Is Philanthropy Anti-Democratic?
&gt; The dead have no property rights, Mill claims.<p>Should any contract be void if all of the parties to one side or another die? I think we can at least say &quot;no&quot; if parties on the other side are responsible for the death.<p>If I make a contract with a mortuary to bury me (preferably) after my death, should they be released from the agreement by my death? It seems like this principle would also do serious damage to life insurance. Isn&#x27;t a life insurance policy a property right?<p>Companies and other organizations are sometimes bound by contracts that have only been agreed to by people that are now dead. Is that an argument for not allowing a company to be a party to a contract? Or do we say that a company is a legal person for that purpose, and so since that &quot;person&quot; persists, so should their contractual obligations? If so the issue of control by a dead philanthropist is trivially fixed by incorporation.<p>I hear the U.S. Constitution described as a social contract. Should it be relevant (as Lysander Spooner believed) that all of the signatories to that contract are dead? Or does democracy nullify the principle? If the last legislator who voted for a law dies, should it have any affect on the law?<p>With a philanthropy, maybe the solution is to simply transfer ownership to the trustees, who then have the power to amend their own charter as they wish, breaking any hold by a dead hand.