Howdy Folks:
I'm new, both to computing and to Traveller.
I don't know much official Traveller lore or history, so please forbare.
This is a great, thoughtful discussion about the rights and responsibilities of the various classes under various governments.
The "side line" discussions are also interesting.
I think it should be noted that there are other ways for corporations to be constituted such that they could engage in commerce without being granted "personhood" and there are historical examples.
Corporations were only granted "personhood" in the US by the Supreme Court in the eighteen hundreds. It's proported to have been done in strange circumstances. Somehow the Supreme's of the day used the fourteenth amendment, passed to protect former slaves, was used to justify it. It's out there on the web if you're interested.
One restraint on corporate power that still exists, is the fact that they still must apply for a charter from legislative bodies.
Thus it is possible for a legislative body to revoke this charter. It's used very rarely. I hear there's a movement in CA. to revoke some bigh corporation's charter.
There is an active, world wide, anti-corporate power movement out there that, for the most part, is not made up of riff raff or is violent. Nor is it mostly anti-capatalist. There are, after all, many ways to structure capatalism while retaining its benefits.
For absolute free marketeers, I offer to paraphrase Adam Smith ( wish I had the quote ) who said that under his system, the government would absolutely have too act to redistrabute wealth to protect against too much wealth being in the hands of too few people. I believe he also mentioned that the inevatible disparities in wealth between the very few would cause social upheaval bringing the whole system down.
The Enron situation is one in which the oversite function of constitutional government was abrigated. The congress exempted Enron from regulatory oversite. Is it any wonder that what happened did?
One problem that I see with granting corporations "personhood" is that the corporation then has fifth amendment rights. Thus malifactors posing as legitimat business pepple can have two sets of fifth amendment rights to use. ( I'm all for the fifth amendment for actual people. I don't think corporations should have it.)
I only post this to widen the perspectives being aired. I don't want to debate the merits of any of them, even though I'm a proponant of some of them. I do hope people look up some of the anti-globalization/anti-corporate web sites, but thus ends my pamphleteering.
The abortion issue is something that we certainly must avoid here. Granting good conscience to all, and move on.
My main issue is with feudalism itself. I don't think it would last long in any technolocically advanced society.
What brought down Feudalism in Europe was the twin discoveries of firarms and that serfs had trigger fingers, too.
A space faring society and technolically advanded polity would have this problem exacerbated by the plethora of ways to kill rulers and their confederates with ordinary appliences. Your manservent can toss the heater into the tub. Moreover, we've all just had a re-introduction to the notion that suicide attackers can use ordinary technology to kill.
The kinds of actions frequently attributed to future Feudal rulers of any rank, would spark murderous popular unrest. Truck bombs anyone. Not to mention driving an air raft into the royal procession. Baron Harkonnan's brutality to his subjects wouldn't be tolerated. He'd be killed.
Not can any universe predicated on being in any form of human future exist without various philosophies developing and spreading. These would range accfross the political spectrum, but democracy and/ or Republicism would inevitably spread giving organization, goals and ideals to the downtrodden and even to much of the middle classes. ( Books like "Robert's Rules of Order would inspire sedition! And I don't think it's possible to have a universe with humans in it that wouldn't develope these philosophies or write and publish things that can develope into full constitutional government.)
Also the kinds of commercial arrangements posited here are not capatalism, but mercantilism with all it's involved passthrokughs to various Nobles, Lords, minor setraps and other skimmers, would incite resentment in the higher middle classes too. If you know that your just as good or better than the lordling who got the contract because he's a lordling, you'd get get angry. And you wouldn't be alone.
You can have your universe start at this point, but you're then left with the problem of the unlikely hood of Feudalism evoloving alongside the vast technological and organizationsl tasks of attaining space flignt or of imposing it on another form of government. Remember, the historical flaw that brought Feudalism down was that it's loose organization couldn't stand up to evolving technological and social advances.
I know Traveller's imperium never was anyother form of government, but, with all the technological and social factors I've listed above, the most you'd likely have would be the situation that existed for Queen Victoria in the eighteen hundreds. She had lots of clout remaining, but had to deal with an increasingly reformed House of Commons.
Well, thank you all for listening. I look foward to the continuing discussion.