During the last presidential election one of the topics that was bandied about was the concept of “corporate personhood”. Companies are people and therefore can enjoy the same abilities and protections afforded to people. Many on the left, where I stand, see corporate personhood as a particularly upsetting vestibule to fascism and is really not a good thing.

I’ve been thinking about the social extents of humanity as it currently exists in the 21st century and the magical number is 150. Any one person can only maintain meaningful social interactions with a general maximum of 150 other people. Beyond that and there just isn’t brainpower, time, attention, or will to treat all of them equally. I use this figure of 150 as an honest limit in many parts of my life and while writing some previous blog posts the idea about the moral and ethical capacity of companies came up. When it comes to social networking this number of contacts limit I think is important. People who follow more than 150 others are doing them a disservice and people who are followed by more than 150 others are likewise doing them a disservice. You simply cannot maintain an equal amount of attention beyond this limit and it’s unfair and in the end one could argue that it’s socially abusive to the 151st and further people connected to you.

So we get to corporate personhood. I think that once a company of people start accumulating there are ranges based on this number of 150. Very small companies with less than 150 members may still be able to maintain some moral and ethical understanding, but the relationship is asymptotic as the company approaches the horizon of 150 members. The more people join a company, the less each member feels responsible for the actions of the company. Many companies spread way beyond 150 into the thousands or even more than that and I think that the further along they go from 150, the less human they are when they are all added together. The individuals are all conscientious and compassionate human beings, but it’s when they are added up in a new context that they stop behaving as such and you see things like mob mentality and groupthink. The bigger the company the more these negative forces start to manipulate the membership. So what does this limit of 150 have to do with corporate personhood? I think it’s a bad idea to give any organization the rights and powers of a person when they lack the moral and ethical bearings of regular individuals. It’s like making a Frankensteins monster. Just because the monster is walking and maybe talking doesn’t mean you want it caring for the elderly or working in an infant ICU. Companies beyond 150 members, I would argue have the same moral and ethical understanding of a dead inanimate object, to say, none at all. So perhaps a law that perhaps graces organizations with personhood as long as their maximum membership does not exceed 150 is a wise thing. Companies (or organizations even) that exceed 150 cannot be considered “persons” because they are beyond the human capacity for moral and ethical behavior.

I honestly don’t think that there will ever be any laws where this limit of 150 is used, but I do think that understanding the human limits for socialization is important, especially when you are trying to understand the behavior of some of these large organizations and why they behave with such callousness and disregard for the moral and ethical compasses which regular people are compelled to follow.

In many ways, this 150 limit could also be the functional barrier for The Golden Rule. That people who have more than these social contacts, or organizations with more than this number of members cannot successfully comprehend the wisdom of The Golden Rule. In this light, I would argue that organizations over 150 members be subject to laws that add force to The Golden Rule, if such wisdom cannot come from within then it must be applied from without by laws and regulations.