Abstract
=889472. 182. The "individual-as-information" needs fiduciaries, to protect both the "individual" and any property society allows. Experience shows these fiduciaries should be regulated, particularly if, as is likely, the "information" state is a long one. The example of the Cryonics Society of EMBEDDED VALUE OF HUMAN REMAINS? amply indicates, the potential for fiduciary malfeasance is considerable' 83 and societal regulation would be needed to protect beneficiaries from fiduciaries, particularly in the long run. History also illustrates that the interest of individuals and society are often at odds, and this too seems likely in the flash-frozen hypothetical. Sometimes the interests of individuals seem superior. Particular power blocks or ideologies may hijack the political process and attempt to perpetrate themselves against any fair aggregation of individual values. But even when fairly aggregated, society's majority values may be distorted by such influences as racism, homophobia and anti-Semitism, or descend into hysteria, such as the McCarthy era'84 . And undistorted, fairly aggregated majorities can seek to curtail legitimate individual rights, hence the U.S. Constitution's Bill of Rights.' 85 In some society-individual conflicts, the interests of society seem superior. Society needs wartime sacrifices, even those occluding individual survival, and to be able to quarantine infectious disease carriers. Society also has an interest in setting the outer limits of individual decisions. 186 Heroin addicts may be making rational individual choices, balancing individual short-term values against the cost of a dime bag, but society may keep "impaired" individuals from making harmful or wasteCalifornia is instructive. See Jane Fryer, Hundreds of Corpses Wait for Science To Bring Them Back to Life-The Human Deep Freeze, SUNDAY MAIL (Scot.) Aug. 13, 2006, at 36 ("Body freezing is not an area to cut comers. In 1981, the cryonics community was rocked when tanks holding corpses at the Cryonics Society of California sprang leaks, leading to bodies thawing and decomposing."). Nor is this the only concern. Laws can change or be changed. Information-asindividuals, and any wealth they are able to retain, would be subject to control of the living on a variety of different levels. See supra note 177. 183. One need only point to the Bishop trust. See generally SAMUEL P. KING & RANDALL W. RoTH, BROKEN TRUST: GREED, MISMANAGEMENT, & POLITICAL MANIPULATION AT AMERICA'S LARGEST CHARITABLE TRUST (2006) (describing the corrupt handing of Hawaii's largest land