The Super-Citizen joke — a ledger in a citizen's robes™

The punchline under the whole corporations-aren't-real argument, told as the joke it is. The Super-Citizen is the immortal, invulnerable thing that wants the rights of the mortal, vulnerable one — a ledger in the robes of a citizen. Here's why it's a joke: it can't be jailed, can't bleed, can't die, can't go hungry — it has nothing at stake — and yet it claims to stand above the Biological Citizen, the one with everything at stake (the Inviolability Test: if it can't suffer, it can't outrank what can). The thing that risks nothing lecturing the thing that risks everything — that's the setup and the absurdity in one. And the joke isn't only corporate; it does a kitchen-table cameo every time a person mistakes a bigger paycheck for a bigger soul — using what money bought to claim the right to look down. Same error, smaller robes: earnings buy the gray star, never the gold, and never the standing to judge another human's worth (dollars don't equal speech; they don't equal merit either). The Super-Citizen can dominate a market; it can't earn a soul — that's the one thing it can never buy, and pretending otherwise is the whole joke. Kin: the Inviolability Test, the Gray Star, money-never-votes-here, the dignity floor. (His coin — machine's read, refine to his.)