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>I hope we haven't internalized the idea that corporations should be treated the same as people. Only when it comes to rights. When it comes to responsibilitie

>I hope we haven't internalized the idea that corporations should be treated the same as people. Only when it comes to rights. When it comes to responsibilities the corporations stop being people and go back to being amorphous, abstract things that are impossible to punish.

dontlaugh 1y ago
Would be nice to see executions of corporations as punishment.
- tialaramex 1y ago
  Perhaps better to achieve symmetry by ceasing to execute humans. You're never going to make executing the wrong corporation as thoroughly wicked as the numerous occasions on which we've executed the wrong human, so you can't make the scores even but you can stop putting more on the total for human misery. Historically it was impractical to permanently warehouse large number of humans, death was more practical = but the US has been doing it for all sorts of crap for decades so that's not a problem here. The US would still have much harsher punishments than Western Europe even without the death penalty, because it routinely uses life-means-life sentences where no matter what you're never seeing the outside again.
  - thfuran 1y ago
    >You're never going to make executing the wrong corporation as thoroughly wicked as the numerous occasions on which we've executed the wrong human What if we garnished 100% of the future wages of all the employees in perpetuity as well as dissolving the corporate entity? You know, to to make sure the company stays all the way dead.
    - tialaramex 1y ago
      I guess my bad for not specifying that it'd need be wicked for the corporation not the humans.
- JumpCrisscross 1y ago
  > Would be nice to see executions of corporations as punishment Fines. Massive fines. "Corporate death penalty" is a genius invention of corporate lawyers to distract from the punitive effect of massive fines. Fines and license revocable are precedented. They take real money from the corporation and its owners. Corporate death penalties are a legal morass that doesn’t actually punish shareholders, it just cancels a legal entity. If I own an LLC and have a choice between a fine and the LLC being dissolved, I’d almost always opt for the latter. But fines are boring. Corporate death penalty sounds exciting. The anti-corporate folks tend to run with it like catnip, thus dissolving the coalition for holding large companies accountable. (Which, again, a corporate "execution" doesn't do. Nullifying my LLC doesn't actually hurt me, it just creates a little bit of work for my lawyer, and frankly, getting out of a fuckup by poofing the LLC without touching the udnerlying assets is sort of the selling point of incorporation.)
  - thfuran 1y ago
    Corporate fines are a genius invention of corporate execs' personal lawyers to distract from the fact that all corporate malfeasance is conducted by actual people who could be held accountable.
    - JumpCrisscross 1y ago
      > Corporate fines are a genius invention of corporate execs' personal lawyers Ahistoric and orthogonal. Corporate fines and personal sanctions have coëxisted since corporations were a thing. Charter revocations, on the other hand, have almost always followed individual liability, because again, just poofing a corporation doesn't actually do anything to its assets, the part with actual value. (In the English world, corporations frequently came pinned with trade charters. The actual punishment was losing a trade monopoly. Not a legal fiction being dissolved.) Nothing about corporate death penalties or corporate fines prevents personal liability. And neither particularly promotes it, either, particularly if guilt is never acknowledged as part of the proceedings.
  - HWR_14 1y ago
    I'm guessing that dissolving your LLC as a punishment would include the forfeiture of all the associated assets, not distributing them to shareholders.
parineum 1y ago
> Only when it comes to rights. "Corporations are people" means a corporation is people, not a corporation is a person. People have rights, whether they are acting through a corporation or not. That's what Citizens United determined. I hope you think about who misled you to thinking that "corporations are people" meant a corporation is a person and trust them a little less.
- lblume 1y ago
  In most jurisdictions, a corporation is a juridical person[1]. When not explicitly mentioning natural persons, whether a corporation is a "person" is thus ambiguous. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Juridical_person https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Juridical_person
potato3732842 1y ago
Everyone spewing opinions in this thread so they can get their upvotes from like minded readers is missing the 800lb gorilla. It's not in the state's interest to kill profitable things most of the time except occasionally as a deterrent example. It's the same reason richer people (who pay a lot of taxes, engage in activity spawning yet more taxes, etc) tend to get probation instead of jail. Likewise, the state is happy to kill small(er) businesses. It does this all the time and it doesn't make the news. Whereas with the big ones it just takes its pound of flesh and keeps things running. As long as that incentive mostly remains, the outcomes will mostly remain.

dontlaugh 1y ago

Would be nice to see executions of corporations as punishment.

tialaramex 1y ago
Perhaps better to achieve symmetry by ceasing to execute humans. You're never going to make executing the wrong corporation as thoroughly wicked as the numerous occasions on which we've executed the wrong human, so you can't make the scores even but you can stop putting more on the total for human misery. Historically it was impractical to permanently warehouse large number of humans, death was more practical = but the US has been doing it for all sorts of crap for decades so that's not a problem here. The US would still have much harsher punishments than Western Europe even without the death penalty, because it routinely uses life-means-life sentences where no matter what you're never seeing the outside again.
- thfuran 1y ago
  >You're never going to make executing the wrong corporation as thoroughly wicked as the numerous occasions on which we've executed the wrong human What if we garnished 100% of the future wages of all the employees in perpetuity as well as dissolving the corporate entity? You know, to to make sure the company stays all the way dead.
  - tialaramex 1y ago
    I guess my bad for not specifying that it'd need be wicked for the corporation not the humans.
JumpCrisscross 1y ago
> Would be nice to see executions of corporations as punishment Fines. Massive fines. "Corporate death penalty" is a genius invention of corporate lawyers to distract from the punitive effect of massive fines. Fines and license revocable are precedented. They take real money from the corporation and its owners. Corporate death penalties are a legal morass that doesn’t actually punish shareholders, it just cancels a legal entity. If I own an LLC and have a choice between a fine and the LLC being dissolved, I’d almost always opt for the latter. But fines are boring. Corporate death penalty sounds exciting. The anti-corporate folks tend to run with it like catnip, thus dissolving the coalition for holding large companies accountable. (Which, again, a corporate "execution" doesn't do. Nullifying my LLC doesn't actually hurt me, it just creates a little bit of work for my lawyer, and frankly, getting out of a fuckup by poofing the LLC without touching the udnerlying assets is sort of the selling point of incorporation.)
- thfuran 1y ago
  Corporate fines are a genius invention of corporate execs' personal lawyers to distract from the fact that all corporate malfeasance is conducted by actual people who could be held accountable.
  - JumpCrisscross 1y ago
    > Corporate fines are a genius invention of corporate execs' personal lawyers Ahistoric and orthogonal. Corporate fines and personal sanctions have coëxisted since corporations were a thing. Charter revocations, on the other hand, have almost always followed individual liability, because again, just poofing a corporation doesn't actually do anything to its assets, the part with actual value. (In the English world, corporations frequently came pinned with trade charters. The actual punishment was losing a trade monopoly. Not a legal fiction being dissolved.) Nothing about corporate death penalties or corporate fines prevents personal liability. And neither particularly promotes it, either, particularly if guilt is never acknowledged as part of the proceedings.
- HWR_14 1y ago
  I'm guessing that dissolving your LLC as a punishment would include the forfeiture of all the associated assets, not distributing them to shareholders.

parineum 1y ago

> Only when it comes to rights. "Corporations are people" means a corporation is people, not a corporation is a person. People have rights, whether they are acting through a corporation or not. That's what Citizens United determined. I hope you think about who misled you to thinking that "corporations are people" meant a corporation is a person and trust them a little less.

lblume 1y ago
In most jurisdictions, a corporation is a juridical person[1]. When not explicitly mentioning natural persons, whether a corporation is a "person" is thus ambiguous. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Juridical_person https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Juridical_person

potato3732842 1y ago

Everyone spewing opinions in this thread so they can get their upvotes from like minded readers is missing the 800lb gorilla. It's not in the state's interest to kill profitable things most of the time except occasionally as a deterrent example. It's the same reason richer people (who pay a lot of taxes, engage in activity spawning yet more taxes, etc) tend to get probation instead of jail. Likewise, the state is happy to kill small(er) businesses. It does this all the time and it doesn't make the news. Whereas with the big ones it just takes its pound of flesh and keeps things running. As long as that incentive mostly remains, the outcomes will mostly remain.