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"The obvious way for such an enterprise to begin is for the owner of a human-owned business to automate away as much of his work as possible, and then to die wi

"The obvious way for such an enterprise to begin is for the owner of a human-owned business to automate away as much of his work as possible, and then to die without leaving the business to anybody else. The business would simply continue to take payments, provide services, and pay bills, until something catastrophic happened that it couldn't respond to automatically." This depends on the location the original owner is resident in. In many cases, if the owner dies without an heir or will, their assets go to the state [1]. [1] http://www.nolo.com/legal-encyclopedia/how-estate-settled-if-theres-32442.html http://www.nolo.com/legal-encyclopedia/how-estate-settled-if...

pzone 10y ago
Yeah it doesn't make sense. In the United States, all assets are owned by: 1. Households (aka private individuals) 2. Nonprofits 3. The state This is an accounting identity. Now it would be interesting to think about a machine-run nonprofit (are there legal restrictions to this?) owning machine-run enterprises.
- dragonwriter 10y ago
  I think you want: 1. Natural persons 2. Non-state juridical persons (loosely, corporations, including non-profits). 3. State entities
  - pzone 10y ago
    No, because all corporations are owned by other entities.
mobilefriendly 10y ago
Correct, the government would just auction the business. There's no gap here, the same situation probably occurs regularly today where a business owner dies without heirs or a will, and employees still show up until the business is liquidated. Indeed, if the company has any value the state will pursue the assets and liquidate them.
dragonwriter 10y ago
Yeah, "what happens to your stuff when you die" is a problem human societies have refined solutions to for thousands of years, and most societies don't have a "it just gets ignored and left alone forever" rule; someone—whether another individual, corporate entity, or the state—is going to take ownership of it. Now, if it's a highly automated business and the owner has no particular conflict with it's existing mode of operation , it may be left in operation without change until it hits a crisis—but that's not a machine-owned business, it's an automatically-managed human-owned business of exactly the same kind it was before the first owner passed on.

pzone 10y ago

Yeah it doesn't make sense. In the United States, all assets are owned by: 1. Households (aka private individuals) 2. Nonprofits 3. The state This is an accounting identity. Now it would be interesting to think about a machine-run nonprofit (are there legal restrictions to this?) owning machine-run enterprises.

dragonwriter 10y ago
I think you want: 1. Natural persons 2. Non-state juridical persons (loosely, corporations, including non-profits). 3. State entities
- pzone 10y ago
  No, because all corporations are owned by other entities.

mobilefriendly 10y ago

Correct, the government would just auction the business. There's no gap here, the same situation probably occurs regularly today where a business owner dies without heirs or a will, and employees still show up until the business is liquidated. Indeed, if the company has any value the state will pursue the assets and liquidate them.

dragonwriter 10y ago

Yeah, "what happens to your stuff when you die" is a problem human societies have refined solutions to for thousands of years, and most societies don't have a "it just gets ignored and left alone forever" rule; someone—whether another individual, corporate entity, or the state—is going to take ownership of it. Now, if it's a highly automated business and the owner has no particular conflict with it's existing mode of operation , it may be left in operation without change until it hits a crisis—but that's not a machine-owned business, it's an automatically-managed human-owned business of exactly the same kind it was before the first owner passed on.