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The invention of the corporation is virtually to eliminate responsibility/culpability from any individual.

Human car crash? Human punishment. Corporate-owned car crash? A fine which reduces salaries some negligible percent.


Yes, corporations have all of the rights of a person, abilities beyond a person, yet few of the responsibilities of a person.

Our failure at "corporate alignment" makes it pretty clear that we're also going to fail at any version of "AI alignment"...

The two will likely facilitate eachother :(

Don't forget paying their way out of crimes and no applicability to three strikes laws.

They actually don't have all the rights of a person and they do have those same responsibilities.

If this company was a sole proprietorship, the only recourse this kid would have is to sue the owner, up to bankruptcy.

Since it's a corporation, his recourse is to sue the company, up to bankruptcy.

As for corporations having rights, I can explain it further if necessary but the key understanding is that the singular of "corporations are people" is "a corporation is people" not "a corporation is a person".


You can't put a corporation in prison. But a person you can. This is one of the big problems. The people making the decisions at corporations are shielded from personal consequences by the corporation. A corporation can be shut down but it rarely happens.

Even when Boeing knowingly caused the deaths of hundreds (especially the second crash was entirely preventable if they would have been honest after the first one), all they got were some fines. Those just end up being charged back to their customers, a big one being the government who fined them in the first place.


> Even when Boeing knowingly caused the deaths

Since corporations aren't people, Boeing didn't know anything.

Did someone at Boeing have all of that knowledge?


I'm sure the top leadership was well aware of what happened after the first crash yes. They should have immediately gone public and would have prevented the second crash.

Don't forget that hiding MCAS from pilots and the FAA was a conscious decision. It wasn't something that 'just happened'. The decision to not make it depend on redundant AoA sensors by default too.

My point is, I can imagine that the MCAS suicidal side-effect was something unexpected (it was a technical failure edge-case in a specific and rare scenario) and I get that not anticipating it could have been a mistake, not a conscious decision. But after the first crash they should have owned up to it and not waited for a second crash.


And who even cares if they knew?

Extenuating circumstances, at best.


A drunk driver doesn't get to claim that they didn't know someone was in front of their car.

You need a judge and jury for prison sentences for criminal convictions.

If the government decides to prosecute the matter as a civil infraction, or doesn't even bother prosecuting but just has an executive agency hand out a fine, that's not a matter of the corporation shielding people, that's a matter of the government failing to prosecute or secure a conviction.


If the company is a sole proprietorship, you can sue the person who controls it up to bankruptcy, which will affect their personal life significantly. If the company is a corporation/LLC, you can sue the corporate entity up to the bankruptcy of the corporate entity, while the people controlling the company remain unaffected.

This gets even more perverse. If you're an individual you actually can't just set up an LLC to limit your own liability. There's no manner for an individual to say "I'm putting on a hat and acting solely as the LLC" - rather as the owner you need to find and employ enough judgement-proof patsies that the whole thing becomes a "group project" and you can say you personally weren't aware of whatever problem gave rise to liability. In other words, the very design of corporations/LLCs encourages avoiding responsibility.

You're correct with the nitpick about the Supreme Council's justification, but that justification is still poor reasoning. Corporations are government-created liability shields. How they can direct their employees should be limited, to avoid trampling on those individuals' own natural rights. A person or group of people who want to exercise their personal natural rights through hired employees can always forgo the government-created liability shield and go sole proprietorship / gen partnership.


If hate the esp32 adc, let me introduce you to its "fpu." Or its external flash and memory...

But no real competition for on-chip Wifi/BLE around.

Only ugly two-chip solutions or hyper exotic stuff with no community.


Not sure I'd call the silabs chips hyper exotic. The SIWG917 is intended as a direct competitor to ESP32s. It's a bit more expensive, but not unexpectedly so.

I'm not sure about WiFi, but JieLi (JL) definitely has a huge marketshare for single-chip BLE/BT. They are the origin of the infamous "the Bluetooth device is ready to pair" stock prompt voice.

oh there are a lots, it's just that they are not interested in Western market.

BES, Sifli, realtek, boufallo, etc.


> But no real competition for on-chip Wifi/BLE around.

No competition or no market?

I can't imagine Espressif is selling much volume of these chips.

The fact that they can't even fix their SPI module would tend to indicate that their engineering staff is very thin.



Whats wrong with its external flash and memory?

Why over a special radio system? Why not over the internet?

Why a special wifi? Why not just multicast streaming over the internet?

So you can deploy a bazillion devices without each one needing internet access, which typically has a cost because there's administrative overhead to handling abuse complaints, etc, that come along with full internet access.

If all you got was a one-way stream of data with no internet access (assume your CORS virtual station location is the AP's location, so no need to even pick your own mountpoint) then the abuse potential is basically nil. Just like with FM RDS and stuff, it's just a broadcast that you receive, you can't do anything bad with it. It's not internet, it's just one-way data. Difference being that a lot of microcontrollers now have wifi MAC/PHY built in, whereas FM would need more silicon.


Some good details.

That invokes the ship of theseus. China could terraform Nigeria. Megabridges, super housing projects, surveillance, etc.

(Wait this is still the rodney brooks discussion!?)


In their defense, there is an inexhaustable supply of "take over w my ideology material."

This is a confluence of many conditions. Some long-focused efforts, some architecting and annealing of interests, some individual greed, some long-lasting effects of trauma, and some massive ignorance.

One of the only good points is that the American people are stubbornly allergic to authoritarianism. Yes there are exceptions, but mainly carved out by people trading it for self-interest. Many good surprises like Tucker Carlson's opposition to squashing free speech and the Republican's long-lasting distaste for pedophilia are still out there.

The post above pointing out how we're diff to Nazism is on point. There have been many more authoritarian plays since then. Americans remain conveniently ignorant of them.

Also we're being economically crushed and everyone feels it. Although racism is a powerful tool by this movement, it's actually centered around impoverishing everyone and the dizzying egos of its leaders.


I like a lot of what you are saying. But sadly I think it is an older view. Maybe this was true in 80's before social media.

"American people are stubbornly allergic to authoritarianism"

Literally 40%+ of Americans have voted for Authoritarianism. It's viewed as being 'tough'.


There is no anti-authoritarian party. Are lockdowns not authoritarian? Do mandates to take an experimental vaccine not violate bodily autonomy? How quickly everyone forgets the widescale censorship and lawfare. Snowden had to flee the country and Chelsea Manning was imprisoned during the Obama presidency.

On a more pragmatic level, take the one-party state of California, and the absurd burden of its regulations. These largely prevent the construction of anything new, as seen in the infamous high speed rail project, and the restricted supply of new housing, pricing many young people out of ever owning a home. Perhaps you don't think regulations are authoritarian, yet they're enforced with the power of the state, which wields the monopoly on violence.


One side wants to impose restrictions to avoid loss of life and breakdown of the hospitals. The other wants some people to not exist anymore and are building camps to accomplish that.

Shut the fuck up about both sides being the same.


And make one side rich.

One side: hey lets try to save people.

Other side: hey, how can I make rich people more rich at my own expense.

Totally equal.


"one-party state of California"

Or Texas. Lets not forget if we are calling both sides the same. There are states with one party. Alabama? Mississippi?


We either let them in and grow our economy or compete with them.


Right. It is also rather inconsistent to be the guy who says he is working on the trade imbalance, while simultaneously wrecking one of America's biggest export sectors: education, housing for education, and travel for education.


It validates xenophobia. In a xenophobic population. This keeps them in charge. That is all. This administration is all about cutting off their nose to spite thir face.


Laws dont say what can't happen. They say what the people who are allowed to break laws are allowed to do. It's called norm asymmetry.


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