Ten Science Fiction Premises on Economic and Legal Absurdities

1. Inheritance law applied to uploaded minds — when a person uploads a copy of themselves, the copy is legally their "child," so the original's death triggers a probate battle in which the copy must prove it isn't the heir in order to keep existing. 2. Copyright on lived experience — a corporation owns the copyright to a traumatic event it licensed to you, and sues you for "unauthorized performance" when you relive it in memory without a paid license. 3. Bankruptcy applied to consciousness — a debtor's memories and emotions are seizable assets, so a man bankrupted by medical debt watches his happiest memories auctioned off to strangers who now own them. 4. Zoning law for spacetime — a landlord owns the airspace above your house to a legal height, and a time-traveler's future skyscraper violates it, triggering a century-old eviction notice served on the present. 5. Marriage law applied to AI merger — two AIs that merge become legally "married," and one partner's board files for divorce, demanding the merged intelligence be split in half with shared custody of its skills. 6. Adverse possession of abandoned bodies — a comatose but legally alive body is "squatted" by a second consciousness for seven years, who then claims legal title to it, and the original owner wakes up to find himself a trespasser in his own skull. 7. Property tax on memory — the state levies annual property tax on each memory you retain, so the poor systematically choose which years of their life to let the government seize and delete. 8. Statute of limitations on crimes — a fugitive legally cryo-freezes himself for a century to let his crime's statute expire, only to wake and find his victim also froze, and the clock restarts the moment they're both alive. 9. Trademark law on identity — a corporation owns the trademark on your name and face, so when you try to change your life and your reputation, it sues you for infringing on your own identity. 10. Antitrust law on souls — a megachurch merges with a rival, and the state orders a "divestiture" of believers to restore competition, forcing the congregation to be split and auctioned like a monopoly.