 7, 29, 30, 130–31, 135, 148, 181 private-label products, 25, 50–51 Procter & Gamble, 21, 24 product diversity.


pages: 502 words: 132,062

Ways of Being: Beyond Human Intelligence by James Bridle

Ada Lovelace, Airbnb, Alan Turing: On Computable Numbers, with an Application to the Entscheidungsproblem, Anthropocene, Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic, autonomous vehicles, behavioural economics, Benoit Mandelbrot, Berlin Wall, Big Tech, Black Lives Matter, blockchain, Californian Ideology, Cambridge Analytica, carbon tax, Charles Babbage, cloud computing, coastline paradox / Richardson effect, Computing Machinery and Intelligence, corporate personhood, COVID-19, cryptocurrency, DeepMind, Donald Trump, Douglas Hofstadter, Elon Musk, experimental subject, factory automation, fake news, friendly AI, gig economy, global pandemic, Gödel, Escher, Bach, impulse control, James Bridle, James Webb Space Telescope, John von Neumann, Kickstarter, Kim Stanley Robinson, language acquisition, life extension, mandelbrot fractal, Marshall McLuhan, microbiome, music of the spheres, negative emissions, Nick Bostrom, Norbert Wiener, paperclip maximiser, pattern recognition, peer-to-peer, planetary scale, RAND corporation, random walk, recommendation engine, self-driving car, SETI@home, shareholder value, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley ideology, speech recognition, statistical model, surveillance capitalism, techno-determinism, technological determinism, technoutopianism, the long tail, the scientific method, The Soul of a New Machine, theory of mind, traveling salesman, trolley problem, Turing complete, Turing machine, Turing test, UNCLOS, undersea cable, urban planning, Von Neumann architecture, wikimedia commons, zero-sum game

Imagine a system with clearly defined goals, sensors and effectors for reading and interacting with the world, the ability to recognize pleasure and pain as attractors and things to avoid, the resources to carry out its will, and the legal and social standing to see that its needs are catered for, even respected. That’s a description of an AI – it’s also a description of a modern corporation. For this ‘corporate AI’, pleasure is growth and profitability, and pain is lawsuits and drops in shareholder value. Corporate speech is protected, corporate personhood recognized, and corporate desires are given freedom, legitimacy and sometimes violent force by international trade laws, state regulation – or lack thereof – and the norms and expectations of capitalist society. Corporations mostly use humans as their sensors and effectors; they also employ logistics and communications networks, arbitrage labour and financial markets, and recalculate the value of locations, rewards and incentives based on shifting input and context.


pages: 391 words: 22,799

To Serve God and Wal-Mart: The Making of Christian Free Enterprise by Bethany Moreton

affirmative action, American Legislative Exchange Council, anti-communist, Berlin Wall, big-box store, Bretton Woods, Buckminster Fuller, collective bargaining, company town, corporate personhood, creative destruction, deindustrialization, desegregation, Donald Trump, emotional labour, estate planning, eternal september, Fall of the Berlin Wall, Frederick Winslow Taylor, George Gilder, global village, Great Leap Forward, informal economy, invisible hand, liberation theology, longitudinal study, market fundamentalism, Mont Pelerin Society, mortgage tax deduction, Naomi Klein, new economy, post-industrial society, postindustrial economy, prediction markets, price anchoring, prosperity theology / prosperity gospel / gospel of success, Ralph Nader, RFID, road to serfdom, Ronald Reagan, scientific management, Silicon Valley, Stewart Brand, strikebreaker, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, union organizing, walkable city, Washington Consensus, white flight, Whole Earth Catalog, work culture , Works Progress Administration

“I Â�don’t want to be bolshevistic,” wrote one Texan in support of Depression-Â�era antichain legislation, but€“it certainly is no permanent relief or progÂ�ress for the government to create temporary jobs and distribute money and in a few days it all winds up in Chicago or New York City in the hands of a few extremely wealthy men, owners of the chains and utilities.”61 Patman, the leading ConÂ�gresÂ�sional champion of the inÂ�deÂ�penÂ�dent stores, pointed out that while 200 companies controlled more than half the country’s corporate wealth, only eleven of these were based in the West and a mere nine in the South: “‘How a true Texan can favor ownership and control of local€business by Wall Streeters,” he concluded, “I cannot understand.’”62 Members of the Ku Klux Klan in Clarke County, Georgia, railed against the chain owners as a “‘Little Group of Kings in Wall Street’” and warned 21 TO SERVE GOD AND WAL - Â�M ART that Jewish and Catholic immigrants were using the chain to pauperize native-Â�born white ProtÂ�esÂ�tants.63 Employing a metaphor familiar to rural ProtÂ�esÂ�tants, a 1937 novel cast chain stores as evidence of the approaching Apocalypse.64 Even the fundamental myth of corporate personhood came up for debate: contrasting “arÂ�tiÂ�fiÂ�cial beings” like the American Retail Federation to tangible, “honest-Â�to-Â�God citizens,” Patman attacked the premÂ�ise that legal incorporation permitted companies to claim the constitutional protections of private citizens.65 The suspicion of “foreigners” was echoed in charges of shady business practices.


The Cigarette: A Political History by Sarah Milov

"RICO laws" OR "Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations", activist lawyer, affirmative action, airline deregulation, American Legislative Exchange Council, barriers to entry, British Empire, business logic, collective bargaining, corporate personhood, deindustrialization, fixed income, Frederick Winslow Taylor, G4S, global supply chain, Herbert Marcuse, imperial preference, Indoor air pollution, information asymmetry, invisible hand, Kitchen Debate, land tenure, military-industrial complex, new economy, New Journalism, Philip Mirowski, pink-collar, Potemkin village, precariat, price stability, profit maximization, race to the bottom, Ralph Nader, rent-seeking, scientific management, Silicon Valley, structural adjustment programs, technological determinism, The Chicago School, Torches of Freedom, trade route, union organizing, Unsafe at Any Speed, Upton Sinclair, vertical integration, War on Poverty, women in the workforce

Lamoreaux, The Great Merger Movement in American Business, 1895–1904 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1985), 1; Jonathan Levy, Freaks of Fortune: The Emerging World of Capitalism and Risk in America (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2012), 276–277. 27. Santa Clara County v. Southern Pacific Railroad Company, 118 U.S. 394 (1886); Enstad, Cigarettes, Inc., 75–76. As Enstad notes, what was significant about the creation of corporate personhood was the way in which it augured a shift in the public imagination of the corporation as a private rather than public entity. 28. Enstad, Cigarettes, Inc., 67. 29. Brandt, Cigarette Century, 32–36. 30. P. G. Porter, “Origins of American Tobacco Company,” Business History Review 43, No. 1 (1969): 59–60. 31.


pages: 526 words: 160,601

A Generation of Sociopaths: How the Baby Boomers Betrayed America by Bruce Cannon Gibney

1960s counterculture, 2013 Report for America's Infrastructure - American Society of Civil Engineers - 19 March 2013, affirmative action, Affordable Care Act / Obamacare, Alan Greenspan, AlphaGo, American Society of Civil Engineers: Report Card, Bear Stearns, Bernie Madoff, Bernie Sanders, Black Lives Matter, bond market vigilante , book value, Boston Dynamics, Bretton Woods, business cycle, buy and hold, carbon footprint, carbon tax, Charles Lindbergh, classic study, cognitive dissonance, collapse of Lehman Brothers, collateralized debt obligation, corporate personhood, Corrections Corporation of America, currency manipulation / currency intervention, Daniel Kahneman / Amos Tversky, dark matter, DeepMind, Deng Xiaoping, Donald Trump, Downton Abbey, Edward Snowden, Elon Musk, ending welfare as we know it, equal pay for equal work, failed state, financial deregulation, financial engineering, Francis Fukuyama: the end of history, future of work, gender pay gap, gig economy, Glass-Steagall Act, Haight Ashbury, Higgs boson, high-speed rail, Home mortgage interest deduction, Hyperloop, illegal immigration, impulse control, income inequality, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), invisible hand, James Carville said: "I would like to be reincarnated as the bond market. You can intimidate everybody.", Jane Jacobs, junk bonds, Kitchen Debate, labor-force participation, Long Term Capital Management, low interest rates, Lyft, Mark Zuckerberg, market bubble, mass immigration, mass incarceration, McMansion, medical bankruptcy, Menlo Park, Michael Milken, military-industrial complex, Mont Pelerin Society, moral hazard, mortgage debt, mortgage tax deduction, Neil Armstrong, neoliberal agenda, Network effects, Nixon triggered the end of the Bretton Woods system, obamacare, offshore financial centre, oil shock, operation paperclip, plutocrats, Ponzi scheme, price stability, prosperity theology / prosperity gospel / gospel of success, quantitative easing, Ralph Waldo Emerson, RAND corporation, rent control, ride hailing / ride sharing, risk tolerance, Robert Shiller, Ronald Reagan, Rubik’s Cube, Savings and loan crisis, school choice, secular stagnation, self-driving car, shareholder value, short selling, side project, Silicon Valley, smart grid, Snapchat, source of truth, stem cell, Steve Jobs, Stewart Brand, stock buybacks, survivorship bias, TaskRabbit, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, Tim Cook: Apple, too big to fail, War on Poverty, warehouse robotics, We are all Keynesians now, white picket fence, Whole Earth Catalog, women in the workforce, Y2K, Yom Kippur War, zero-sum game

The time to act had been sometime in the 1980s or 1990s, before there were billions of facts/dollars on the ground, all eager to undo McCain-Feingold. By the 2000s, it became trivial to dispose of irritants like McCain-Feingold, and courts dispatched them in a series of cases culminating in Citizens United v. FEC (2010).* Anyway, political theatre aside, the Boomers were largely content with the idea of corporate personhood and speech, and the culture of political money. Hillary Clinton said she despises the idea of PACs, but she’s enjoyed several, most quite large. Lest this seem merely academic, the corrosive money politics of the Boomer era have become so entrenched and pervasive that the Supreme Court now seems unable to even define corruption.


pages: 772 words: 203,182

What Went Wrong: How the 1% Hijacked the American Middle Class . . . And What Other Countries Got Right by George R. Tyler

"Friedman doctrine" OR "shareholder theory", "World Economic Forum" Davos, 8-hour work day, active measures, activist fund / activist shareholder / activist investor, affirmative action, Affordable Care Act / Obamacare, Alan Greenspan, bank run, banking crisis, Basel III, Bear Stearns, behavioural economics, benefit corporation, Black Swan, blood diamond, blue-collar work, Bolshevik threat, bonus culture, British Empire, business cycle, business process, buy and hold, capital controls, Carmen Reinhart, carried interest, cognitive dissonance, collateralized debt obligation, collective bargaining, commoditize, company town, compensation consultant, corporate governance, corporate personhood, corporate raider, corporate social responsibility, creative destruction, credit crunch, crony capitalism, crowdsourcing, currency manipulation / currency intervention, David Brooks, David Graeber, David Ricardo: comparative advantage, declining real wages, deindustrialization, Diane Coyle, disruptive innovation, Double Irish / Dutch Sandwich, eurozone crisis, financial deregulation, financial engineering, financial innovation, fixed income, Ford Model T, Francis Fukuyama: the end of history, full employment, George Akerlof, George Gilder, Gini coefficient, Glass-Steagall Act, Gordon Gekko, Greenspan put, hiring and firing, Ida Tarbell, income inequality, independent contractor, invisible hand, job satisfaction, John Markoff, joint-stock company, Joseph Schumpeter, junk bonds, Kenneth Rogoff, labor-force participation, laissez-faire capitalism, lake wobegon effect, light touch regulation, Long Term Capital Management, low interest rates, manufacturing employment, market clearing, market fundamentalism, Martin Wolf, minimum wage unemployment, mittelstand, Money creation, moral hazard, Myron Scholes, Naomi Klein, Northern Rock, obamacare, offshore financial centre, Paul Samuelson, Paul Volcker talking about ATMs, pension reform, performance metric, Pershing Square Capital Management, pirate software, plutocrats, Ponzi scheme, precariat, price stability, profit maximization, profit motive, prosperity theology / prosperity gospel / gospel of success, purchasing power parity, race to the bottom, Ralph Nader, rent-seeking, reshoring, Richard Thaler, rising living standards, road to serfdom, Robert Gordon, Robert Shiller, rolling blackouts, Ronald Reagan, Sand Hill Road, Savings and loan crisis, shareholder value, Silicon Valley, Social Responsibility of Business Is to Increase Its Profits, South Sea Bubble, sovereign wealth fund, Steve Ballmer, Steve Jobs, stock buybacks, subprime mortgage crisis, The Chicago School, The Spirit Level, The Theory of the Leisure Class by Thorstein Veblen, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, Thorstein Veblen, too big to fail, transcontinental railway, transfer pricing, trickle-down economics, tulip mania, Tyler Cowen, Tyler Cowen: Great Stagnation, union organizing, Upton Sinclair, upwardly mobile, women in the workforce, working poor, zero-sum game

Goodman, as quoted in “A Fresh Look at the Apostle of Free Markets,” New York Times, April 13, 2008. 9 Catherine Rampell, “Same Old Hope: This Bubble Is Different,” New York Times, Sept. 14, 2009. 10 Mathias Döpfner, “On the Search for the Honor of the Merchant,” Handelsblatt, Nov. 19, 2011. 11 John Carswell, The South Sea Bubble (London: Cresset Press, 1960). Catherine Rampell, “Same Old Hope: This Bubble Is Different.” 12 Timothy H. Parsons, The Rule of Empires (New York: Oxford University Press, 2010), 170, 194, 201–202. 13 John Gillespie and David Zweig, Money for Nothing (New York: Free Press, 2010), 20–24 and Jan Edwards, “Challenging Corporate Personhood,” Multinational Monitor, November 2002. 14 Amrit Dhillon, “Fresh Brew,” Sydney Morning Herald, June 5, 2010. 15 Ralph Nader, The Nader Reader, Feb. 21, 2000, speech. 16 R. Jeffrey Smith, “DeLay Trial a Window Into Influence,” Washington Post, Dec. 1, 2010. 17 Justin Fox, “What the Founding Fathers Really Thought about Corporations,” HBR Blog Network, Harvard Business Review, e-mail exchange between Justin Fox and Brian Murphy, April 1, 2010, http://blogs.hbr.org/fox/2010/04/what-the-founding-fathers-real.html 18 John Kay, “Beware the Bailout Kings and Backbench Barons,” Financial Times, May 20, 2009. 19 Luke Mitchell, “Understanding Obamacare,” Harper’s Magazine, December 2009. 20 Hedrick Smith, Who Stole the American Dream (New York: Random House, 2012). 21 Charles Morris, “A Recession Can Clear the Air,” Washington Post, Nov. 16, 2008. 22 Northeast Public Power Association (NEPPA), “Deregulation Continues to Impact Retail Electric Prices in Region,” NEPPA News Line, vol. 43, no. 12, December 2007.


pages: 918 words: 257,605

The Age of Surveillance Capitalism by Shoshana Zuboff

"World Economic Forum" Davos, algorithmic bias, Amazon Web Services, Andrew Keen, augmented reality, autonomous vehicles, barriers to entry, Bartolomé de las Casas, behavioural economics, Berlin Wall, Big Tech, bitcoin, blockchain, blue-collar work, book scanning, Broken windows theory, California gold rush, call centre, Cambridge Analytica, Capital in the Twenty-First Century by Thomas Piketty, Cass Sunstein, choice architecture, citizen journalism, Citizen Lab, classic study, cloud computing, collective bargaining, Computer Numeric Control, computer vision, connected car, context collapse, corporate governance, corporate personhood, creative destruction, cryptocurrency, data science, deep learning, digital capitalism, disinformation, dogs of the Dow, don't be evil, Donald Trump, Dr. Strangelove, driverless car, Easter island, Edward Snowden, en.wikipedia.org, Erik Brynjolfsson, Evgeny Morozov, facts on the ground, fake news, Ford Model T, Ford paid five dollars a day, future of work, game design, gamification, Google Earth, Google Glasses, Google X / Alphabet X, Herman Kahn, hive mind, Ian Bogost, impulse control, income inequality, information security, Internet of things, invention of the printing press, invisible hand, Jean Tirole, job automation, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, John Markoff, John Maynard Keynes: Economic Possibilities for our Grandchildren, John Maynard Keynes: technological unemployment, Joseph Schumpeter, Kevin Kelly, Kevin Roose, knowledge economy, Lewis Mumford, linked data, longitudinal study, low skilled workers, Mark Zuckerberg, market bubble, means of production, multi-sided market, Naomi Klein, natural language processing, Network effects, new economy, Occupy movement, off grid, off-the-grid, PageRank, Panopticon Jeremy Bentham, pattern recognition, Paul Buchheit, performance metric, Philip Mirowski, precision agriculture, price mechanism, profit maximization, profit motive, public intellectual, recommendation engine, refrigerator car, RFID, Richard Thaler, ride hailing / ride sharing, Robert Bork, Robert Mercer, Salesforce, Second Machine Age, self-driving car, sentiment analysis, shareholder value, Sheryl Sandberg, Shoshana Zuboff, Sidewalk Labs, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley ideology, Silicon Valley startup, slashdot, smart cities, Snapchat, social contagion, social distancing, social graph, social web, software as a service, speech recognition, statistical model, Steve Bannon, Steve Jobs, Steven Levy, structural adjustment programs, surveillance capitalism, technological determinism, TED Talk, The Future of Employment, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, Tim Cook: Apple, two-sided market, union organizing, vertical integration, Watson beat the top human players on Jeopardy!, winner-take-all economy, Wolfgang Streeck, work culture , Yochai Benkler, you are the product

Among these, several became essential shelter for the surveillance capitalists’ bold actions, secret operations, and rhetorical misdirection: (1) democracy was to be constrained in favor of actively reconstructing the state as the agent of a stable market society; (2) the entrepreneur and the corporation were conflated, enshrining “corporate personhood,” rather than the rights of citizens, as the focus of legal protections; (3) freedom was defined negatively, as “freedom from” interference in the natural laws of competition, and all control was understood as coercive, except for market control; and (4) inequality of wealth and rights was accepted and even celebrated as a necessary feature of a successful market system and a force for progress.


pages: 864 words: 272,918

Palo Alto: A History of California, Capitalism, and the World by Malcolm Harris

2021 United States Capitol attack, Aaron Swartz, affirmative action, air traffic controllers' union, Airbnb, Alan Greenspan, Alvin Toffler, Amazon Mechanical Turk, Amazon Web Services, Apple II, Apple's 1984 Super Bowl advert, back-to-the-land, bank run, Bear Stearns, Big Tech, Bill Gates: Altair 8800, Black Lives Matter, Bob Noyce, book scanning, British Empire, business climate, California gold rush, Cambridge Analytica, capital controls, Charles Lindbergh, classic study, cloud computing, collective bargaining, colonial exploitation, colonial rule, Colonization of Mars, commoditize, company town, computer age, conceptual framework, coronavirus, corporate personhood, COVID-19, cuban missile crisis, deindustrialization, Deng Xiaoping, desegregation, deskilling, digital map, double helix, Douglas Engelbart, Edward Snowden, Elon Musk, Erlich Bachman, estate planning, European colonialism, Fairchild Semiconductor, financial engineering, financial innovation, fixed income, Frederick Winslow Taylor, fulfillment center, future of work, Garrett Hardin, gentrification, George Floyd, ghettoisation, global value chain, Golden Gate Park, Google bus, Google Glasses, greed is good, hiring and firing, housing crisis, hydraulic fracturing, if you build it, they will come, illegal immigration, immigration reform, invisible hand, It's morning again in America, iterative process, Jeff Bezos, Joan Didion, John Markoff, joint-stock company, Jony Ive, Kevin Kelly, Kickstarter, knowledge worker, land reform, Larry Ellison, Lean Startup, legacy carrier, life extension, longitudinal study, low-wage service sector, Lyft, manufacturing employment, Marc Andreessen, Marc Benioff, Mark Zuckerberg, Marshall McLuhan, Max Levchin, means of production, Menlo Park, Metcalfe’s law, microdosing, Mikhail Gorbachev, military-industrial complex, Monroe Doctrine, Mont Pelerin Society, moral panic, mortgage tax deduction, Mother of all demos, move fast and break things, mutually assured destruction, new economy, Oculus Rift, off grid, oil shale / tar sands, PageRank, PalmPilot, passive income, Paul Graham, paypal mafia, Peter Thiel, pets.com, phenotype, pill mill, platform as a service, Ponzi scheme, popular electronics, power law, profit motive, race to the bottom, radical life extension, RAND corporation, Recombinant DNA, refrigerator car, Richard Florida, ride hailing / ride sharing, rising living standards, risk tolerance, Robert Bork, Robert Mercer, Robert Metcalfe, Ronald Reagan, Salesforce, San Francisco homelessness, Sand Hill Road, scientific management, semantic web, sexual politics, Sheryl Sandberg, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley ideology, Silicon Valley startup, social web, SoftBank, software as a service, sovereign wealth fund, special economic zone, Stanford marshmallow experiment, Stanford prison experiment, stem cell, Steve Bannon, Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak, Steven Levy, Stewart Brand, stock buybacks, strikebreaker, Suez canal 1869, super pumped, TaskRabbit, tech worker, Teledyne, telemarketer, the long tail, the new new thing, thinkpad, Thorstein Veblen, Tim Cook: Apple, Tony Fadell, too big to fail, Toyota Production System, Tragedy of the Commons, transcontinental railway, traumatic brain injury, Travis Kalanick, TSMC, Uber and Lyft, Uber for X, uber lyft, ubercab, union organizing, Upton Sinclair, upwardly mobile, urban decay, urban renewal, value engineering, Vannevar Bush, vertical integration, Vision Fund, W. E. B. Du Bois, War on Poverty, warehouse robotics, Wargames Reagan, Washington Consensus, white picket fence, William Shockley: the traitorous eight, women in the workforce, Y Combinator, Y2K, Yogi Berra, éminence grise

Aggregating the three cases, the justices of the Supreme Court agreed in 1886’s Santa Clara County v. Southern Pacific Railroad Company that corporations were entitled to avail themselves of the young Fourteenth Amendment and its equal protection clause.13 They ruled for the Combine and established the doctrine of corporate personhood. Long before Santa Clara County stood for Silicon Valley, Santa Clara County meant that companies are people, too, and the United States endowed its scams with civil rights. The case itself, of course, was part of the game. Representing California on the Supreme Court was Stephen J. Field, appointed by Lincoln on the recommendation of the state’s governor: Leland Stanford.