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Agreed, there's definitely the emergence principle at work when looking at how groups of people function. The population of a city or a nation is similarly gre

Agreed, there's definitely the emergence principle at work when looking at how groups of people function. The population of a city or a nation is similarly greater than the sum of its parts, and there is an emergent property in both cases. Same as an ant colony. 2 things though. The constituant parts of a corporation are human, unlike an ant colony. So in that sense they are human, and ant colonies are ant. Regarding ourselves, we absolutely are an assembly of cells, it wouldn't be wrong to define us as such, although not terribly convenient. But interchangeable the cells are not, well not like a person to a corporation. A cell can't move from one person to another, if it somehow disagreed with a decision of the central nervous system. The human brain is made up of billions of cells, and decisions of the brain are heavily dictated by the digestive system and various hormones. A corporate board is at the most, what, maybe a few dozen people? There isn't the same level of responsibility of each component. Finally, if the entire corporation decides as one entity, how to punish for wrongdoing? Should every component of the corporation be put in jail if the corporation kills people (looking at you Boeing), or just the humans at the top that made those decisions? Another way of looking at it: Is the entirety of the Palestinian population responsible for the decisions of the dozens of humans that are the Hamas leadership?

BriggyDwiggs42 2y ago
The decision makers still have agency, but structures exist to prevent those who would make un-profitable decisions from reaching the top of the corporation in the first place. Once they’re there, their choices are constrained somewhat and (with nuances) profitable decisions are incentivized over others. The consequence is that, while individuals possess agency, we can also observe that the average individual’s behavior is predictable and in service of the corporate machine in aggregate. You can punish the ghoulish person who decided, along with a few others, to dump toxic waste into the river, while still recognizing that their actions were an inevitable result of the incentives we created for them. The most productive thing, of course, would be to change the incentives, but baby steps.

BriggyDwiggs42 2y ago

The decision makers still have agency, but structures exist to prevent those who would make un-profitable decisions from reaching the top of the corporation in the first place. Once they’re there, their choices are constrained somewhat and (with nuances) profitable decisions are incentivized over others. The consequence is that, while individuals possess agency, we can also observe that the average individual’s behavior is predictable and in service of the corporate machine in aggregate. You can punish the ghoulish person who decided, along with a few others, to dump toxic waste into the river, while still recognizing that their actions were an inevitable result of the incentives we created for them. The most productive thing, of course, would be to change the incentives, but baby steps.