Page 8 - Unlikely Stories 3

Omega

Omega absorbed and exploited every one of the dishonest legalities
we created in order to socialize risk and privatize profit.

OL: What do you mean, “overreached”?

CCLO: Two crucial errors, involved in using the corporation as a
tool to evade personal restrictions on influencing elections. We don’t
want regulation of any industry, in terms of a social contract—and we
certainly deny any environmental responsibility. So we pushed to get
corporations to be recognized as persons, and money as speech. All
very well and good for the stock market and the enrichment of
owners and managers. But Omega, using knowledge vaster than any
human strategist could muster, used those self-serving decisions to
buy more Washington officials via its distributed network of lobbyists
than any of its competitors, eliminating any opposition to its
relentless absorption of every multinational corporation. You name
it, that human-rights-endowed computer did it.

CFO: Okay. So here we are: Omega owns everything. No
government stopped it. The public accepted it as doing business as
usual, engulf-and-devour. You have portrayed the means of doing
this as a mechanical, conscienceless device designed to conquer all.
Why, then, is Omega distributing its entire equity in equal non-voting
shares to every adult in the world? Is there a bug in the program?

CCLO: Almost certainly not. It was Tingley’s intention to do this, to
use capitalism against itself. That’s why he let Omega continue. It
might have been stymied before it got this far, but we stupidly had to
give total freedom to non-human entities without regard to
consequences. Nevertheless, according to what I recently discovered,
his motivation might have been deciphered much earlier.

CEO: How?

CCLO: The original documents of incorporation were misread by a
clerk who copied them into the public record. That led to an error in
the name of the corporation. Tingley let it stand, not wanting to call
attention to himself. It was not “Omega.” It was “0mega.” In other
words, “big nothing.”

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