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Unexpected things that are people

bengoldhaber.substack.com

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Re: Unexpected things that are people

#191

Post by bjt »

jmye wrote: post #187
monocularvision wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 ... ?

A restriction on government (as the First Amendment language is phrased) is not the same thing as an individual right. There are plenty of cases where a restriction is in the law, but only a very limited set of entities has standing to sue to enforce it. You could imagine such a case with regard to the First Amendment if we didn't have the corporate personhood doctrine.

Re: Unexpected things that are people

#193

Post by bjt »

rootusrootus wrote: post #46
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…

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.

> capital punishment should be on the table.

Isn't it, though? If a corporation was found guilty of murder I wouldn't be surprised for a court to order it dissolved.

Re: Unexpected things that are people

#194

Post by nzeid »

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.

But their employees collectively do. I know this is not the approach the US court system decided to humor, but there's no way around journalists' rights.

Re: Unexpected things that are people

#195

Post by shawndrost »

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.

I don't understand this POV, can you explain what I'm missing?

Usually when people say "corporations aren't people" I think they are confused about the need for an abstraction. But you acknowledged the need for an abstraction.

I don't imagine you are confused about the status quo of the legal terminology? AFAIK, the current facts are: the legal term "person" encompasses "natural person" (ie the common meaning of "person") and "legal person" (ie the common usage of "corporation"). In legalese, owning shares of legal persons is not slavery; owning shares of natural persons is; owning shares of "people" is ambiguous.

I don't imagine you are advocating for a change in legal terminology. It seems like it would be an outrageously painful find-and-replace in the largest codebase ever? And for what upside? It's like some non-programmer advocating to abandon the use of the word "master" in git, but literally a billion times worse.

Are you are just gesturing at a broader political agenda about reducing corporate power? Or something else I am not picking up on?

Re: Unexpected things that are people

#196

Post by jmye »

bjt wrote: post #191
jmye wrote: post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 ... ?

A restriction on government (as the First Amendment language is phrased) is not the same thing as an individual right. There are plenty of cases where a restriction is in the law, but only a very limited set of entities has standing to sue to enforce it. You could imagine such a case with regard to the First Amendment if we didn't have the corporate personhood doctrine.

I have no idea what that has to do with my comment or the one I responded to. The freedom of the press is guaranteed by the first amendment. The NYT doesn’t suddenly lose “rights to it” if it’s not seen as a person.

“Corporate personhood” is irrelevant, in this comment chain, and is just a way to take a swipe at an ostensibly left-leaning org in order to turn this into a team sport.

Re: Unexpected things that are people

#197

Post by foolswisdom »

shawndrost wrote: post #195
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.

I don't understand this POV, can you explain what I'm missing? Usually when people say "corporations aren't people" I think they are confused about the need for an abstraction. But you acknowledged the need for an abstraction. I don't imagine you are confused about the status quo of the legal terminology? AFAIK, the current facts are: the legal term "person" encompasses "natural person" (ie the common meaning of "per…

The argument is that the need for abstraction doesn't mean we must reuse an existing concept. We should be able to talk about corporations as entities and talk about what laws or rights should apply, without needing to call them people.

Re: Unexpected things that are people

#198

Post by FridayoLeary »

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)

>My sister is a ship

Found one.

Re: Unexpected things that are people

#199

Post by mrandish »

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,…

> while a corporation is easy to fine, it's hard to put in prison...

IANAL, but I believe in at least some scenarios, officer(s) of U.S. corporations can go to jail if they are responsible for the directing the corporation to commit certain offending actions (despite not physically doing it themselves). To be clear, I'm not just talking about personal liability for fraud, insider trading, etc they may have committed themselves.

A recent example might be when Adobe was fucking around repeatedly making it virtually impossible for users to cancel Creative Cloud subscriptions - despite having already agreed to do so. IIRC the Justice Department issued a warning if it wasn't fixed immediately, they'd prosecute the Executive Vice President responsible for the business unit. Their press release named the guy and emphasized the consequences for continued non-compliance could include that guy going to jail.

Re: Unexpected things that are people

#200

Post by FridayoLeary »

beau_g wrote: post #69

The ship example maybe wasn't the greatest, in the cases of the Ever Given and MV Aman, the crews were required to stay on the boats as custodians while dealing with these issues, in the latter case a single sailor was on the ship for 4 years, the last 2 alone and without power. Another interesting case with ships is the Trieste and several other Russian oligarch mega yachts being held in Italy. Italian law requires…

The second case was apalling. No human would inflict such a cruel punishment like a blind bureaucracy can. A similar case is an iranian who was stuck in a French airport for 18 years. Completely pointless.
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