I rather enjoyed this, although I had assumed from the title that it was going to be "things" like the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority that at one time was Jon Postel (a person). Any other examples of that ilk...?
Unexpected things that are people
171–180 of 312 posts
Re: Unexpected things that are people
#172People were really upset that "corporations are people" around 2011, but it seems to have died down, as it should. Corporate personhood mostly just means that for some purposes, the same laws apply to corporations as to people. You can think of it as code reuse. There is also the argument that corporations are groups of people. A way for people to organize activities under a system of laws. Which is mostly true.
> Corporate personhood mostly just means that for some purposes, the same laws apply to corporations as to people.
No, it also means that corporations are protected in ways that were only ever meant to apply to people. Think of it as a failure of separating concerns - one function doing too many things. Every time we pass a law that's intended to apply to people, we have to think of corporations.
Re: Unexpected things that are people
#173Great article but disappointed that the monkey with the camera did not make an appearance.
Re: Unexpected things that are people
#174People were really upset that "corporations are people" around 2011, but it seems to have died down, as it should. Corporate personhood mostly just means that for some purposes, the same laws apply to corporations as to people. You can think of it as code reuse. There is also the argument that corporations are groups of people. A way for people to organize activities under a system of laws. Which is mostly true.
> Corporate personhood mostly just means that for some purposes, the same laws apply to corporations as to people.
In my experience, almost no-one is truly upset about the "corporations are people" idea in isolation. The upset stems from the combination of "corporations are people", "people have a right to free speech", and "political donations are speech", which in effect meant "corporations can make unlimited political donations". If there was a system that categorized political donations as a form of speech that could be limited, 95% of the issue would go away.
Re: Unexpected things that are people
#175It's pretty tangential, but > It’s not clear to me how a specific next friend is established - what if the god has a lot of friends? reminded me of Pratchett's Small Gods. If you needed a random book recommendation, this is it.
GNU Terry Pratchett.
Re: Unexpected things that are people
#176I'm smiling already. Excellent read. This writer has SKILLS!
Re: Unexpected things that are people
#177Earlier quoted context omitted.
> If corporations are people, then how can they be bought or sold considering the 13th amendment? Sports players are people, but their service is bought and sold by teams. Is that slavery, too?
Slaves generally don't get to choose not to participate. Sports players are as much wage slaves as Hollywood actors or Walmart greeters, albeit with much shorter runways to comfortable lifestyles.
My argument is created to test the original "corporations are people" legality in common law.
- slavery, the owning of people, is prohibited by the 13th amendment. - the law of the land is that corporations are a type of legal person based on the famous ruling based on the 14th amendment - corporations are bought and sold, and owned by shareholders. Can they be people if this is so?
obviously there is a problem here with all of the contradictions involved, but thats the point of my argument. The legal system picks and chooses the desired outcome, and doesn't actually pay attention to the words involved.
Re: Unexpected things that are people
#178The title of this blog post is deliberately provocative. If it was titled "Unexpected things that have legal personhood" it would be much less catchy. No one is actually arguing these things are human beings. > https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legal_person
Correct.
Re: Unexpected things that are people
#179Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
I would like to see the law defining that!
Re: Unexpected things that are people
#180Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
I dont think youd get less rich-people-friendly decisions from ccongress. It may well be the opposite. Certainly it removes some of the separation of powers.
No but i think you get more accountability and visibility. Right now we could never do this but in a functioning democracy I think it would be prudent.
In civil law when there is no clear precedent congress gets involved preventing the kind of critisisms we get in our legal system of activist judges ect.