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plight: "a dangerous, difficult, or otherwise unfortunate situation." Pretty sure a business can have plight.
by smabie 6y ago
plight: "a dangerous, difficult, or otherwise unfortunate situation."
Pretty sure a business can have plight.
- maybelsyrup 6y agoIt was hyperbolic, yes, but only a little, I think. The point I was making is that we've drunk a lot of koolaid about corporations being legal persons, as having rights, etc., such that no one bats an eye at anthropomorphisms like "the suffering of a company". My claim is that a) those words in that context are anthropomorphisms, metaphors, and b) that I don't think we've had much of a conversation about the koolaid I'm alluding to. (Outside of wealthy educated elites like ourselves, I mean.)
- zepto 6y agoNobody talks about “the suffering of a company” - that’s a made up example. People do say things like ‘the company suffered losses’, but isn’t anthropomorphising.
- smabie 6y agoA company is just a group of people right? Like people talk about the plight of the Syrian people or whatever. What's the difference?
- ForHackernews 6y agoMaybe we're getting a little philosophical here, but I don't believe inanimate entities can experience "difficulty" or "misfortune". Would you say that a rock suffers "misfortune" if it topples off a cliff into the sea? Is it "difficult" for a glacier to maintain its integrity in the face of global warming? Is my car unfortunate to have been scratched in a parking lot? (OK, I do believe that last one, but I'm anthropomorphising my car to talk about my own human misfortune)
- hervature 6y agoDefinitely philosophical. If we can use statements like “a business had a bad quarter” and “a business had a good quarter” and understand that these mean that the financial statements were negative/positive. It isn’t a stretch to say something like “a business has had 10 straight bad quarters” is a plight considering a business can cease to exist.
- FFRefresh 6y agoIs a group of people an inanimate entity to you? Are there only certain types of groups of people that you think are an animate entity?
- ForHackernews 6y agoIf you want to get really pedantic about it, a company is not a "group of people": a company is a particular legal structure for organising a profit-making enterprise. So yes, it is an inanimate entity. When we say things like "that Lions football team suffered a crushing defeat", we're engaging in metonymy -- referring to the suffering of the members of the team but speaking metaphorically about "the team".
- FFRefresh 6y agoWe'll have to agree to disagree here. I don't think whatever arbitrary legal structure there is around a group of people somehow makes the organization not human. For example, I think it's perfectly normalized to say "that Detroit Lions team suffered a crushing defeat", even though the Detroit Lions are a profit-making enterprise.
- 8note 6y agoI'll go with, there is a group of people involved with a corporation, but it's largely decoupled from the corporation itself. The group of people are the labourers being exploited, and they're separate from the group of owners that the corporation represents.
- pupdogg 6y agoGood point, I can think of 1 right away: Toys-R-Us. Miss having them around!