Legal Fiction Flashcards
Corporations, Money, Religion, Nations
CARD #1: Intro to legal fiction//IMAGINARY CONSTRUCTS//Much of the everyday things we take for granted as real are only imaginary constructs that were invented for the econony to grow, and for very large groups of people to be able to work together with common goals.
If we didn’t use these imaginary constructs, there would be no ways for nations to form, corporations to be in business, armies to exist and be united.
Money would not exist. Having money means instant cooperation with total strangers.//You think money exist? It is a construct. Pull out a dollar bill and look at it. Nowhere does it say it is money! It says it is a Federal Reserve Note, a promissory note. You can trade it for one dollar’s worth of service or product. Nobody really has any money. They only have the imaginary construct of it being money.//Having corporations and LLC’s enables people to take chances on starting a business and not being held personally liable if everything goes wrong. Also, it enables the sale of stock to provide capital to the corporations plus make people into investors sometimes gaining massive fortunes from the stock market.
Time is legal fiction. It only exist here on Earth in everybody’s mind. Yet having this construct enables billions of people to gather for meetings, catch a train or a jet to a far away destination, to arrive at a theater at the beginning of a movie, etc.
The nation is a construct, to give millions of people the security of knowing they own a small piece of this land and the government (another legal fiction construct) will protect their land from invasion and make improvements to their streets, Police departments, Fire Departments, Ambulance service. //Speaking of the Army. The Military is a legal fiction construct where people enlist to protect their country for several years. And these people will fight to their death, all threats and enemies to protect you and your country.
Religions are legal fiction constructs. They invent Gods, Saviors, Demons, Angels, Saints, eternal paradise and eternal damnation. All of this to control the thinking, behavior and control of Billions of people. Religion makes a person a prisioner of their own mind in such a way the person will generally behave themselves because they fear punishment by God. They seek the reward, not the damnation.//Back in the days of Constantine, the Roman Emperor, Constantine was amazed that religion would control people far better than his mighty armies. Ergo, he made the Christian religion the law. Any law breakers were guilty of heresy and quickly rounded up and killed.
CARD #1: Cognitive Revolution
Ref: Sapiens
Cognitive revolution is today known cognitive science. It basically means communication and sapient behavior.
Successful family businesses usually face a crisis as they grow larger
than 150 employees. If they don’t reinvent themselves, they go bust.
This threshold makes it necessary to invent imaginary constructs to manage more and more people.
How did we do it? Large numbers of strangers can cooperate successfully by believing in common myths. Mainly corporations, Armies and religions.
Any large scale human cooperation is rooted in common myths that exist only in people’s collective imagination. A church for example. Two Catholics who have never met can work together on a crusade to build a hospital because they share a common myth. Jesus as their savior.
Two lawyers who have never met can combine efforts to defend a complete stranger because they share the belief of laws, justice and human rights.
Yet none of these things exist outside of their beliefs. There are no Gods in the universe, no nations, no money, no human rights, no laws and no justice outside the common imagination of human beings.
CARD #3: Corporations
Take for example the Peugeot car company. Employs 200,000 people worldwide. Makes millions of cars. Makes revenues of about 55 Billion Euros, owns car plants, people own millions of shares of stock.
Peugeot seems to have no essential connection to the physical world. Does it really exist?
It only exist a a figment of collective imagination. It is technically “Legal Fiction” and so long as people agree it is real, it continues to be a legal entity.
It belongs to the Genre of legal fiction called “Limited liability companies”.
This LLC is one of humanity’s most ingenious inventions. The LLC protects the man who starts up the business. So if somethiing goes bust, the LLC can be fined or sued, but the man who started the corporation is not liable for any fines or punishment.
The LLC can borrow money, sell stock and take bold chances without the man himself being liable for any damages.
The LLC greatly boosted the world’s economy and LLCs grew all over the world. LLCs were legally independent of the people who set them up. In America, the LLC is called a corporation.
So in 1896, Armand Peugeot started his LLC. How did Peugeot create the company out of thin air?
He did it much the same way that Priest have created Gods and Demons throughout history. And every Sunday, all over the world, the Catholic Church is creating Jesus’ body and blood in the parish churches. It all revolved around telling stories and convincing people to believe them. Each Sunday, over a billion devout Catholics behave as if they are eating God’s flesh and drinkng his blood. Hocus Pocus!
CARD #6: Convincing people to believe
How does one convince millions of people to believe stories about Gods, Nations, Armies, Money and Corporations?
It gives Sapiens immense power, because it enables millions of strangers to cooperate and work towards common goals.
Just imagine how difficult it would be to create states, or Churches, or legal systems if humans could only speak about things that really exist, like rivers, trees and Lions.
This figurative reality is called an imagined reality, and as long as this communal belief persists,the imagined reality exerts a powerful force in the world, just like religions do.
Our world trade network today is based on trust in fictional entities as the dollar, the Federal Reserve and Corporations.
The real difference between us and Chimpanzees is the “Mythical Glue” that binds together large numbers of people, families and groups. This glue has made us masters of creation.
EOF
