Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Unexpected things that are people

bengoldhaber.substack.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

181–190 of 312 posts

Re: Unexpected things that are people

#181

Post by degamad »

AlotOfReading wrote: post #63
roywiggins wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Property can't enter into contracts or own bank accounts, which is probably the big marker for traditional corporate personhood. It might be possible to sue property but property can't itself sue, so it's not the same type of thing as a corporate person, which can. You wouldn't need "in rem" jurisdiction if there was a legal person to sue, you'd just call it "in personam" like normal. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/In…

Estates do most of that without any notion of personhood. Suing an estate is in rem. When the estate sues someone else, the executor sues on its behalf. The executor can also enter the estate into new contracts and administer the bank accounts it owns, and so on. The estate can even own a corporation.

The estate "inherits" (pun intended) its abilities from the personhood of the deceased. It is in effect a legal "Weekend at Bernie's", keeping the deceased party legally alive in order to continue their interests until those interests can be appropriately disposed of.

The estate doesn't have independent interests distinct from those of the deceased. (In particular, the estate is not owned by, and does not serve, the beneficiaries.)

A corporation has independent goals and interests from any of its owners or officers.

Re: Unexpected things that are people

#182

Post by mattmaroon »

otterdude wrote: post #162
mattmaroon wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Corporations aren’t people in the literal sense which the 13th amendment uses, nobody ever said they were. They just have the ability to do some people things. They can have a bank account or sign a contract. They cannot vote or enlist or do lots of things people can do. (The technical name is ‘juridicial people’ and what they can or cannot do is spelled out in law quite well.) Money isn’t speech, and no court ever s…

I guess my larger point is that words are manipulated to get to a desired effect in the justice system. Slavery is defined as the practice of owning a "person" which the 13th amendment prohibits. As corporations are people why couldn't this apply using the same flexible level of logic our court system uses??? Its just picking winners and losers!!! Regarding "money is speech", this is the implication and argument from…

Slavery in the 13th amendment is not defined at all, and nowhere is there a legal definition of slavery that would include a non-human person.

And the latter is simply you (and others, you didn’t invent it) paraphrasing a ruling inaccurately. I paraphrased it more accurately.

So again, the only word manipulation is going on outside of the legal system and you’re arguing against straw men. The actual legal system (not the carton of it you imagine) is not nonsensical in either case.

Re: Unexpected things that are people

#183

Post by mattmaroon »

kannanvijayan wrote: post #152
mattmaroon wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Corporations aren’t people in the literal sense which the 13th amendment uses, nobody ever said they were. They just have the ability to do some people things. They can have a bank account or sign a contract. They cannot vote or enlist or do lots of things people can do. (The technical name is ‘juridicial people’ and what they can or cannot do is spelled out in law quite well.) Money isn’t speech, and no court ever s…

Unfortunately the practical effect of whatever policy that comes out of this theorycrafting has left your media landscape an absurd and abject failure. Where the idea of objective truth being open to the highest bidder and allowed to change on a week by week, or day by day basis without challenge.. is a reality Americans now live every day. If the theory is "sensible", who cares? At some point you do want to connect…

Unfortunately it isn’t that simple. The opposite of our media landscape is countries that think they have free speech but really don’t, like most of Europe.

I’ll take having all the information in the world (true or false, purposefully curated for propaganda or organically reported) over any society that locks people up for social media posts deemed “fake”.

I have faith both in the marketplace of ideas leading to the best outcomes, and that the ability to lock people up over false speech will be weaponized eventually.

The American media landscape is the only possible result of true freedom of speech combined with the internet. It’s faaaaar from perfect but I do believe it’ll be the best in the end.

Re: Unexpected things that are people

#185

Post by [deleted] »

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…

[deleted]

Re: Unexpected things that are people

#186

Post by monocularvision »

nzeid wrote: post #157
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,…

> But I think the boring answer here is that we sometimes need legal abstractions. Absolutely - the legal abstraction is that corporations are corporations, not people. The article went with a lighter hearted quip but here's my own tired old one: If corporations are people, then owning shares is unconstitutional as that would be a form of slavery.

And if corporations aren’t people, then the New York Times has no right to the First Amendment.

Re: Unexpected things that are people

#187

Post by jmye »

monocularvision wrote: post #186
nzeid wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But I think the boring answer here is that we sometimes need legal abstractions. Absolutely - the legal abstraction is that corporations are corporations, not people. The article went with a lighter hearted quip but here's my own tired old one: If corporations are people, then owning shares is unconstitutional as that would be a form of slavery.

And if corporations aren’t people, then the New York Times has no right to the First Amendment.

I'm curious what you think "Congress shall make no law [...] abridging the freedom of [...] the press" means, in this case. Did you just not know what the actual text is, or ... ?

Re: Unexpected things that are people

#188

Post by chipsrafferty »

NoboruWataya wrote: post #49
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. 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…

It's not even "a thing being a person", this is just dumbing down the situation. A boat is not a person. A boat is not a person "legally speaking", either. A boat has some of the same rights that people have.

Re: Unexpected things that are people

#189

Post by AshleyGrant »

anon291 wrote: post #148
rootusrootus wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wouldn’t have so much problem with corporate personhood if we hadn’t decided money was speech. Plus, if corporations get to be people for all the good stuff, it should require taking the bad bits too. E.g. capital punishment should be on the table.

Why isn't money speech? Like I don't like that money influences politics, but ignoring corporations completely... can anyone explain why some person should not be able to spend their money to make their point? It all boils down to you being upset that you cannot use your means to make your point, rather than any fundamental ethical argument.

Because it means that someone with more money has a Constitutional right to be louder than those with less money.

Re: Unexpected things that are people

#190

Post by [deleted] »

otterdude wrote: post #133
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.

[deleted]
Post reply on HN