Ordered Liberty
"Ordered Liberty" The government's role is to set fair rules and restrict powerful entities. Crucially, society must remember that people have inherent rights, while AI and corporations are human-made tools that must serve humanity.
Here is what we need: everyone gets what they need to participate.
Cognitive tools.
Economic foundation.
Protection from those who would take it away.
The government's job is simple. Set fair rules. Enforce them equally. Stop the powerful from rigging the game. Then get out of the way.
Five things:
- Teach people how to think
- Give them enough to live
- Chain down corporate power
- Let them deliberate together
- Make it permanent in law
The Trap
"They" will say your freedom threatens order. They mean it threatens them.
"They" will say society needs control. They mean they need control.
This is the oldest trick. Don't fall for it.
The Test
Three questions stop this policy game:
Does it serve everyone, or just those in charge?
Would you want this rule if you didn't know who you'd be?
Does it make us better, or just more controlled?
If it fails any test, it fails. The powerful will call this chaos. It isn't. It's the only order worth having.
People, Tools, and Who Gets to Decide
There are only two kinds of things in the world that matter for making rules.
First, there are people. Real humans. You. Me. Your neighbor. We were born. We feel pain. We have thoughts. We will die someday.
Second, there are things people made. Tools. Corporations. Computer programs. AI. These things don't exist in nature. We invented them. We built them to help us do things.
Here's the important part: These two types are completely different.
People have rights because we're people. We exist. Nobody gave us permission to be human.
But corporations? AI? We made those. We decide what they can do.
Think about it like this:
You own a hammer. The hammer doesn't get to vote. It doesn't get rights. It doesn't get to make decisions.
You use the hammer when you need it. If it breaks, you fix it or throw it away. The hammer exists to serve you. Not the other way around.
Corporations are the same. We invented them to help us do business. They're tools. Useful tools. But still tools.
AI is the same. We're building it right now. To help us solve problems. Another tool.
So why do corporations act like they're in charge?
Because we forgot they're tools.
Over many years, corporations got more and more power. They hired lawyers. They bought politicians. They convinced judges that corporations should have the same rights as people.
That was the mistake.
A tool is not a person. It never will be.
Now we're about to make the same mistake with AI.
People are already saying: "AI needs freedom to grow." "You can't restrict AI." "AI has to make its own choices."
No. Stop. Think.
AI is a tool. We built it. We can set any rules we want for how it works.
Same as corporations.
Here are the rules that make sense:
Rule 1: We decide what the tool can do.
You want to build a corporation? Fine. You can do business. You can make products. You can hire people.
You cannot buy elections. You cannot hide what you're doing. You cannot hurt people and walk away.
Same with AI. You can build it. You can use it for specific jobs.
You cannot let it make decisions about people's lives without explaining how it works. You cannot blame the machine when something goes wrong. You cannot replace workers and leave them to starve.
Rule 2: Whoever controls the tool is responsible for what it does.
If your corporation poisons a river, you pay to clean it up.
If your AI denies someone healthcare, you explain why and you fix it.
No hiding behind "the computer decided" or "the corporation did it."
You did it. You're responsible.
Rule 3: If the tool starts hurting people instead of helping them, we change it or get rid of it.
This is common sense with regular tools.
If your hammer breaks and becomes dangerous, you throw it away.
If your car doesn't work right, you fix it.
Same thing. Corporations and AI are tools we created. If they stop helping and start hurting, we fix them or shut them down.
The Big Question:
Who's in charge? People or tools?
Right now, tools are winning.
Corporations buy our elections. They write our laws. They decide who gets jobs and who doesn't.
AI is about to do the same thing. Unless we remember one simple fact:
We made them. They work for us.
Not the other way around.
People have rights because we're people.
Tools have jobs because we gave them jobs.
When we forget that difference, we end up serving our own creations.
That's backwards.
A hammer doesn't tell you what to build.
A corporation doesn't tell you how to run your country.
AI doesn't get to decide your future.
You do.
Remember that, and everything else gets easier.