Corporations versus "corporations": Network Effect, by Martha Wells

 OK, I am a bit behind in the gloriously named "Murderbot Diaries" series, by Martha Wells.  The most recent entry actually won the Hugo, which surprised and impressed me, since what I had read up to that point was essentially engagingly fun action-snark, in contrast to the over-the-top self-seriousness and look-at-my-wokeness which typically dominates the Hugos in moderntimes.  So let's catch up, with some frustration, because alas, Murderbot is gunnin' for the awards rather than just the Targets (intentionally capitalized, in reference to the text).

So here's the deal.  In the distant future, not only has humanity colonized space, humanity creates robots and "constructs," which are cyborg-terminator things.  Central to the series are "SecUnits," short for Security Units.  Think RoboCop.  Or Terminator, if you prefer.  Anyway, SecUnits are rented out by "the company" to handle security for dangerous jobs, as disposable appliances, and while they are sentient, they have "governor modules" which keep them in line.  The titular Murderbot hacked its governor module so that it could do what it wanted, which was mostly watch tv, being lazy as fuck.  But it then just hung around the company killing shit for a while, until a job went south, and then the people who rented it bought it, said come with us to our happy-fun planet, Murderbot said, 'k, thanks, bye.  Because all it really wants to do is watch tv.  Imagine if RoboCop were lazy as fuck, and misanthropic but not psychopathic, and just wanted to watch tv, but periodically needed to kill a lot of people in very violent and gruesome ways.  That's The Murderbot Diaries.

Wackiness ensues for a series of novellas, until we get to Network Effect, which is the first full-length novel.  In the preceding novellas, Murderbot is hitchhiking around the galaxy conducting a half-assed investigation, and then eventually has to rescue the idiots who originally bought it.  They take it back to Preservation, which is their happy-fun communist utopia.  (Rant forthcoming, and it's way worse than that.)  Then a ship heads off for an expedition, and the ship gets pirate-jacked by, well, alien-infected people using the ship with which Murderbot made friends back in its hitchhiking days.  Murderbot has to save the humans hijacked, and the ship's crew, much killing follows, and Murderbot doesn't get to watch its tv shows, which is still the only thing it really wants to do.  Goddamned stupid humans.

Wells has a trick.  Humans do stupid things, Murderbot grumbles about not being able to watch its tv shows, then kills a lot of people in very well-written action sequences.  That's all you really need, but I suppose if you want a Hugo, you need to up your wokeness/lefty game, and Wells started doing that with Network Effect.  I shall grumble.  Mostly, I shall grumble about "corporations," but I have a few preliminaries, as I usually do.

First, that stupid communist/lefty utopia of Preservation.  It's... bad.  First, I can suspend disbelief on basically anything except "communism works."  Why?  Because I can fucking read, and I have read.  In fact, I am old enough to have fucking watched.  I am fortunate enough not to have lived, or died, but seriously.  How does anyone still take this seriously?  And to borrow from Douglas Murray, as long as we are tearing down everyone in history who did, said or wrote racist shit, when are these children ever going to get around to how racist Marx was?  And consequently rejecting everything about Marx?  Oh, right.  Never.

How many object lessons do we need that communism doesn't work, and indeed, cannot work?

It's worse than that.

On the entire planet, there is essentially zero crime.

On the planet.

Even the fucking commie Federation doesn't say, oh, we don't even have crime anymore.  Seriously.  The communist revolution eliminates all crime!  Perfect utopia!  It gets dumber.  Instead of pair-based marriages, it's all multi-person complex marriage webs.  Not even that bullshit polyamory.  Why?  Because this is next level lefty bullshit.  Somebody took the looniest idea of a hippy-commie commune and gave it to Wells and said, here.  Make this a fuckin' planet, and pretend it not only works, but works perfectly.

I'm only scratching the surface of the bullshit.

I just wanted to read some escapist action.

OK, rather than continue with that, let's go on a different rant, still picking on the left.  I am annoyed that this rant is necessary, again, but it is.  It is always necessary.

What is a corporation?  Let's skip the sarcasm-quotes for the moment.  The real-deal corporation.  What is it?  It is a limited liability legal partnership.  One or more people start a business, or potentially a nonprofit organization.  If that organization takes on debt, then without having "incorporated," creditors can seek payment from those who founded or operate the organization.  If damages are incurred by the organization, anyone who suffers damages can sue those who founded or operate the organization.

Here's a thing.  Most businesses fail.  By that, I mean that they take on more loss than profit.  Hence, they fold.  Put your own money into a business, and if you don't incorporate, you are taking a big risk.  If you want, you know, jobs to exist (remembering that communism is the stupidest idea ever), the incentives need to support the creation of business.  Hence, you need to be able to start a business without the fear that you are more likely to lose everything than turn a profit.

That is where the process of "incorporation" comes in.  That is what allows rational people to start for-profit businesses with the potential to grow, and even nonprofits that might engage in any kind of activity involving raising/spending money.

If you start a business, and don't incorporate, you're an idiot, unless narrow circumstances apply.

That's it.  That's what a corporation is.  What it really is.

So what is a "corporation," with sarcasm-quotes?  To a knee-jerk lefty/commie, a "corporation" is a big, evil money thing.

What's the difference?  A lot.  First, you will never hear a lefty use the word, "corporation" in a way that separates it from "evil."  100% of the time, if a lefty uses the word, "corporation," it is to convey the concept of evil.  Lefties have no concept of what corporations do, nor why they exist, just something about evil and money, which are inextricably linked in ideas of evil.  Also, "big."  Most corporations are small, but that's a separate point.  There are large institutions with a lot of money, which are not incorporated, and we could go through history, and yadda-yadda, but actually, where I'm going with this is that the Murderbot Diaries, and Network Effect specifically show what happens when lefties just use the word without thinking through the concept.

Did you notice something about the concept?  It's about legal liability.  In order for that to be important, the corporation has to exist within the jurisdiction of a functioning government, with a court system and enforcement mechanisms.  No government, no courts, no enforcement?  No "corporations."

So here's the operating politics of The Murderbot Diaries.  Until Murderbot heads off to Preservation with Mensah and the rest, it is hitchhiking around "the Corporation Rim," which is a set of territories held, not by governments, but by corporations.  Here's a place held by this corporation, and there's a region held by that corporation, and it's one corporation versus another corporation and corporation this, and corporation that.  Where this really becomes clear is in Network Effect, where the corporations are looking around to colonize planets, or rediscover planets that had been colonized years earlier to take advantage of work that had already been done and save on costs.  There are restrictions, though, based on whether or not there are "alien remnants."  That's the key to the plot in Network Effect.  The planet at the center of the plot had been colonized a couple of times, but there were alien remnants, which fucked with the colonists, and those alien-infected colonists were the ones who hijacked Murderbot's transport ship friend, ART, setting the plot in motion.  Yet, there are regulations about colonization and alien remnants, and...

Where's the fucking government!

The "Corporation Rim" is constructed as a capitalist-dystopia, controlled by "corporations" run amok.  But if there's no government overseeing them, then there shouldn't be corporations, because the only purpose of incorporating is to protect a group from legal liability, which only exists in the presence of a court system with an enforcement mechanism.  You know... government.  Which is also the thing which would create those things called... regulations.

Why the incoherence?  Why is Wells constructing a capitalist-dystopia of corporations-run-amok with no government to make sense of the concept of incorporation, much less the operative regulations that make the plot make sense?

Because this is lefty bullshit.  She doesn't know what a corporation is, but she is trying to construct a capitalist dystopia to contrast with the obvious communist utopia.  As for that communist utopia thing...  lefty lunacy.  It is over-the-top here.  Wells just looked around at the lefty landscape and said, oh you think you're left?  Well, Murderbot will mow down all your lefty tropes and only I shall be left standing at the top of the lefty hill!

Seriously, everything in this series prior was lazy-Terminator, who went around committing acts of brutal violence while complaining that the need for it to go on a murderous rampage was getting in the way of its tv-watching.  And then... yeah.

Seriously?  Communism?

Selwyn Birchwood, "Corporate Drone," performed live.  The studio track is on Pick Your Poison.  It is a little crass that he is wearing his own t-shirt, and Murderbot would definitely not approve, but the kid is good.