4 ms·

Corporations are literally the something-extra over a "group of actors working together".

jariel 6y ago
I should have added 'with a charter' - and then, corporations are literally just that - formalised groups working together with some ostensibly stated purpose. The legal enfranchisement of such organisations is something contextual to the establishment of broader legal frameworks, which happened later in civilisation (i.e. Modern Era), but even then, one could apply the same ideal to Noble Houses, which derived their 'charters' from various agreements with the Sovereign. Like for example in the Magna Carta. These 'more fine grained legal articulations' of groups did not change the nature of what such groups were, they just put some boundaries around them. Merchants were merchants before they were codified as 'Corporations'. If anything, the modern notion of 'Corporation' actually does not derive very well from such organisations at all! Corporations with 'shares' are a neat legal construct to allow several businessmen to invest in something like a voyage from Venice to somewhere in Asia, whereby the surpluses will be divided upon return, and the corporation would cease to exist. Which is where we derive the term ''Executive Officers' -> of ships! The 'economic entities' that produced large warships in Antiquity for example, are in every practical sense - corporations - and certainly for Charlie's purposes of comparison to AI, it's exactly the same thing. There was no aspect to Charlie's 'formalised, legal' definition of a corporation which had anything to do with his AI comparison. He focused entirely on the organisational aspects, which predate the legal definition of corporations.
- choward 6y ago
  > formalised groups working together with some ostensibly stated purpose Increasing shareholder value. There is no other goal that any corporation has unless corruption is involved.
  - drdeca 6y ago
    Aren’t “public benefit” corporations a thing? Where they have both the goal of profit and also some other goal(s) set out in their charter or whatever?
pdonis 6y ago
No, they aren't. Corporations don't magically do things that the group of actors working together don't do.
- dodobirdlord 6y ago
  They literally do. Plenty of legal and regulatory constructs apply only to corporations. Limited liability is a thing that is available by forming a corporation, as is carrying out an SEC filing and selling stock. A corporation can also survive, as a legal construct, the deaths of all founding members.
  - pdonis 6y ago
    > They literally do. None of the things you describe make corporations magically able to do things without the group of people that make up the corporation doing things.
    - benlivengood 6y ago
      Limited liability allows companies to take risks that no sane individual or group of individuals would take on their own. Limited liability is precisely the factor that lets corporations act as agents instead of extensions of individual or group human goals.
      - pdonis 6y ago
        > Limited liability allows companies to take risks that no sane individual or group of individuals would take on their own. No, limited liability allows people to use corporations as a tool, which includes misusing them to take risks that should not be taken. > Limited liability is precisely the factor that lets corporations act as agents instead of extensions of individual or group human goals. No, limited liability is the factor that lets people use corporations to further goals that benefit them, including goals that are harmful to society as a whole. It's still people doing things, not corporations as magical agents independent of people. Thinking of a corporation as doing nefarious things as a separate agent from the people running it just distracts attention from the actual problem, which is people who want to do nefarious things misusing whatever tool they can.

I should have added 'with a charter' - and then, corporations are literally just that - formalised groups working together with some ostensibly stated purpose. The legal enfranchisement of such organisations is something contextual to the establishment of broader legal frameworks, which happened later in civilisation (i.e. Modern Era), but even then, one could apply the same ideal to Noble Houses, which derived their 'charters' from various agreements with the Sovereign. Like for example in the Magna Carta. These 'more fine grained legal articulations' of groups did not change the nature of what such groups were, they just put some boundaries around them. Merchants were merchants before they were codified as 'Corporations'. If anything, the modern notion of 'Corporation' actually does not derive very well from such organisations at all! Corporations with 'shares' are a neat legal construct to allow several businessmen to invest in something like a voyage from Venice to somewhere in Asia, whereby the surpluses will be divided upon return, and the corporation would cease to exist. Which is where we derive the term ''Executive Officers' -> of ships! The 'economic entities' that produced large warships in Antiquity for example, are in every practical sense - corporations - and certainly for Charlie's purposes of comparison to AI, it's exactly the same thing. There was no aspect to Charlie's 'formalised, legal' definition of a corporation which had anything to do with his AI comparison. He focused entirely on the organisational aspects, which predate the legal definition of corporations.

choward 6y ago
> formalised groups working together with some ostensibly stated purpose Increasing shareholder value. There is no other goal that any corporation has unless corruption is involved.
- drdeca 6y ago
  Aren’t “public benefit” corporations a thing? Where they have both the goal of profit and also some other goal(s) set out in their charter or whatever?

pdonis 6y ago

No, they aren't. Corporations don't magically do things that the group of actors working together don't do.

dodobirdlord 6y ago
They literally do. Plenty of legal and regulatory constructs apply only to corporations. Limited liability is a thing that is available by forming a corporation, as is carrying out an SEC filing and selling stock. A corporation can also survive, as a legal construct, the deaths of all founding members.
- pdonis 6y ago
  > They literally do. None of the things you describe make corporations magically able to do things without the group of people that make up the corporation doing things.
  - benlivengood 6y ago
    Limited liability allows companies to take risks that no sane individual or group of individuals would take on their own. Limited liability is precisely the factor that lets corporations act as agents instead of extensions of individual or group human goals.
    - pdonis 6y ago
      > Limited liability allows companies to take risks that no sane individual or group of individuals would take on their own. No, limited liability allows people to use corporations as a tool, which includes misusing them to take risks that should not be taken. > Limited liability is precisely the factor that lets corporations act as agents instead of extensions of individual or group human goals. No, limited liability is the factor that lets people use corporations to further goals that benefit them, including goals that are harmful to society as a whole. It's still people doing things, not corporations as magical agents independent of people. Thinking of a corporation as doing nefarious things as a separate agent from the people running it just distracts attention from the actual problem, which is people who want to do nefarious things misusing whatever tool they can.