Unexpected things that are people • Hacker News Board

Re: Unexpected things that are people

#91

Post by pugworthy » Mon, Nov 10, 2025, 7:44 PM UTC

Vecr wrote: post #89

pugworthy wrote: post #86

It would be interesting if the "no cure, no pay" principle from right of salvage could be applied to medical treatment. Something like this... > The "no cure, no pay" principle is a fundamental concept in medical law where a doctor (the party assisting a human in health danger) is only entitled to a reward if the healing operation is successful in saving the person or part of person (life, limb, sight, hearing, etc.)…

All you would get is even more insurance overhead and even higher nominal prices. People who pay cover people who don't, and doctors will get insurance to pay for all their failures.

Oh yes all kinds of ethical issues as well.

Re: Unexpected things that are people

#92

Post by otterley » Mon, Nov 10, 2025, 7:46 PM UTC

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 different types of jurisdictions go back centuries, even further back than English common law from which U.S. law is derived.

This leads to amusing case names, like "United States v. 422 Casks of Wine" and "United States v. One Solid Gold Object in the Form of a Rooster".

Re: Unexpected things that are people

#93

Post by franze » Mon, Nov 10, 2025, 7:46 PM UTC

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)

Re: Unexpected things that are people

#94

Post by jandrewrogers » Mon, Nov 10, 2025, 7:46 PM UTC

pugworthy wrote: post #86

It would be interesting if the "no cure, no pay" principle from right of salvage could be applied to medical treatment. Something like this... > The "no cure, no pay" principle is a fundamental concept in medical law where a doctor (the party assisting a human in health danger) is only entitled to a reward if the healing operation is successful in saving the person or part of person (life, limb, sight, hearing, etc.)…

That sounds like a sure-fire recipe for adverse selection.

Re: Unexpected things that are people

#95

Post by robot-wrangler » Mon, Nov 10, 2025, 7:49 PM UTC

giraffe_lady wrote: post #81

kerkeslager wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Most people who (quite reasonably) hate corporate personhood would probably have a knee-jerk reaction that personhood for a river can/should be normalized. Straw man argument. I'm for regulating different things differently and as what they are: a corporation should be regulated as a corporation and a river should be regulated as a river.

update: I don't think this comment is correct, after kerkeslager's response to it. I'm leaving it intact underneath so the conversation still makes sense. People on here almost universally value logical consistency over beneficial outcomes. By the HN moral consensus a rule that can be applied to all situations without modification is a good rule. It does not much matter what outcomes that produces.

> It does not much matter what outcomes that produces.

One outcome would be a predictable and mechanistic process, which reduces the potential for corruption and creates a more fair world. The currently popular legal theory in the US is far worse than "logical consistency" would be, because it's blatantly corrupt and autocratic. See Judge Barret's position on stare decisis (basically "should we honor precedent?") combined with reliance interests (basically "can we change anything without effecting someone?").

You know how division by zero allows you to prove 1=2? There's a similar thing at work when you allow completely contradictory legal systems to just continue with business as usual. Now a few people can do whatever they want with all the appearance of rigor/consistency/process without actually having any. As Leibnitz says, "let us calculate". Or just admit there is no process, and thus no real basis for the authority

Re: Unexpected things that are people

#96

Post by wizzwizz4 » Mon, Nov 10, 2025, 7:50 PM UTC

kerkeslager wrote: post #51

NoboruWataya wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We don't have to, that's just the way we chose to do it (specifically for groups of humans acting in a commercial context).

To be clear, it's not the way WE chose to do it, it's how CORPORATIONS chose to do it, because it benefits them greatly: corporations can get all the rights that a human can get while being immune to most consequences such as imprisonment and the death penalty. Corporations benefit from this, we humans don't.

Corporations are neither agents nor beneficiaries. They don't take decisions. (That metaphorical abstraction is sometimes useful: here, it is not.) Some people are deciding to do things this way, and are benefiting from it, and those people are humans.

Re: Unexpected things that are people

#97

Post by gwbas1c » Mon, Nov 10, 2025, 7:51 PM UTC

> It’s more like the New Zealand parliament reified a god and gave it a multi-million dollar trust fund to get on its feet.

(joke)

So if the Whanganui river floods well beyond its expected banks and ruins my property, can I sue it?

Re: Unexpected things that are people

#98

Post by [deleted] » Mon, Nov 10, 2025, 7:52 PM UTC

pugworthy wrote: post #86

It would be interesting if the "no cure, no pay" principle from right of salvage could be applied to medical treatment. Something like this... > The "no cure, no pay" principle is a fundamental concept in medical law where a doctor (the party assisting a human in health danger) is only entitled to a reward if the healing operation is successful in saving the person or part of person (life, limb, sight, hearing, etc.)…

[deleted]

Re: Unexpected things that are people

#99

Post by VWWHFSfQ » Mon, Nov 10, 2025, 7:52 PM UTC

pugworthy wrote: post #86

It would be interesting if the "no cure, no pay" principle from right of salvage could be applied to medical treatment. Something like this... > The "no cure, no pay" principle is a fundamental concept in medical law where a doctor (the party assisting a human in health danger) is only entitled to a reward if the healing operation is successful in saving the person or part of person (life, limb, sight, hearing, etc.)…

It would be an interesting application of that principle, but I think it would lead to a rapid deceleration in medical research and advancement since the state of the art requires so much experimentation even at the clinical and practical level.

Research institutions and universities would dramatically reduce the amount of testing they're doing if they can't get any compensation for the shit they're throwing at the wall.

Re: Unexpected things that are people

#100

Post by throwaway173738 » Mon, Nov 10, 2025, 7:55 PM UTC

gwbas1c wrote: post #97

> It’s more like the New Zealand parliament reified a god and gave it a multi-million dollar trust fund to get on its feet. (joke) So if the Whanganui river floods well beyond its expected banks and ruins my property, can I sue it?

There’s already a concept of acts of God in contracts so probably not? Like you couldn’t sue the Christian god for hitting you with lightning or whatever.