Harry nodded, as if approving the behavior of an apprentice. He then passed his hand over the circle. The bugs began to walk randomly, breaking the symmetry, but then quickly reorganized into a small rectangle, continuing their non-stop movement.

He waved again, this time while uttering a phrase both unpronounceable and unspellable. The insects disappeared and were replaced by a metal object. It was the size and shape of that original deck. The letters IR were prominently stamped top center.

“You always wanted an Osmium paperweight, right?” he asked.

I did indeed. It had been a long-time fantasy. “How did you know?”, I stammered.

“Well, I did attend Hogwarts, after all.” he said, proud of his alma mater, “And I’ve been in the presence of and have had conversations with many Muggles. No offense, by the way. So its not exactly mind reading, but you come to be able to tell things about people.”

In fact, I had always wanted a paperweight made of the densest metal, but the symbol on the object was IR, not OS.

He continued, “Osmium is indeed the densest metal, but when left out in the open it reacts with air, forming Osmium Tetroxide, a particularly nasty substance. Quite poisonous.

“So for the sake of nearby people and animals, I used Iridium, the next densest element, just a fraction lighter and nice and inert. Please accept it as a gift.”

“Well, well . . . thank you. That is so nice of you.” I replied, appreciative and again dumbfounded.

“My pleasure. But be careful carrying it. It weighs about 3 pounds.”

I picked it up. I knew it would be heavy, but its weight seemed other- worldly.

I didn’t want to seem ungrateful but did have a concern. “What happened to the ladybugs?” I asked.

Correctly sensing that I had bonded with the little creatures, he replied “Don’t worry. No ladybug souls were harmed by this episode.”

I didn’t exactly know what that meant, but felt reassured.

He continued “So what’s the first step? lose the advertising?”

“Yes,” I replied, “get rid of it.”

“But most of Facebook’s income is from ads. How to finance it?”

“Can’t you just wave your wand, and it all turns out right?”

“No. Common misconception. There has to be a plan. Actually that’s not exactly right. There doesn’t have to be a plan, but to not make a mess, there has to be a plan.

“You’ve probably heard about the guy who asked a wizard to make him irresistible to women?” he asked.

“Don’t think so. What happened?”

“He turned him into a puppy.”

“Ooops! I guess a plan would be a good idea.”

“So then how are we going to finance the new and improved Facebook?” Harry asked.

“Well, I guess there could be options. We can charge a subscription fee, or we could turn it into a utility.”

He motioned me into the drawing room. There were logs in the fireplace. He lit a long match, holding it beneath the wood as he turned on the gas.

We sat down. The chairs were indeed comfortable. The fireplace was nice on this sunny but cold winter’s day. But before we could continue our conversation, I heard wings. An owl flew into the room! It took a seat, or I should say a perch, on one of the chairs.

“This is Dave” said Harry. “I’ve asked him to join us. Sometimes we call him Mr. Woo.”

“Is he a Chinese owl?” I thoughtlessly blurted out. What does one say in such a situation?

“It’s an acronym, dummy.” Said the owl, causing me to about jump out of my skin. A talking owl! “You have an IQ in double figures don’t you? Figure it out.”

This was just too much. Plus he had an attitude. Or was he one of those self-possessed individuals who can joke with you from your first conversation without offending. I was about to find out.

The owl, Dave was his name, spoke perfect English, with just a trace of a bird accent. Did his mother name him Dave? Is it a common name for bird infants? Was he named before or after he hatched?

“And who are you?” Asked Dave.

“Josh. Josh McCurdy.” I replied

“Any relation to Elmer McCurdy?”

“I don’t have any relatives by that name that I know of.”

“Catch me up. Would you guys explain to me why are we getting rid of Facebook advertising?” Asked Dave.

At this point, I told myself to stop asking stupid questions. We’re in Harry Potter’s house, for god’s sake. Explanations unnecessary. Have a conversation with a talking owl? Why not?

“Ads attack us from every direction,” I replied, “all the time, night and day, every day. We can’t just live our lives. Wherever we go, whatever we do, whoever we are with, whatever personal drama we are trying to cope with, we see and hear ‘Buy! Buy! Buy!’ no holidays, no weekends, no birthdays, no vacations.

“Most of us are irritated by all this persistent advertising. Strike that. All of us are irritated. But we assume that our wonderful lives, populated with so many treasured, necessary and beautiful objects, requires this permanent degradation of our environment.

“Its been normalized. Yeah, that’s the term, ‘normalized.’ We think of it as unchangeable reality. Like tooth decay.”

“I see you’re pretty serious about this,” said Dave, “but wouldn’t eliminating FB advertising just make a dent?”

“True. A dent, but a significant one. Disappearing advertising from Facebook would get people’s attention, and awaken them to possibilities. It’s a first step to de-normalizing.” I answered.

“How does that sound to you, HP?” asked Dave of the wizard.

“Josh sounds a little worked up, but I can’t argue.” replied Harry. “Any other reasons?”

“It gets worse.” I continued, “Much worse.”

The post New Neighbor, Part 2 appeared first on The DNA of Corporations.

I settled in, unpacking boxes, arranging furniture, watching my wife squinting at the walls, making sure pictures and other objects were hanging straight. A few days passed pleasantly in this manner.

Then one morning, I walked out my front door and looked to my right. That house one door to the north, which I had come to admire, being so well maintained, both building-wise and landscaping-wise, had been replaced by a colorful three-story Victorian.

I got scared. A stroke? What else could explain this dramatic misperception. I felt weak-kneed. I put my hands in front of my face. Normal. closed one eye, then the other. Seemed fine. I recalled my own name, and those of my family members. Seemed right. I stared back at my own house, then back at the prodigy. A man emerged from the side gate, wheeling a trash bin. He was 30-something with round glasses and a baseball cap.

“You’re looking a little pale there, neighbor.” the man said. It was our first conversation.

“Your house . . . ” I mumbled. I was in obvious distress.

“Oh I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean to freak you out. Its just that re- modeling is so much easier when you’re a Wizard. Don’t worry, its all up to code.” he said cheerfully.

I had moved in next to Harry Potter. Hiding in plain sight.

“Welcome to the neighborhood. It’s pretty chill here. People treat me just like anyone else. Appreciate that.”

Never before had I experienced such a combination of relief and amazement.

Recovering quickly, I realized this was an opportunity which I could not let pass.

“Could you do me a favor?”

“Sure” he said. “Wanna borrow my lawn-mower?”

“No, But could you please fix Facebook?”

He burst out laughing. “Now there’s a good project! You Muggles really fucked that one up, didn’t you?”

“Guilty as charged.” I replied.

“Come on in, I’ll show you a card trick.”

An invitation no-one could refuse.

I followed Harry Potter into his house. The interior was brighter than I might have expected, and seemed pretty lived-in for a brand-new building. The decor displayed a comfortable mixture of genres. A round gas ceiling light emitted tiny blue flames. Owls. Several of them. Life-like. Maybe alive. An ordinary-looking broom leaned against a wall. Did it have hidden powers, or was it left there by the cleaning lady? And do wizards even need cleaning ladies? Lots of questions.

We passed through a drawing room, populated with comfortable-looking wing chairs and a fireplace.

We entered the dining room where was centered a heavy 8-foot wooden table, whose style I could only describe as “medieval”. A deck of playing cards lay near one end.

Harry Potter picked up the deck and gave it a precise 52-card fan, a common, but still impressive trick. He jokingly fanned himself “It’s so hot in here!”, he quipped.

He then threw the cards high in the air. They fluttered for a moment but then quickly morphed into tiny insects forming a faintly buzzing cloud hovering above the table. After a few seconds, the cloud descended, landing on the table surface. Thereon the insects assembled themselves into a near-perfect circle, milling around within its circumference. Ladybugs!

“Let’s try something” he said. He touched an index finger onto the table a few inches from the undulating circle. A dozen or so of the insects crawled away from the crowd and up onto his finger.

He pointed it upwards and the bugs circumnavigated the digit, staying respectfully above his second knuckle. They seemed perfectly happy with this arrangement, giving no sign that it was in the least unusual.

He lowered his fingertip back to the tabletop. The bugs crawled down and rejoined their brethren, the circle maintaining its Euclidian precision.

“Try it” suggested Harry.

My original amazement had grown by an order of magnitude as I pressed a finger down near the circle, and the bugs climbed up. I raised my finger. There they were. I looked closely. Some were solid red, some had those black dots, and an orange one here and there. No words.

I stared for a few more moments, mesmerized by the phenomenon. “Anywhere is fine.” said Harry, sensing that as much as I liked the bugs, I probably didn’t want them for permanent companions.

I walked to the far end of the table, placing my bug-inhabited fingertip carefully on the tabletop, to avoid squishing anybody.

They crawled down, and headed for the distant circle at the other end, a single file line of ladybugs, doing their unhurried but deliberate walk. A big grin formed on my face. It was the coolest thing. I watched for the minute or so it took them to march the length of the table. The travelers melted back into the circle.

The post New Neighbor, Part 1 appeared first on The DNA of Corporations.

This is a switch from our beginnings. The Founders left the governance of corporations up to individual states. The Federal constitution says nothing of corps, but early state constitutions tightly regulated their behavior.

Corporations could be dissolved by the state legislature if they broke the rules, or if legislators just decided they were not serving the community. At the time, corps were not regarded as “people”, and the “due process” afforded real people was not available to them. If a legislator were having a bad day, he could take it out on an unfortunate business. Capital punishment for corporations was a thing.

Capital punishment for corporations should still be a thing, although its casual deployment should probably replaced with something more deliberate. Corporations will get due process, but the process for them doesn’t have to be the same as that for us humans.

Efforts by corporations to acquire rights continued during most of the 19th century, and continued into the 20th. Their efforts to acquire the rights enjoyed by ordinary human citizens were largely successful.

Armed with said rights, hordes of lawyers and lobbyists, and unlimited cash, corporations get away with all kinds of misbehavior. We observe the disinformation on Facebook, abandoned mines, oil wells leaking methane and toxic goo, failing electrical grids, the perilous temporary containment of nuclear waste, and plastic everywhere its not supposed to be. We don’t like any of it, but we can’t figure out how to fix it.

Facebook Founder Mark Zuckerberg takes his place among other corporate executives. He is not an outlier. He’s just another CEO doing his job.

During 2018 testimony Senator Orrin Hatch asked Mr. Z, “So, how do you sustain a business model in which users don’t pay for your service?”

He replied “Senator, we run ads”.

Some onlookers thought they observed a smirk in Mr. Z’s reply. My impression is that he tried to suppress the smirk, but was not entirely successful.

They do run ads. They are the source of 98% of Facebook’s revenue. Therefore, the company needs eyeballs. Lots of them. They would like to have as many people as possible spending as much time as possible staring at the screen, scrolling and clicking. As ads are displayed and viewed, money accumulates. Whether this is healthy behavior for humans, young or old, or for society overall is not part of the calculation since the company is not liable for any unfortunate consequences.

To attract viewers, Facebook needs “content”. New material keeps people engaged, so it must be constantly refreshed. Cat video producers are impressively creative, and they are definitely a source of revenue as users mindlessly click on the next one.

But far better is demonizing various racial / ethnic groups, blaming them for, well, everything, and propagating unlikely conspiracy theories thus producing rage, indignation and frenzied non-stop clicking. This is the heroin of internet content and the holy grail for social media platforms.

Not surprising therefore that Mr. Z says people should decide the truth of what they are viewing, not tech companies. Convenient and lucrative. Other CEOs might criticize Facebooks behavior, but when questioned about policies that might affect their own companies, they can be counted on the take the position that is most profitable for them. Mr. Z mixes effortlessly with the crowd.

The post Mr. Z — Part 2 appeared first on The DNA of Corporations.

The American Prospect, 8/6/21: “Who’s more Dangerous, Murdoch or Zuckerberg?”. New York Times, 6/4/21: “The Terrible Cost of Mark Zuckerberg’s Naivete”. Media Matters, 5/8/20: “Mark Zuckerberg is a hypocrite and a Trumpist”. And Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio Cortez asking: “So you won’t take down lies, or you will take down lies?”

ALLEGED CRIMES OF FACEBOOK

1) Vast amounts of disinformation appear on its pages.

2) Such material is not just “available” but is actively promoted. FB knows what you like and can send additional similar content to keep you engaged. Ads appear too, and as you read and click, money flows from the advertisers to Facebook. This is a successful business model, and the company would prefer that no constraints be placed upon it.

So as a person who controls and represents a large corporation, Mr. Zuckerberg’s behavior is not mysterious or unusual. He wants his company to make as much money as possible, just like every other CEO. Perfectly normal.

Corporations are economic entities, chartered by states to engage in business and make money. UCLA football coach Red Sanders declared “Winning isn’t everything, winning is the only thing.” For a large corporation, it is appropriate and accurate to modify that slogan slightly: “Money isn’t everything, money is the only thing.”

Unlike humans, a corporation with enough money can live indefinitely. Resilient humans can withstand protracted episodes of poverty, but corporations can’t. Unable to earn, borrow or otherwise acquire enough cash, the company quickly and inevitably dies.

Johnson and Johnson has operated continuously since 1886, witnessing the passage of many generations of executives, employees and stockholders. It’s a “mega-cap” company, with around 400 billion dollar stock value. It is just one example of many such long-lived companies. During that same period, countless others ran out of cash and disappeared.

Facebook, though newer, is likewise a mega-cap, pegged at close to a trillion dollars.

Pressure to make money within these huge companies, new or old, is relentless. Its like the forces deep in the Earth that turn carbon into diamonds.

Pressure grows beyond the control of any well-intentioned employee or executive. Sincere individuals might for example write credible, even eloquent corporate values statements, but they only marginally affect the company’s behavior and serve mainly as advertising.

This pressure to make/conserve money is exerted everywhere within the company. Departments are rewarded/penalized for going under/over budget. Employees, not excluding already highly paid executives, clamor for higher salaries. Individual employees may be rewarded for finding ways to make operations less costly. Stockholders demand higher share prices and dividends. Big institutional investors are expert at squeezing for more returns. Negotiating with suppliers and finding new ones never stops. Fights with labor unions, active or aspiring, is ongoing.

How do companies respond to all that pressure? Naturally they will buy as much advertising, and employ as many salespersons as they need to maximize income.

But a rich company can do more. It can fool regulators into ignoring dangers products might pose. It can influence elected representatives with campaign contributions. On leaving their offices, lawmakers are at risk of being trampled by lobbyists.

Companies might sue a country for attempting to enforce its own environmental laws. Waste, toxic or otherwise, will be disposed of in whatever manner is convenient. Paying bribes is not unknown.

Pressed day and night, companies struggle for profit. They will buy out their competitors if they can, and compete if they must. Money is the only thing.

So its fair and accurate to say that these large companies will do whatever they can get away with. For business school graduates, with starry-eyed romantic notions of corporations, and who are now becoming indignant, fix yourself a drink and take a detour to http://www.corporatecrimereporter.com

So there is no mystery. Mr. Z is a textbook executive. You could almost say that he is programmed to act as he does. So don’t freak out about Mr. Z. If you’re going to freak out, do it because there are countless Mr. Z’s acting as he does across numerous industries.

So begging is hopeless. If we want Mr. Zuckerberg, his corporation, or any corporation to behave, you must make them do it. They will not volunteer. If you are serious, then you will not shrink from using the tools available, namely: laws, regulations, courts, fines and jail.

Easier said than done, however, because of “corporate personhood”. Corporations, before the law, are regarded as “persons”, and are thereby entitled to substantially the same rights as individual humans. Laws attempting to limit corporate power have been repeatedly struck down by courts citing this principle.

But corporations had almost no rights in the late 18th and early 19th centuries. The founders knew all about corporate power, and left their regulation to the states. The states were up to the task, and did so strictly.

There is a long interesting history about how corporations, wholly artificial economic entities, made by man and not by God, broke through these constraints, and acquired the same rights as people.

Granting corporations human rights is a correctable mistake. The remedy is the proposed 28th constitutional amendment, HJR 48, the “We the People Amendment”, stating that when the constitution mentions people or persons, it applies only to genuine homo sapiens. You and me. The grass-roots organization, Move To Amend, is promoting this legislation and deserves our support. Details at http://www.movetoamend.org.

The post Mr. Z — Part 1 appeared first on The DNA of Corporations.