The tree that owns itself: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tree_That_Owns_Itself
There’s also the tree that got arrested - https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2016/09/03...
Unexpected things that are people
71–80 of 312 posts
Re: Unexpected things that are people
#72Earlier quoted context omitted.
In the US, a corporation needs a business bank account, and that account must be registered to one or more corporate officers with legal identification.
You absolutely do not need a bank account for an LLC. It makes accounting easier, but it's not a requirement.
Can confirm, having started multiple LLCs and S-Corps.
You get the corporate entity first, and this is required to get the bank account.
So, if the bank account was required to get the corporate entity formed, none would ever be formed, as the bank acct and the corporate authorization would forever be waiting for the other prerequisite to be complete.
And no, AFAICT, there is no hard requirement for a bank account to maintain a corporation, although in practice it would make doing almost everything quite inconvenient.
Re: Unexpected things that are people
#73I recommend reading the book 'For Profit' for deeper knowledge on this topic - the book covers the origin of corporations and the ideas lying behind legal personhood. It sounds like a dry read but it is surprisingly well written and as much about history as about law. https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/60568507-for-profit Criminal and Civil liability are the two topics to focus on - you will find that non-human enti…
>Also worth noting that Common Law tends to be the primary mode of law globally, even in counties that are nominally Code Napoleon (aka Civil Law) countries.
Why do you say this?
Re: Unexpected things that are people
#74Wouldn'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,…
> This obviously has negative externalities, because while a corporation is easy to fine, it's hard to put in prison... but trying to approach it differently would be about as fun as modeling a CPU as a bunch of transistors. There's nothing stopping the legislature (other than their own self-interest) from passing a law that executives and board members are criminally liable for the malfeasance of their entity. We al…
It's always possible to think up new rules that solve social issues. The challenge is seeing how such rules would ever robustly come into place. In your example, medical lab directors have no lobbying power and less dramatically profitable upside to their activities.
Re: Unexpected things that are people
#75Earlier quoted context omitted.
> This obviously has negative externalities, because while a corporation is easy to fine, it's hard to put in prison... but trying to approach it differently would be about as fun as modeling a CPU as a bunch of transistors. There's nothing stopping the legislature (other than their own self-interest) from passing a law that executives and board members are criminally liable for the malfeasance of their entity. We al…
It's always possible to think up new rules that solve social issues. The challenge is seeing how such rules would ever robustly come into place. In your example, medical lab directors have no lobbying power and less dramatically profitable upside to their activities.
That's exactly my point. It's not hard to figure out how to "put a corporation into prison", the issue is that we've been trained to accept corruption as a normal facet of corporate personhood.
Re: Unexpected things that are people
#76Thought 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.
You can dream up rules. But what environment would ever lead to this being enacted? Politicians don't seek virtue and fairness. You must address why such a rule has not been moved forward, and in fact why we have gone in the opposite direction. What would effectively motivate adopting your rule?
Re: Unexpected things that are people
#77Earlier quoted context omitted.
In the US, a corporation needs a business bank account, and that account must be registered to one or more corporate officers with legal identification.
Sure, you need humans for a corporate structure to exist. But nothing prevents meat proxies from occupying the vital positions. Find a few sufficiently loyal humans, have them bring the corporate structure up. Arrange for good wages and proper incentives, set up checks and balances so that the system can tolerate and recover from meatbag failures. Make the corporation fully reliant on the AGI for normal functioning,…
That’s basically just the benefits of limited liability, that has nothing to do with AI personhood. And you’re basically just describing the formation of a legal entity, the reference to AGI could just as easily be replaced with “talented founder” or “dual class shares” or “poison pill” or something.
In any event, the law tends to be responsive about establishing doctrines for extending liability to individuals involved, like piercing the corporate veil, principles of partnership, or a statutory regime (like CERCLA).
Re: Unexpected things that are people
#78Wouldn'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,…
> This obviously has negative externalities, because while a corporation is easy to fine, it's hard to put in prison... but trying to approach it differently would be about as fun as modeling a CPU as a bunch of transistors. There's nothing stopping the legislature (other than their own self-interest) from passing a law that executives and board members are criminally liable for the malfeasance of their entity. We al…
This is already the case. Or rather, a corporation can not (e.g.) commit murder or theft because that usually requires some physical action. That physical action will be performed by a human, who can then be found guilty. If he was ordered to do so by (e.g.) the board, the board will be held as accessory to the crime and cam also be found guilty.
The problem is just that the board can usually claim they did not know, and that they have deep pockets to afford good attorneys. To get around the first thing, you have strict liability laws.
Strict liability laws, though, are how you end up with the situation where barkeepers are criminally liable for selling alcohol to underage people, even if they could not have known the buyer was underage (and that's about the only instance of strict liability in criminal law). I personally find this very unjust and would rather that strict liability was not part of criminal law.
Re: Unexpected things that are people
#79I recommend reading the book 'For Profit' for deeper knowledge on this topic - the book covers the origin of corporations and the ideas lying behind legal personhood. It sounds like a dry read but it is surprisingly well written and as much about history as about law. https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/60568507-for-profit Criminal and Civil liability are the two topics to focus on - you will find that non-human enti…
Amusingly enough, corporate personhood is one relatively straightforward pathway for a capable AGI to attain legal personhood. No novel legislation required. Just some legal grey areas and a whole lot of scheming.
What if it tries to DoS the Delaware corporate registry via a rapidly-evolving network of shell corporations?
(Ref: http://www.accelerando.org/fiction/accelerando/accelerando.h...)
Re: Unexpected things that are people
#80> Te Awa Tupua is a legal person and has all the rights, powers, duties, and liabilities of a legal person.
Does that mean I can sue it for flooding my property?