We moved the power from the human to something we said is "human enough" to have them. But this thing is a concept, it doesn't exist. It can't die. It can change forms until it doesn't pay taxes. It can't experience pain or go to prison.
Basically, we gave the power to the company without the responsibilities to the humans behind it because there is less consequences, less skin in the game.
The power of having a bank account, of moving funds around, of signing contracts, etc.
Before that, companies had to have everything attached to a human, not the company. So the human was responsible.
You are so used to it that you think it's normal, but it's not.
It's a concept we have created: that companies can act in their own name, like they are actually something concrete.
But when we did that, we failed to give companies expiration date, something like inheritance tax, the equivalent of prison and so forth.
Something that doesn't exist, a concept, enjoy many things a concrete human can do, but won't pay nearly the same consequences.
In fact, it's sometimes in the title: limited liability company. It's by design.
And of course, it allowed humans to do a lot of things without risking to lose all their life if they failed. But we went to far and now, we have companies that can enjoy all those benefits but with much less limitations than the humans counterpart.
> The power of having a bank account, of moving funds around, of signing contracts, etc.
I don't think companies can sign contracts. What is the power of having a bank account and moving funds around? It's still people deciding to do this, and doing it, just under a group name. What power?
> Something that doesn't exist, a concept, enjoy many things a concrete human can do, but won't pay nearly the same consequences
People are still doing it. You seem to have totally mis-framed this. If you say "people can get away with doing things inside a company" you'd have a point, perhaps, but you're talking as though companies are sentient.
Of course it matters. What does it meant to punish something that isn't sentient? It's like bemoaning the fact that you can't punish the car that was driven into someone.
Depends on if you care about outcome or morality. Already now we use terms like punishment, reward and adverserial competition between neural networks.
If the entity (be it a corporation or AGI-driven corporation) learns from the punishment (or its peers learn by observation) it doesn't matter if the entity is sentient, the outcome is less of the unwanted behaviour. I didn't mean anything more complicated than that.
The corporation cannot learn. Why anthropomorphise when you can actually think about the real problem: how to incentivise the people who own and direct companies to behave well.
Basically, we gave the power to the company without the responsibilities to the humans behind it because there is less consequences, less skin in the game.