Filtered for ants and laws, Matt Webb:
Let’s say we could chat with ants. Could we trade with them? What would we want from them?
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In short: people treat almost everything as people, at least a bit, including companies.
- We could try to communicate with ants and then include them in capitalism. Would this raise all boats for humans (who currently do low-paying/low-prestige work) and the ants (what is good pay/prestige/standard of living for an ant, I don’t know!)?
- We attribute person-like qualities to corporations. Infamously, in the case of Citizens United and more innocuously like attributing creativity to Apple, potential then hucksterism with Tesla, or declining design aesthetic with BMW.
- If we bring ants into corporatism and personify them, there’s an opportunity for some futurist/dystopian sci-fi where a mysterious cadre of house cleaners/chore-doers conceal themselves via surveillance technology and financial engineering of shell corporations. Turns out, it’s just a mega-colony of ants.
