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Unexpected things that are people

bengoldhaber.substack.com

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Re: Unexpected things that are people

#131

Post by dheera »

coliveira wrote: post #120
otterdude wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am continually baffled by the "logic" behind laws and the justice system. If corporations are people, then how can they be bought or sold considering the 13th amendment? How can money be speech, if the constitution allows congress to regulate commerce, but prohibits it from abridging speech. It just seems like in a common law system we're forced to live with half-assed arguments that corporate lawyers dreamed up wh…

A corporation is a person, not a human. Person is an abstraction used by law, but it has no direct relation to a human being.

The law has lots of weird terminology. For example they have "exhibits" that are really just some crappy figures in an appendix of someone doing something bad, and not actual exhibits that you can buy tickets to visit.

Re: Unexpected things that are people

#132

Post by tclancy »

gwbas1c wrote: post #97

> It’s more like the New Zealand parliament reified a god and gave it a multi-million dollar trust fund to get on its feet. (joke) So if the Whanganui river floods well beyond its expected banks and ruins my property, can I sue it?

For those interested in how the river came to be a person, I highly recommend Robert McFarlane's latest book, "Is a River Alive?". https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/218569826-is-a-river-ali...

Re: Unexpected things that are people

#133

Post by otterdude »

chemotaxis wrote: post #5

Wouldn't personal property in the US fall under the same criteria, in the sense that the government can sue the property itself (civil forfeiture)? But I think the boring answer here is that we sometimes need legal abstractions. If they don't exist, Microsoft is no longer a distinct entity; it's 200,000 people who for some reason talk to each other, and you can't really audit their finances, punish them collectively,…

The answer if for congress to make a legal definition of corporation, instead we get the justice system coming up with a handwavy explanation that helps out their golfing buddies.

The answer is to get rid of the common law justice system and codify laws in congress like a civil law system. That way you dont get rich people trying to buy favors or "tip" judges.

Re: Unexpected things that are people

#134

Post by thewebguyd »

arrosenberg wrote: post #87
jojomodding wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is already the case. Or rather, a corporation can not (e.g.) commit murder or theft because that usually requires some physical action. That physical action will be performed by a human, who can then be found guilty. If he was ordered to do so by (e.g.) the board, the board will be held as accessory to the crime and cam also be found guilty. The problem is just that the board can usually claim they did not know,…

If they know about malfeasance and don't stop it, they are complicit; if they don't know about it, they are grossly negligent. In either case, they should be held accountable for the crimes. Maybe in an ideal world it would not be that way, but since we are seeing corruption run amok in corporate board rooms, it's clear they need a greater incentive to police their organizations.

What we have is a severe lack of enforcement of the laws we do have.

We do have legal mechanisms to hold the individual people criminally liable for criminal offenses the corporation commits, the problem is we don't enforce it.

Boeing just got off scott free for killing 338 people. DOJ told the judge to dismiss the case.

We've also neglected to enforce our own anti-monopoly laws for far too long, and most recently when there could have been actual, real change, we let Google go with nothing more than a slap on the wrist.

The laws aren't the problem, the corrupt and paid for DoJ is the problem.

Re: Unexpected things that are people

#135

Post by saintfire »

otterdude wrote: post #118
wmeredith wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The law is very much like a programming language in that it is attempting to abstract a concept from practice, so that it is useful in many applications instead of just one. In both cases these abstractions are always flawed. In the law's case, that's why we have judges.

The problem is judges, especially in a common law system. Computers follow the machine code PERFECTLY. For the legal system judges get to embark on a jazz odyssey of bullshit. Were living in an easy to track, decades long legal conspiracy to abuse power for corporations - based on the Powell memo. https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLYoqcr7bAIs7kdyMhh-9m...

Except that natural language is imperfect, as are lawmakers, as are lawmaking processes.

Following exclusively the letter of the law, even where unambiguous, is not a win. That's effectively how people are trying to skirt the intent of a law (see: every corporation).

The letter and the spirit are both important. Judges make bad judgments, they also make good judgements. Such is life.

Re: Unexpected things that are people

#136

Post by niam »

otterdude wrote: post #104
otterley wrote: post #92

The first example about ships is inaccurate. A ship isn't treated as a person in the law; it's treated as the thing that it is. There's a specific type of jurisdiction known as "in rem" ("over the thing") that differs from the typical "in personam" ("over the person") that gives the Court the ability to dispose of property without needing jurisdiction over its owner (otherwise known as an ex parte case). These differ…

I am continually baffled by the "logic" behind laws and the justice system. If corporations are people, then how can they be bought or sold considering the 13th amendment? How can money be speech, if the constitution allows congress to regulate commerce, but prohibits it from abridging speech. It just seems like in a common law system we're forced to live with half-assed arguments that corporate lawyers dreamed up wh…

"Money is speech" is kind of a misleading interpretation because it comes with all sorts of baggage that people typically infer from a thing "being speech".

Phrased another way: the argument is that limiting one's ability to spend is practically a limitation on their speech (or their ability to reach an audience, which is an important part of speech). If some president can preclude you from buying billboards, or web servers, or soapboxes on which to stand: he has a pretty strong chokehold on your ability to disseminate a political message.

I'm not defending that argument, only saying what it is as I understand it.

Re: Unexpected things that are people

#137

Post by whatevertrevor »

jstanley wrote: post #9
robot-wrangler wrote: post #7

Thought provoking. Most people who (quite reasonably) hate corporate personhood would probably have a knee-jerk reaction that personhood for a river can/should be normalized. The thing with temples stems ultimately from fairly practical matters if they hold such treasure, but it's a magnet for strife, and actually kind of surprising that in the case-study mentioned they resisted the opportunity to justify abuse of po…

> Most people who (quite reasonably) hate corporate personhood would probably have a knee-jerk reaction that personhood for a river can/should be normalized. I would have thought that people who hate the idea of corporate personhood would also hate the idea of any other kind of non-person personhood.

I don't think the general hatred of corporate personhood stems from the logical or taxonomic absurdity of it. Rather, I sense it comes from the perceived effects of it, that in their eyes allow corporations to get away without paying their "fair share".

I think it's an instrument of convenience that has predictably resulted in a lot of legal tech-debt, which is largely inevitable because of how slow we are at adapting laws to our lived realities.

Re: Unexpected things that are people

#138

Post by dredmorbius »

franze wrote: post #93

My sister is a ship insolvency lawyer in Hamburg. Not only is each ship a company (legal person) but also quite often a single shipping transfer is its own company - owned partially by the ship and/or other entities. And when they exchange cargo at a far away port it can get complicated. Also nearly all global long distance shipping transfers have some kind of "Schwund" IANASL (i am not a shipping lawyer)

Much corporate and insurance law has deep roots, if not origins in, shipping.

Turns out that these are high-cost, high-risk ventures with a highly probabalistic profit/loss distribution, and spanning multiple borders and jurisdictions.

Re: Unexpected things that are people

#139

Post by toast0 »

gwbas1c wrote: post #97

> It’s more like the New Zealand parliament reified a god and gave it a multi-million dollar trust fund to get on its feet. (joke) So if the Whanganui river floods well beyond its expected banks and ruins my property, can I sue it?

The article quotes:

> Te Awa Tupua is a legal person and has all the rights, powers, duties, and liabilities of a legal person.

Which would seem to be yes. If the river damages your property, you should be able to seek redress through the courts.

Re: Unexpected things that are people

#140

Post by wtetzner »

otterdude wrote: post #114
NoboruWataya wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Most people who (quite reasonably) hate corporate personhood would probably have a knee-jerk reaction that personhood for a river can/should be normalized. Only if/because they are reading too much into the concept of legal personhood. A thing being a person doesn't mean the thing is equivalent to a human or that it has every right that every human has. It generally just means that the law attributes certain rights…

Its just not logical to argue, either they are or they arent. For instance, corporations can be bought or sold, but people cannot per the 13th amendment. Help me understand how these inconsistent principles are allowed in the supposedly rigorous logic of the legal system

"Person" in legalese means something specific. It's not the same as the dictionary definition.
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