Thursday, November 22, 2012

Will Faceook be required to provide health insurance to both its users and employees?

Will Facebook be the first cyber-revolution, creating the first Cyber-Nation-State or a simple corporation which will crumble when its users no longer use or buy Facebook?

Alcatraz, San Francisco, California
Background:
Facebook recently requested feedback on its proposed changes to its site governance process.

by Mauricio Rosas, 12/22/12

Facebook is an evolutionary anomaly that may be replacing the definition of a Nation-State to a "Cyber-Corporate-Nation-State." It has no territorial boundaries. It transcends Tribal, Republics, Totalitarian, Commonwealth, Communist or any type of government we know of today. FB is a Corporation where its users have no rights. FB need only be responsible to its stockholders. They have the right to vote. The user does not!  FB is not a Democracy! It's not Communist! It's a Corporation!! It's also the natural evolution of a mass convergence of people with a sense of self-importance or purpose or used to connect to friends, family, employees, stockholders.... FB has also become an outlet for the oppressed to fight for their FREEDOM! No one could have predicted the power of social media to affect political and economic change. 

It's marvelous!!

Yet, somehow, we the users want independence, suffrage and rights.  How can a corporation become a viable living organism where its users want similar status as a citizen ? In the United States, the Supreme Court has given corporations life in its ruling, Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission. But there is a persistent question.  What is Facebook? Is it a corporation whose interest is to its investors? Is it a public domain?  Wikipedia provides a fair interpretation of the spirit of the law. 
"A conceptual definition comes from Lange, who focused on what the public domain should be: "it should be a place of sanctuary for individual creative expression, a sanctuary conferring affirmative protection against the forces of private appropriation that threatened such expression. Patterson and Lindberg described the public domain not as a "territory", but rather as a concept: "There are certain materials - the air we breathe, sunlight, rain, space, life, creations, thoughts, feelings, ideas, words, numbers - not subject to private ownership. The materials that compose our cultural heritage must be free for all to use no less than matter necessary for biological survival." 
The question remains unanswered.

If it's a corporation, users agree to their terms with no authority to suffrage unless it's a stockholder. If users don't like the product then, don't buy it.  If their employees no longer want or need to work at FB then, the company collapses.  It happened to Eastern Airlines? The question is, how can we work together to put FB in the public domain or negotiate to create an Industrial Democracy?  Do we create a Declaration of Independence?  Create a Constitution?  Draft a Bill of Rights? Begin a cyber corporate revolution?

Will we marvel at the first Cyber-Nation-State?

Will it be required to provide health insurance to both its users and employees?


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