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

Corporations can vote in some Delaware elections, judge says

news.bloomberglaw.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

221–230 of 269 posts

Re: Corporations can vote in some Delaware elections, judge says

#221

Post by anthk »

Most corporations in the US are legalized mafias. Well, and in Spain and the rest of Europe, almost literally, with bribes and such. Don't ever talk about some practices from El Corte Inglés, La Liga, estate companies, construction sections and tourism and the like. Basically we don't have proper remote working "thanks" to the construction and estate lobbies.

And from media/TV corpos, ahem... Mediaset and Atresmedia, there have been internal wars too. Sometimes even with death threats.

And as I said, not just Spain. Germany, France, the Netherlands, even Iceland has tons of shaddy corporate stuff.

Do you know what you get when corporates do what they want with no consecuences? The South of Italy. Because I'm pretty sure the North of Italy it's a gem... polished with the misery of shaddy business from the South.

For sure they must be tons of money laundering down there. Ditto with some barber shops, smartphone cover/case shops, some laundries, kebabs, TONs of bars and pubs in Spain. I have more than 10 bars around me in less than 100 meters around. Think about it, all of them can't be as profitable except for a major main street where everyone hangs out. On average 1 in 10 or 20 bars in around must be selling more than spirits...

If the common folk has to this to survive, just imagine what a billion based corporation could be doing. And the CEO's, welll... pure psychos and OFC with the profiles you would find around Epstein, and not just with pedophilic tendencies -which is power related, not sex-. The small CEO's will resort to cocaine and night clubs with prostitutes. The big ones... just run away from these people. Seriously.

Re: Corporations can vote in some Delaware elections, judge says

#222

Post by watwut »

kulahan wrote: post #219
xboxnolifes wrote: post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There’s really nothing inherently profane about the concept, it’s just often abused. The same thing can be said about any autocratic government, but the practical and documented historical issues are why they are not liked. Just as dictatorship works well when you have a good ruler who cares about the people, the issue isn't if you get a bad ruler, but when.

The same can be said about literally anything in existence, from this incredibly inane point of view. Lots of things are historically dangerous and only work well when people who don't suck is running it. Most things suck when someone shitty is running it. This is the worst argument of all time. There's really no reason, based on the very bad argument you've presented here, to assume a local, state, or federal govern…

> Lots of things are historically dangerous and only work well when people who don't suck is running it.

Authoritarian dictatorships always have people who sux on top. They are created by people who sux in the forst place and there is only a little to make them accountable.

And incentives placed on rules and their underlings ensure they will sux even when they did not originally.

Re: Corporations can vote in some Delaware elections, judge says

#223

Post by thrance »

SoftTalker wrote: post #159
ceejayoz wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> So no you can't just spin up a bunch of LLCs to rig an election… Sure you can. You just have to sell them some land as part of it.

Land is bought and sold in government-regulated parcels. You can't just split up an acre of land into square foot plots and sell them.

For now. Corporations rule the world, and there's nothing that a few bribes here and there can't fix. Hell, they've gotten the right to vote, in spite of all common sense and constitutional arguments. What makes you think they won't be able to go all the way and take over the entire democratic process?

Re: Corporations can vote in some Delaware elections, judge says

#224

Post by watwut »

BurningFrog wrote: post #158
craftkiller wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> they won’t want rich people to vote. I don't think anyone would object to a rich person casting a single vote and maybe putting a bumper sticker on their car or a sign in their yard. The issue people take with the rich and politics is the outsized influence they wield in elections. The whole "one person one vote" thing falls apart when the rich can throw millions at advertisements and millions at the "charities" ru…

This is just a disagreement with the principle of free speech. If you're only for free speech as long as it doesn't change people's minds, we have very different perspectives.

Money are not speech. Yes, I know supreme court is openly pro corruption and lawlessness when to comes to their guys. That does not mean I have to buy that sophistry too.

Re: Corporations can vote in some Delaware elections, judge says

#225

Post by ProllyInfamous »

cco wrote: post #177
ProllyInfamous wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have no problem with individual jurisdictions controlling how their domestic-chartered companies operate/speak/vote — particularly with the recent Hawai'ian example: [in attempts of] reversing Citizens United , by removing political speech from corporate entities. Bravo, Hawaii.

This ruling is the exact opposite of the recent proposal from Hawaii. That ruling is predicated on the state having control over corporations and how they behave. This ruling in Delaware is affirming a clear path for corporations to have control over the state (county, city etc). With this ruling, it affirms a corporations ability to form air tight rule over municipal governments and operate them as they see fit. Onc…

>This ruling is the exact opposite of the recent proposal from Hawaii.

Understood, but state-control of corporate charters (in both cases) is the underlying enabler.

>In the thin sense these are both jurisdictions controlling how corporations behave, but one cedes complete control to corporations and the other vastly limits a corporation's ability to exert political control.

My original claim is that states ought'a have Tenth Amendment Rights – no? – what they do with it also ought'a be up to their homerulings.

----

Personally, I support Hawaii's newfound corporate speech limitation.

Re: Corporations can vote in some Delaware elections, judge says

#226

Post by ceejayoz »

kulahan wrote: post #218
ceejayoz wrote: post #203

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So is heroin.

Oh? Which industry regularly uses this as a part of standard business for consumers? Unless... you're just pretending to be too obtuse to understand the extremely obvious implication here.

As with asbestos, it (diamorphine) has some limited legitimate uses.

https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC3953108

Re: Corporations can vote in some Delaware elections, judge says

#227

Post by wat10000 »

bit-anarchist wrote: post #210
EnergyAmy wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because corporations aren't people. Full stop.

To the extent that is relevant to law and ethics, they are. Juridical people , as it goes.

Hold up. Law, OK, partially. But ethics? What ethical framework treats corporations as people?

Re: Corporations can vote in some Delaware elections, judge says

#228

Post by happymellon »

floatrock wrote: post #190
SoftTalker wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Land is bought and sold in government-regulated parcels. You can't just split up an acre of land into square foot plots and sell them.

Lets be armchair evil for a sec... What is the smallest subplot you can split a parcel into? And are we talking literally land, or would condo ownership suffice? (After all, you typically stack a few condos on top of one parcel of land). The smallest condo is probably dictated by some pesky human habitability rules, but what class of property has the fewest minimum-square-footage zoning rules? Retail probably has egr…

I read this as basically an attempt to run around the rotton borough mitigations.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rotten_and_pocket_boroughs

Re: Corporations can vote in some Delaware elections, judge says

#229

Post by cwmma »

cogman10 wrote: post #185
SoftTalker wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Land is bought and sold in government-regulated parcels. You can't just split up an acre of land into square foot plots and sell them.

Why not? Isn't it fundamentally the same idea as apartment complex tenets getting votes? Why couldn't a business sell off lockers to companies giving them voting access? Walk in Closets? Very small room apartments? What's the minimum size of real-estate needed?

I find myself defending this shitty ruling (which I honestly think is bad, but bad for completely other reasons) the ruling basically says, since corporations are not using this to dilute the vote it's fine, which basically means in other words, if corporations where to do the shenanigans you're suggesting, the judge is open to revising the ruling.

Re: Corporations can vote in some Delaware elections, judge says

#230

Post by cwmma »

ceejayoz wrote: post #11
cwmma wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It sounds like you it's only corporations that own property in the town that get to vote. So that's probably whats preventing you.

Wonder how long it is before there's a vote to allow the sale of inch-square lots.

besides zoning laws, the judge fairly explicitly states that one of the reasons he thinks it's fine is because corporations aren't doing these kinds of shenanigans, so if you were to do something like that he might revise the ruling.
Post reply on HN