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A politician is an organization, as much as any corporation or brand is. The politician is the owner, spokesperson, and mascot, but the more senior they are the

A politician is an organization, as much as any corporation or brand is. The politician is the owner, spokesperson, and mascot, but the more senior they are the more they have a huge staff that is responsible for what would otherwise be called CEO, CFO, Chief Council, PR, HR, IT, R&D. And remember that corporations are people too, my friends. But they are very strange kinds of people. When Taco Bell hires a marketing firm to pay a TV station to air a commercial X times, is that a bot? Or even stranger, Taco Bell and Pizza Hut can get into a twitter troll war with each other, even though they're both wholly-owned subsidiaries of Yum! Brands, Inc. and the whole thing could have been written by a marketing firm and scheduled it through TweetDeck. Is that a bot? Edit: Or every newspaper is basically auto-posting their recent articles, some even just doing it like an RSS feed, where it tweets a link and headline whenever an article is posted. Is that a bot?

pferde 4y ago
Absolutely, yes to all of that. (Off topic, but I love the juxtaposition of your handle and the topic being discussed. :) )
heresie-dabord 4y ago
> corporations are people too, my friends. But they are very strange kinds of people. It has been said elsewhere that corporations are a sort of amoral artificial intelligence. The trouble is that they are more powerful than a human citizen, while having none of the community or political interests of a human citizen.
- somenameforme 4y ago
  The bigger one is the lack of any consequences whatsoever. For instance, do something that leads to the death of another person, even unintentionally, and you may find yourself behind bars for some significant period of time. Do it as a corporation, even on a large scale, and you'll generally suffer little more than a fine that is generally no more than a few days of yearly revenue, and of course zero consequences for the executives who in many cases are directly culpable - frequently making decisions consciously prioritizing short-term profit over all, including safety. Boeing being the contemporary poster child.

pferde 4y ago

Absolutely, yes to all of that. (Off topic, but I love the juxtaposition of your handle and the topic being discussed. :) )

heresie-dabord 4y ago

> corporations are people too, my friends. But they are very strange kinds of people. It has been said elsewhere that corporations are a sort of amoral artificial intelligence. The trouble is that they are more powerful than a human citizen, while having none of the community or political interests of a human citizen.

somenameforme 4y ago
The bigger one is the lack of any consequences whatsoever. For instance, do something that leads to the death of another person, even unintentionally, and you may find yourself behind bars for some significant period of time. Do it as a corporation, even on a large scale, and you'll generally suffer little more than a fine that is generally no more than a few days of yearly revenue, and of course zero consequences for the executives who in many cases are directly culpable - frequently making decisions consciously prioritizing short-term profit over all, including safety. Boeing being the contemporary poster child.