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Corporations can vote in some Delaware elections, judge says

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

#231

Post by Gormo »

Henchman21 wrote: post #171
Gormo wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It _seems true_ when the people represented by the organizational model never face consequences for their actions, using the corporation as a liability shield. Corporations don't function as a liability shield in the sense you're talking about. The idea that people can individually engage in criminal or tortious conduct without any direct accountability is a myth -- limited liability protects investors from financi…

Excellent reply thank you! So why then does it seem that corporations do in fact shield executives from criminal charges? Is this just collusion among the well-off? Money buys verdicts? I’m happy to take your word on limited liability as IANAL (obviously) but it sure as hell seems like executives ought to go to jail a LOT more than they do. Corporations do terrible things in the world and are seemingly never held to…

> So why then does it seem that corporations do in fact shield executives from criminal charges? Is this just collusion among the well-off? Money buys verdicts?

Misinformation, propaganda, urban legends, etc.

> but it sure as hell seems like executives ought to go to jail a LOT more than they do.

Based on what? Which executives are you talking about, and what crimes do you suspect them of?

> Corporations do terrible things in the world and are seemingly never held to account.

Again, what "terrible things" are you talking about, and what level of accountability do you see lacking in the way existing police forces, regulatory agencies, and the courts respond to their behavior?

> Finally, looking to my own education, can you suggest a place to read up on this topic so I am not flatly wrong in the future?

I'd start with any basic intro-level textbook on business law.

Before you start, given the extent to which your previous comments indicate you're relying on how things feel or seem to you, I'd recommend considering the extent to which you are reading your own assumptions and emotional attachments into your perceptions of the outside world, and the extent to which you're relying on echo chambers and biased sources of information to validate your theories and assumptions.

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

#232

Post by Gormo »

underlipton wrote: post #208
Henchman21 wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Excellent reply thank you! So why then does it seem that corporations do in fact shield executives from criminal charges? Is this just collusion among the well-off? Money buys verdicts? I’m happy to take your word on limited liability as IANAL (obviously) but it sure as hell seems like executives ought to go to jail a LOT more than they do. Corporations do terrible things in the world and are seemingly never held to…

Laymen here: my guess would be that the financial and social resources corporate representatives have access to (both personally and through the entity that has a vested interest in them not going to jail) make the prospect of prosecuting them for criminal misconduct unappetizing. It would be a lot of time and money to send people with a lot of powerful friends to jail for a handful of years, at best. As a prosecutor…

Before trying to explain why you think business executives aren't being prosecuted for criminal conduct, can you first point to a reliable source of data that indicates that this is actually happening, and isn't just a myth reinforced by online echo chambers?

Anecdotally, most of the large corporate scandals that involved actual criminal conduct that I'm aware of did result in prosecutions and, often, convictions of the culpable parties. For example, Jeffrey Skilling, Bernie Madoff, and Elizabeth Holmes all went to jail.

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

#233

Post by EnergyAmy »

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.

They're not, and the terminology shouldn't be confused. "Juridical people" tries to sneak in priors about what "people" means.

People, of course, have rights. Corporations are not people, including "juridical people". They are legal fiction with absolutely no rights. Every action they take is permission granted to them by the people.

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

#234

Post by EnergyAmy »

akramachamarei wrote: post #194
Henchman21 wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nice assertion. No. You should be able to vote where you live. Full stop. Nothing else. You don't get more than one vote .

What about the notion of No Taxation without Representation? With that in mind, shouldn't you get to vote wherever you are (substantially) taxed?

Corporations don't have the right of representation, because corporations don't have rights. People have rights, and corporations are not people.

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

#235

Post by bit-anarchist »

wat10000 wrote: post #227
bit-anarchist wrote: post #210

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

The one that backs the law, for instance. But, more broadly, corporations, specially ones ruled by shareholders/contracts, tend to have a will of their own, and "people" in ethics is more about will and desire than biology.

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

#236

Post by bit-anarchist »

EnergyAmy wrote: post #233
bit-anarchist wrote: post #210

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

They're not, and the terminology shouldn't be confused. "Juridical people" tries to sneak in priors about what "people" means. People, of course, have rights. Corporations are not people, including "juridical people". They are legal fiction with absolutely no rights. Every action they take is permission granted to them by the people.

You have it backwards. As you acknowledged elsewhere, "juridical people" is an abstraction over a group of people. To be more precise, a collective acting towards a unified goal (with a set of norms binding them together).

Even the naive perspective over this recognizes that the corporation has "rights" by being proxies of their constituents, so you are correct in saying "Every action they take is permission granted to them by the people."

However, a more careful analysis recognizes that the exercised rights of a corp comes from a combination of the rights of its members, often in intermingled way (due to binding norms of the corp) that doesn't map directly into a singular individual. As such, it's common to abstract it as the "rights of the corporation". You can look at the individual rights (sometimes you have to), but that's like looking at humans by their individual cells. Certainly doable, but cumbersome most of the time.

Also, I find the phrase "They are legal fiction with absolutely no rights" funny. As if rights weren't legal fiction themselves. Not that this means much either, ethics and law are about "what ought to be done", and that's - objectively - as fictional as you can get.

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

#237

Post by underlipton »

Gormo wrote: post #232
underlipton wrote: post #208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Laymen here: my guess would be that the financial and social resources corporate representatives have access to (both personally and through the entity that has a vested interest in them not going to jail) make the prospect of prosecuting them for criminal misconduct unappetizing. It would be a lot of time and money to send people with a lot of powerful friends to jail for a handful of years, at best. As a prosecutor…

Before trying to explain why you think business executives aren't being prosecuted for criminal conduct, can you first point to a reliable source of data that indicates that this is actually happening, and isn't just a myth reinforced by online echo chambers? Anecdotally, most of the large corporate scandals that involved actual criminal conduct that I'm aware of did result in prosecutions and, often, convictions of…

2008 happened.

You could also just look for examples of officials trying to explain why they won't bring charges against banking officials.

https://financialservices.house.gov/news/documentsingle.aspx...

https://www.propublica.org/article/why-havent-bankers-been-p...

https://www.npr.org/2011/07/13/137789065/why-prosecutors-don...

I should state that this reply is mostly for other people reading our comment thread, as I can think of no adult American who would present your argument in good faith.

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

#238

Post by wat10000 »

bit-anarchist wrote: post #235
wat10000 wrote: post #227

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

The one that backs the law, for instance. But, more broadly, corporations, specially ones ruled by shareholders/contracts, tend to have a will of their own, and "people" in ethics is more about will and desire than biology.

What is "the one that backs the law"?

I don't buy it at all. For example, it's generally considered to be unethical to kill a person aside from limited circumstances such as self defense. Killing a person because they're no longer useful to you is Right Out in every ethical framework I've ever heard of. Are you implying that dissolving a corporation is unethical?

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

#239

Post by cco »

ProllyInfamous wrote: post #225
cco wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

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

Couldn't agree more!

My point is that it is the same underlying power, but one is using the power to maintain and grow powers over corps, the other using the same power to cede it.

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

#240

Post by EnergyAmy »

bit-anarchist wrote: post #236
EnergyAmy wrote: post #233

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They're not, and the terminology shouldn't be confused. "Juridical people" tries to sneak in priors about what "people" means. People, of course, have rights. Corporations are not people, including "juridical people". They are legal fiction with absolutely no rights. Every action they take is permission granted to them by the people.

You have it backwards. As you acknowledged elsewhere, "juridical people" is an abstraction over a group of people. To be more precise, a collective acting towards a unified goal (with a set of norms binding them together). Even the naive perspective over this recognizes that the corporation has "rights" by being proxies of their constituents, so you are correct in saying "Every action they take is permission granted…

You're confusing them again, which is why sneaking in priors with the term "people" is bad. "granted to them by the people" means "We The People", society, etc, not the people in control of the legal fiction.

> being proxies of their constituents

These proxies have no rights. People can exercise their rights as people. Or, they can create legal fictions with no rights. That legal fiction inherits no rights from the owners, which is where the analogy fails. There's no intermingling/combination/whatever to call "rights", because there's nothing.

Every action that legal fiction takes is a permission granted to it by society that continues to tolerate its existence. That tolerance is finite. When that tolerance ends, so does the legal fiction's existence. Unlike with people, there are no moral quandaries with revoking the privilege of existence.

Rights being inherent to people is an interesting but separate topic. We've generally agreed as a society that people have rights.

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