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Seems appropriate here: https://genius.com/Moondog-enough-about-human-rights-lyrics

In other words, why do we have to make something a person in order to give it rights?

Because it's much simpler to inherit laws than to craft a whole new set. Once an entity is declared a person, the rather complex web of existing legislation that applies to personhood automatically takes effect.

Simpler in the short run, but creates tech debt I think.

We don't have to, that's just the way we chose to do it (specifically for groups of humans acting in a commercial context).

To be clear, it's not the way WE chose to do it, it's how CORPORATIONS chose to do it, because it benefits them greatly: corporations can get all the rights that a human can get while being immune to most consequences such as imprisonment and the death penalty.

Corporations benefit from this, we humans don't.

Corporations are neither agents nor beneficiaries. They don't take decisions. (That metaphorical abstraction is sometimes useful: here, it is not.) Some people are deciding to do things this way, and are benefiting from it, and those people are humans.

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