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Amazon argues that national labor board is unconstitutional
- skissane 3y agoYesterday's discussion of same topic: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39398448 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39398448
- voidfunc 3y agoI don't quite understand Amazon's argument, isn't the NLRB operating on the delegated authority of Congress? Congress has the ability to create bodies to regulate things and basically delegate its lawmaking power to them. It seems Amazon is arguing that Congress doesn't actually have that authority?
- gjsman-1000 3y agoThere are powers that Congress does not have the power to designate. For example, Congress cannot create a branch of government that can simply declare people to be guilty of crimes at-will without a fair trial. But if corporations are people… and a fine isn’t that distinguishable from a crime… (Edit: For the down voters, I don’t get it. This is an actual legal case and argument the SCOTUS is hearing, right now, called Securities and Exchange Commission v. Jarkesy. This doesn’t mean I agree with it.)
- voidfunc 3y agoHmm okay, I guess I can sort of see how you might construct an argument here. I guess Amazon is hoping a conservative judiciary agrees.
- cycomanic 3y agoSo can government create a branch that decides it can exempt people from liability? Isn't incorporation also regulated by a branch of the government. And I would argue bestowing limited liability on corporations is taking away a right from others (to recover damages). Is the consequence of this argument not that we need to go back to that Congress needs to decide on every incorporation and put it into law?
- gjsman-1000 3y agoI’m not a lawyer and I don’t know - however, most commentators do agree that Congress would likely be forced to do a lot of boring work soon. Also see Consumer Financial Protection Bureau v. Community Financial Services Association of America, Limited, another case with potential to massively injure administrative offices by possibly overturning the Chevron decision. It also, well, threatens the CFPB’s existence.
- phpisthebest 3y agoThis would imply that congress has unlimited authorirty to regulate anything it chooses, that would be a complete inversion of constitutional purposes which is to limit the power of congress to just a few things. now over the centuries bad judges making terrible rulings (see Wickard) , and a few poor amendments (17th being one of them) have allowed the federal government to expand well beyond its original limited powers. Thankfully and mercifully the current Supreme Court seems very willing to put the federal government back into its proper constitutional box... Amazon I am sure is looking to leverage that... As outside the terrible expansion of the Commerce Clause in Wickard does the federal government have any authority to regulate employment in any state... No where other than a massive liberal reading of the commerce clause is that power found in Article 1 Section 8 from which all congressional and federal authority is derived.
- voakbasda 3y agoThe Wickard ruling is by far one of the most far reaching bad decisions ever made. The mental gymnastics required to justify it are inexcusable, as it boldly spits in the face of the 10th Amendment.
- Spivak 3y agoI think it's horribly bad application of law but a good ruling in practice. The federal government is the last desk in situations where coordinated action between or restrictions on states is needed to avoid bad outcomes and prisoner's dilemmas for everyone. If the federal government had only one power I think it should be that. I wish they would apply it to ban the sweetheart deals states give companies so that we can end the race to the bottom where states have to suck ceos off to get them to set up shop.
- AnthonyMouse 3y ago> The federal government is the last desk in situations where coordinated action between or restrictions on states is needed to avoid bad outcomes and prisoner's dilemmas for everyone. That kind of regulation is the core of the central planning fallacy. If people know how much demand for wheat there would be next year or what crop yields would be then farmers would know how much to plant before it would become unprofitable and you wouldn't need anyone to order them to. If that information isn't available then it isn't available to the government either and they're not going to make any better a decision, and in most cases it will be worse because they'll have less information than the people actually doing it or less reason not to be careless or hidebound because it's not their livelihood on the line. The purpose of the interstate commerce clause is that sometimes the victims of a misdeed are in a different state than the perpetrators and then the victims have to be able to go somewhere for redress that has jurisdiction over the perpetrators. But that only applies when the commerce is actually inter-state. > I wish they would apply it to ban the sweetheart deals states give companies so that we can end the race to the bottom where states have to suck ceos off to get them to set up shop. The sweetheart deals aren't a race to the bottom, they're corruption. If the state wanted to attract business generally then it would create a generally favorable environment with low administrative overhead or quality infrastructure etc., not create weird exceptions for one specific corporation. Those one-company deals never actually work out because their true purpose is to steal from the taxpayer.
- coolhand2120 3y ago> Congress has the ability to create bodies to regulate things and basically delegate its lawmaking power to them. It doesn't. https://constitution.congress.gov/browse/essay/artI-S1-4-1/ALDE_00001315/ https://constitution.congress.gov/browse/essay/artI-S1-4-1/A... Article I, Section 1: All legislative Powers herein granted shall be vested in a Congress of the United States, which shall consist of a Senate and House of Representatives. By vesting Congress with [a]ll legislative Powers, the Supreme Court has viewed the Legislative Vesting Clause as limiting the authority Congress can delegate to other branches of government or private entities. In general, the Court has held that the legislative power of Congress cannot be delegated.1 In 1935, Chief Justice Charles Evans Hughes, on behalf of the Court, declared that Congress is not permitted to abdicate or to transfer to others the essential legislative functions with which it is thus vested.2 This principle is the basis of the nondelegation doctrine that serves as an important, though seldom used, limit on who may exercise legislative power and the extent to which legislative power may be delegated. In its 2022 decision in West Virginia v. Environmental Protection Agency, the Supreme Court provided further clarity on the nondelegation doctrine, emphasizing that a decision of magnitude and consequence rests with Congress itself, or an agency acting pursuant to a clear delegation from that representative body.3
- brvsft 3y agoI support this step in destroying Federal bureaucracy. Hoping these cases go somewhere.
- forgetfreeman 3y agoIf unfettered free markets and a society unburdened by the constraints of government oversight are what you crave why not book a one way ticket to Somalia...
- endo_bunker 3y agoSurely you're creative enough to imagine a system of government less imposing than an unaccountable executive bureaucracy but more functional than gangs of warlords.
- DiscourseFan 3y agoWell, those warlords are getting paid by someone, and its not profitable to use warlords to extract resources and labor from a country with a functional government.
- forgetfreeman 3y agoTruly, but my worldview is not so childlike to assume such systems scale.
- cscurmudgeon 3y agoWhat is wrong with Somalia and how is that causally due to less government oversight?
- AnthonyMouse 3y agoIn particular, is it caused by a constitutional form of government that requires lawmaking authority to rest in elected rather than unelected officials?
- NegativeK 3y ago
- jmull 3y agoIt probably is these days. A while ago we passed into a dystopia where the constitution protects corporations from the imposition of the interests of the citizens.
- ncr100 3y agoDoes this mean that we the People of the USA cannot overcome lobbying of the Corporate world, and no longer make changes to our Constitution to allow such regulation of business?
- AnthonyMouse 3y agoYou don't need to change the constitution, all you'd have to do is pass the rules you want through Congress instead of having them created by an unelected administrative agency.
- eli 3y agoSCOTUS strikes them down anyway if they don’t like them. And we all know Congress is broken. It cannot possibly make the decisions currently delegated to agencies.
- rpmisms 3y agoIf Roe was an actual law, it wouldn't have been overturned. The current Supreme Court is simply remedying years of lazy legislating from executive agencies and the bench, instead of making laws the way we're supposed to. Everyone should support this.
- vkou 3y ago> If Roe was an actual law, it wouldn't have been overturned It would have been overturned at any point that the reps had both the legislature and the executive. 2002-2006, and 2016-2018.
- oblib 3y agoMeanwhile Jeff Bezos sells another $2B in Amazon stock, brings weekly cashout total to $6B https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/markets/jeff-bezos-sells-over-4-billion-in-amazon-shares-in-past-week/ar-BB1if8Wr https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/markets/jeff-bezos-sells-ove... But the good news is Bezos will save over $600M in taxes on his stock sale thanks to Seattle-Miami move: https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/realestate/jeff-bezos-will-save-over-600m-in-taxes-on-his-stock-sale-thanks-to-seattle-miami-move/ar-BB1iaNSK https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/realestate/jeff-bezos-will-s...
- losvedir 3y agoHe'll be paying $1.7B on the sale in taxes federally. It looks like by moving from Washington State he's not paying those $0.6B to the state, though. If I'm understanding that article correctly.
- HDThoreaun 3y agoAt least he's paying taxes unlike the vast majority of tech billionaires who do buy borrow die.
- bushbaba 3y agoBorrow to die only works with zirp. With higher rates it’s cheaper to pay taxes
- HDThoreaun 3y agoAs long as equity returns are higher than interest rates buy borrow die is effective. When youre a billionaire its not an effective way to not pay taxes ever, but its still extremely effective for delaying them. You get $26 million stepped up on death completely untaxed so buy borrow dying that much always makes sense.
- semiquaver 3y ago> The attorneys also argue that NLRB proceedings deny the company a trial by a jury and violate its due-process rights under the Fifth Amendment. Is it really the case that NRLB rulings are not appealable to an article 3 court? If that’s so, the due process claim seems pretty reasonable —- why should an agency be able to just declare you in violation of the law without giving you a right to defend yourself at trial? Edit: it seems that as you’d expect, NLRB decisions are appealable to a circuit appeals court like federal district rulings are, making this claim seem pretty weak. https://www.nlrb.gov/about-nlrb/what-we-do/decide-cases https://www.nlrb.gov/about-nlrb/what-we-do/decide-cases
- cyanydeez 3y agoDue process for _corporations_. I'll accept this argument if CEO's accept the criminal liability of due process. Otherwise, stfu, you exist for the public good and don't get the treat the constitution like a prostitute.
- pclmulqdq 3y agoCorporations are just piles of contracts signed by people. Stripping due process rights from corporations is equivalent to stripping those rights from the people who signed those contracts.
- rfrey 3y agoDo the people who signed the contracts bear responsibility and consequences for the actions taken by that pile of contracts?
- pclmulqdq 3y agoThe owners of the corporation are materially damaged when the corporation gets sued or fined. That happens because that pile of contracts is essentially the steward of their money. However, the corporation itself doesn't take actions. It's just a pile of contracts. Managers take actions. I do agree that corporate managers have a weird form of liability shield for their bad actions, though. However, if you dig into why this happens, it's often because of things like plausible deniability and diffusion of responsibility, which you don't need a corporation to create (see the way the mob operates).
- DonnyV 3y agoIf corporations continue taking rights away from citizens and giving them no way to solve grievances. Then I hope corporations are ready for an all out riot and physical fight against their assets and owners. They're giving people no other choice.
- ByQuyzzy 3y ago[flagged]
- phpisthebest 3y agoI have been working for over 30 years, never once have I considered the NLRB being for me the normal worker.... never once have I ever wanted to be part of a union, and never once have I ever seen personally unions provide any benefit to workers. I have worked in and around unionized manufacturing plants my entire life, including many times during the formation of a union. In all most all cases the workers lives, pay, and conditions were WORSE post union than before...
- xboxnolifes 3y agoConsidering how many business owners I know who complain about the amount of benefits they need to give/pay to their union workers, I can only assume they are gaining something.
- laverya 3y agoDeadweight losses exist, and it is also possible for things that the union demands of the employer to cost the employer more than they provide in benefits to the worker.
- oofdoof 3y agoWhich they would win because they have the money to get themselves a well equipped army if they need to.
- ImPostingOnHN 3y ago
- arunabha 3y agoAs a meta comment, I was really surprised by the rapidity at which this story is falling off the front page. Yesterday there were three different submissions about this which reached the front page only to speedily fall beyond the third page. I'd have thought that this would appeal to a large section of the HN crowd!
- elcritch 3y agoIt’s also ripe for “flame wars”. Not that this is that. More that HN’s algorithm lowers stories where there’s nearly as many comments as there are points to avoid flame wars, or so I’ve read. Make sense.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- standardUser 3y agoWhether or not that have a legitimate case here, one has to question the wisdom of waging total war on workers. The balance of power between capital and labor in this country is already skewed massively against workers by comparable international standards. Do they really think tearing down the current pro-employer status quo will result in a new world where their power is even more unchecked? If so, I suggest they focus group some millennials.
- smitty1e 3y agoNext someone is going to read the 9A & 10A and conclude that most of the federal government is scope creep. While true, that doesn't afford much guidance for what to do regarding the last century+ of Leviathan's growth. We (and I mean literally the HN readership) need to show how we can preserve the ideals informing the U.S. Constitution (as amended) while de-centralizing and offloading the cruft that has let DC run amok these decades. Ain't gonna be easy or quick.
- whatindaheck 3y ago> The attorneys also argue that NLRB proceedings deny the company a trial by a jury and violate its due-process rights under the Fifth Amendment. Corporations aren’t people. Amazon, which has trampled competition, trying to launch an “equal rights” campaign (my personal take) is disgusting when actual individual citizens are suffering from anti-LGBTQ laws, etc.
- 1vuio0pswjnm7 3y agoThis is a fun read: https://apps.nlrb.gov/link/document.aspx/09031d4583c620a2 https://apps.nlrb.gov/link/document.aspx/09031d4583c620a2 Will the public ever get to see this documentary. https://variety.com/2024/film/news/union-filmmakers-amazon-labor-jeff-bezos-documentary-1235875691/ https://variety.com/2024/film/news/union-filmmakers-amazon-l... "Amazon describes itself as a company that "strives to be Earth's most customer-centric company, Earth's best employer and Earth's safest place to work." This doc makes it clear that their efforts are clearly not working. Do you think Amazon founder Jeff Bezos will come after this doc or have anything to say about it? Story: I don't know if he will ever find out [about it]. There will probably be a strategic response that [Amazon] will give if they do acknowledge the film." Amazon "acknowledged" it by using it as evidence against the union organisers. :) https://variety.com/2024/film/reviews/union-review-1235888521/ https://variety.com/2024/film/reviews/union-review-123588852... https://www.washingtonpost.com/entertainment/movies/2024/01/22/union-amazon-workers-documentary/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/entertainment/movies/2024/01/... https://www.yahoo.com/entertainment/amazon-anti-labor-tactics-spotlighted-235023539.html https://www.yahoo.com/entertainment/amazon-anti-labor-tactic...
- johnea 3y agoOrganized crime argues law is unconstitutional...