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Corporations can vote in some Delaware elections, judge says
- booleanbetrayal 4mo ago[dead]
- John7878781 4mo agoThis sounds completely absurd. What's stopping me from starting up a bunch of LLCs or Trusts to rig the vote?
- cwmma 4mo agoIt sounds like you it's only corporations that own property in the town that get to vote. So that's probably whats preventing you.
- ceejayoz 4mo agoWonder how long it is before there's a vote to allow the sale of inch-square lots.
- mindslight 4mo agoIANAA. It would seemed to be recorded, not registered, land. Which means I wouldn't think approval would be required in the first place (the lot isn't going to be buildable though, of course]
- deleted 4mo ago[deleted]
- NDlurker 4mo agoExactly. Same thing as offices set up to register out of state businesses.
- cwmma 4mo agobesides zoning laws, the judge fairly explicitly states that one of the reasons he thinks it's fine is because corporations aren't doing these kinds of shenanigans, so if you were to do something like that he might revise the ruling.
- SoftTalker 4mo agoI own property in a nearby town but it's an investment; I don't live there. I'm unable to vote in their local elections. I have not heard of property ownership being a qualification to vote since the 1800s.
- Hugsbox 4mo agoWhich makes sense... why should anyone get a say in the local matters of a place they don't even live in?
- SoftTalker 4mo agoI own property there, I pay property taxes there (at the highest "non-owner-occupied" rate), in my case I'm actively operating a business not (just) a passive investor. Why should I have zero say in how those taxes are spent, or other local governance? I'm not a disinterested bystander.
- shimman 4mo agoI pay sales taxes in other cities I travel in, I too should get a say in how they run their government. Money, after all, is the top virtue in a democracy; if it wasn't why did the founders ensure that slavers had equal representation?
- SoftTalker 4mo agoI would say the difference is that as a property owner I have a long-term local presence and vested interest there, I am (in theory) motivated to make thoughtful decisions about local governance, as opposed to a disinterested bystander passing through and paying local sales tax on a soft drink.
- ryandrake 4mo agoYou can't have a presence if you're not present. My parents own two properties, but they have to decide which one they are residents of, because they are not entitled to a say in how both local governments are run. If I am a long-term owner of Google stock, I still don't get a say in how Mountain View runs their city. A "vested financial interest" in an area should not be enough to give one a vote on local laws.
- SkyPuncher 4mo agoOwning property through a corporation is trivial. 3 of my nearby neighbors are owned via an LLC (rentals). * Start an LLC/C-corp for a trivial amount of money. * Purchase land, but instead of paying with it via a personal check, you need a touch of foresight so you can "capitalize" the corporation you just started. Write the check from the corporation, instead of your personal checkbook.
- cwmma 4mo agoyeah so it sounds like if you did this IN THIS TOWN and didn't also live in the town you'd get a vote. I'm not sure if you'd get a vote if you owned the land directly but for all I know you might.
- mindslight 4mo agoIANAA, but having looked into it this does very little to actually reduce the liability exposure from small businesses. The minute you do anything yourself, you start to accrue personal liability. The only way to keep the corporate veil intact is to hire other people. So it only works if you're rich enough to hire a management company to do everything (screen tenants, maintenance/inspections, supervise contractors, etc) and you manage it as a purely financial investment. Just like the anonymity aspect doesn't work out in most states unless you're willing to shell out for an attorney to be the manager. In general these laws aren't made to help little people.
- dfxm12 4mo agoA quick Google search suggests Fenwick Island has ~400 residents. The only thing stopping you would be someone else with more resources.
- tekla 4mo ago[flagged]
- nh23423fefe 4mo agoRead the opinion. > I appreciate that Plaintiff may disagree with Delaware’s policy of authorizing certain municipalities to allow voting on behalf of entity property owners. Visions of faceless large corporations or even HAL, 55 controlling a small town are frightening and the stuff of science fiction. However, Plaintiff has not demonstrated that this policy violates the principle of one person/entity/one vote.
- pessimizer 4mo agoThe answer to the question asked is not here. Accusing somebody of seeing "visions" is not an answer, it is an evasion.
- josefritzishere 4mo agoIt fundamentally violates one person/entity/one vote. Corporations are not sentient. If you let them vote, a person gets to vote twice. There's no way around that conflict. I feel like this has to collapse on appeal or the nation is doomed.
- nh23423fefe 4mo ago> a person gets to vote twice. how do they do that?
- kjkjadksj 4mo agoWhoever dictates the company vote then votes for themselves.
- Refreeze5224 4mo agoThe owner votes as themselves, and again as the corporate entity.
- ceejayoz 4mo agoNo. Per the ruling: > Where a voter is entitled to vote by virtue of being both a resident and as an owner of real property, that voter shall be entitled to only one vote; where a voter is entitled to vote by ownership of two or more parcels of real property, that voter shall be entitled to only one vote. However, that seems to get messy with multi-owner LLCs where you might give 1% of each LLC to a bunch of your buddies and have them each vote as POA for theirs.
- deleted 4mo ago[deleted]
- yieldcrv 4mo ago> Visions of faceless large corporations or even HAL controlling a small town are frightening and the stuff of science fiction The City of London and Hong Kong have half of the voting power held by corporations and City of London is older than any US state, and colony. And so are some of the guilds Universal suffrage at all, and exclusive to natural persons, is more science fiction than corporations voting
- tialaramex 4mo agoOne of the interesting patterns for suffrage has been that it doesn't matter. Before Great Reform the vast majority of British people can't vote, after it all the moderately wealthy men can now vote. So did that result in massive political change, reflecting the newly enfranchised people's preferences? Nope. Subsequent tinkering expanded suffrage slightly but again, the results were the same. Then last century they did several things in quick succession (often portrayed as "universal suffrage" but as we'll see that's just what people always call any expansion, the "universe" of one's imagination grows). First they gave all men (including poor men), and older women suffrage. This made no appreciable difference except that, having now entertained the idea that women should vote (it wasn't technically illegal before Great Reform it just didn't happen enough to matter) the women realised hey, maybe women should be politicians and that did cause some modest changes. Then they equalised voting age for men and women, so now a 21 year old can vote regardless of gender. Later in that century the UK gave almost† all 18 year olds the vote too, and again the worry was maybe a 19 year old will vote differently? Nope. More or less the same results. So, maybe giving corporations the vote changes nothing, but I'm less hopeful than I was for giving Sarah, an 18 year living with her parents on benefits the vote knowing that for some insane reason she's not actually much more likely to vote against a "Fuck Sarah, take her money away" policy than everybody else is because apparently all people are morons so giving more of them suffrage changed nothing. I think corporations are psychopaths not morons... † Although most crooks in the UK aren't magically stopped from voting, they can't vote in prison and in practice it's very hard to vote from prison even if it would be legal for you because you're held there prior to a trial or whatever. So that's not ideal. It is controversial whether specific electoral interference crimes should result in withdrawal of suffrage, as is the practice today or whether that's just petty and ultimately futile. [[ I still support universal suffrage, but because now it's everybody's fault. You're not going to get a good government, but now the terrible government is your fault too. ]]
- bitwize 4mo ago[flagged]
- rayiner 4mo ago[flagged]
- ceejayoz 4mo ago41% of Delaware voters picked Trump in 2024. Per https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:2024_United_States_Presidential_Election_in_Delaware_by_Precinct.svg https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:2024_United_States_P..., Fenwick Island itself went red (the absolute bottom-right-most spot).
- rayiner 4mo ago[flagged]
- ceejayoz 4mo agoYou asserted "Everyone in this story is a Democrat". That seems unlikely, given the town is a red precinct. No one said anything about Trump's fault, just that there are clearly people and entire regions in Delaware who vote Republican. Look how red that map is - plenty of Republicans in local government.
- mindslight 4mo agoIt's a low effort partisan comment, but "Republicans" generally represent the naked corporate agenda (bad cop) while the "Democrats" at least try to hide it and throw the People some concessions (good cop).
- rayiner 4mo agoExcept we’re talking about Delaware, which is totally controlled by Democrats who also cater to corporations.
- condis 4mo ago[dead]
- 8cvor6j844qw_d6 4mo agoSame question. So someone rich can spin up shell companies to steer elections hmm... Or several companies with the same interest in mind voted for something good for the companies, bad for individuals.
- SoftTalker 4mo agoDo you care enough about the local governance of the Town of Fenwick Island to do this?
- jauntywundrkind 4mo agoYou can register a corporation in Delaware for $109. The Town of Fenwick Island mentioned here has a population of 400. It's high noon for this matter, & about time to start repealing corporate rights. The undoing of this travesty should be a federal project. But hopefully Delaware can course correct themselves, and reverse the mega-threat to humanity they have been unleashing. At least states like Hawaii are heading in the opposite direction already, saying corporations are not people and denying them human speech rights. Potentially immortal easy to spawn companies should indeed not be granted full human rights. https://inequality.org/article/hawaii-targets-citizens-united/ https://inequality.org/article/hawaii-targets-citizens-unite...
- mindslight 4mo agoDoing this at scale might be even cheaper than that. A Delaware Series LLC is $300/year, which then lets you make an unlimited number of independent legal entities. You don't even have to file paperwork with the state to create these new entities, just your own internal bookkeeping. Although presumably you'd have to file paperwork to transfer them a tiny sliver of real estate ($$), register to vote (free), and to actually vote (free).
- chuckadams 4mo agoI have to imagine that's an OpenClaw workflow by now.
- deleted 4mo ago[deleted]
- NDlurker 4mo agoSo I buy one parcel of land and then split off ownership to each of the 400 entities I created? Crazy
- king_geedorah 4mo agoThe original complaint cites no minimum land ownership requirement and the judgement does not seem to make specific disagreement with this fact as best I can tell, so that is my understanding as well.
- bitbytebane 4mo ago[dead]
- cwmma 4mo agoIt's specifically about corporations that own property in a specific town voting. So no you can't just spin up a bunch of LLCs to rig an election, this is about the rights of absentee landlords.
- ceejayoz 4mo ago> So no you can't just spin up a bunch of LLCs to rig an election… Sure you can. You just have to sell them some land as part of it.
- davkan 4mo agoWhy become a lord in Scotland when you can become a voter in Delaware.
- SoftTalker 4mo agoLand is bought and sold in government-regulated parcels. You can't just split up an acre of land into square foot plots and sell them.
- deleted 4mo ago[deleted]
- xd1936 4mo agoSure, corporations would _never_ get into the real estate market...
- cogman10 4mo agoWhy not? Isn't it fundamentally the same idea as apartment complex tenets getting votes? Why couldn't a business sell off lockers to companies giving them voting access? Walk in Closets? Very small room apartments? What's the minimum size of real-estate needed?
- throwway120385 4mo agoExcept if I really wanted to be an awful human being, I'd just buy property, subdivide it, and then multiply my votes in the town election by the number of property units I've individually sold to my various LLCs. This is kind of a violation of the "one man one vote" ideal that is the bedrock of our society. It easily turns in to "money buys influence" which is exactly the opposite of what made the US a great country to live in. If you don't understand that and you're a US Citizen you should really retake the civics / political science classes from high school.
- DarkNova6 4mo agoCorporate representation in UNO when?
- ryeights 4mo agoThis reads like satire from a Slate commentary piece on Citizens United. I suppose we’re just waiting around until the majority of corporations in the US are formed and operated by AI agents. And then…
- black6 4mo agoIf I own property in multiple municipalities/states, then I should be able to vote in all of them on local issues.
- postflopclarity 4mo agothat's a different legal question than the one here.
- toast0 4mo agoThis case is specifically about allowing voting for non-resident property owners when the ownership is held by a corporation rather than a natural person.
- postflopclarity 4mo agocorrect. and the comment I replied to is about allowing voting for non-resident property owners when the ownership IS held by a natural person.
- toast0 4mo agoThe poster did not indicate how they hold their ownership. Many people hold their real estate indirectly; a trust is common; if I read the opiniom correctly, a majority of properties in the municipality in question are held in trust.
- yesfitz 4mo agoWhy?
- samwiseg 4mo agoAbsolutely not. If you don’t live there, then your vote shouldn’t matter as much as someone who does live there.
- Henchman21 4mo agoNice assertion. No. You should be able to vote where you live. Full stop. Nothing else. You don't get more than one vote.
- bluefirebrand 4mo agoI hope we can agree that allowing corporations to vote in any kind of political process is taking corporate personhood too far
- rayiner 4mo ago[flagged]
- soco 4mo agoThen it wouldn't be a big deal to change that charter, right? Right? Right? Of course, if the actual locals are bothered by it - not us on the internet with exactly zero dogs in that fight.
- rayiner 4mo agoThe charter in question has allowed non-resident voting since the 1950s.
- bluefirebrand 4mo agoBecause owning a corporation becomes a way for you to vote twice, once on your own behalf, once on behalf of your corporation. This seems like an obvious problem
- klaff 4mo agoI absolutely agree. They shouldn't be able to vote and they shouldn't have free speech rights. Corporations are a legal structure - a way to allow risk sharing to encourage investment that would otherwise maybe not happen if one had to risk everything in order to invest. But when we choose to allow that, and it is a choice, we should not give those entities the rights of people. It is simply absurd.
- rayiner 4mo agoI don’t understand why people have so much trouble understanding that a “corporation” is just a proxy for the humans that own and control the corporation. In this case, non-residents who own a house on the island can vote according to the charter. The charter just says that this doesn’t change because you move ownership of the house into a legal entity that some human then owns and controls. The actual grievance seems to be unrelated to the corporation itself. People just associate “corporations” with rich people, and they won’t want rich people to vote.
- tiahura 4mo agoWhen I hear people grouse about the concept corporate rights, I always ask them why they hate New York Times _Co._ v. Sullivan.
- ceejayoz 4mo agoAnd they scratch your head and say "but... that ruling applies to regular people, like NYT staff and you and me." It simply sets a high standard for proving defamation claims by public figures.
- rayiner 4mo ago“NYT” staff don’t publish the paper, the corporation does.
- ceejayoz 4mo agoIrrelevant. New York Times Co. v. Sullivan - and the First Amendment it draws upon - applies to everyone, regardless of what corporation they may or may not work for. An unemployed person is protected from defamation claims by public figures under it just fine. It does not establish any special corporate rights.
- rayiner 4mo agoSullivan absolutely establishes corporate rights. Otherwise, Trump could enact a ban on “fake news” and say it applies only to the corporation itself, not the staff. The staff can write whatever they want, but the corporation can’t use its printing presses, etc., to disseminate what the government considers fake news.
- rc-research 4mo ago> Visions of faceless large corporations or even HAL controlling a small town are frightening and the stuff of science fiction. Company towns are well-recorded history, not science fiction. Lost Hills California (home of Wonderful Pistachios) exists in the real, present, non-fictional world.
- roxolotl 4mo agoThat does not make it not frightening nor not the stuff of science fiction. We know how awful corporate towns are that’s partly why cyberpunk is what it is.
- ranger_danger 4mo agoNot always... Bentonville is actually pretty great: https://youtu.be/sIwslwoQUKY https://youtu.be/sIwslwoQUKY
- xerox13ster 4mo agoBentonville is not "pretty great". Take it from someone who lived there for decades before the current marketing push. The only things that make Bentonville "pretty great" are available in all of the surrounding cities. Rogers, Lowell, Springdale, Fayetteville, Bella Vista. ALL OF THEM are better than Bentonville in spades. Bentonville is riding on their coattails. Bentonville DOES NOT have a single national retailer other than Walmart in its city limits. Walmart makes sure of it by owning over half the land in town. The only competing grocer is an employee owned co-op that Walmart could not succeed in starving out like they did all the IGAs and local markets. It is car centric as hell, despite the meager efforts they've been making with the NWA Regional Greenway (which was started by Rogers and Fayetteville and Bentonville initially resisted). They destroyed a long standing low income community so they could widen 8th for Walmart. You might think, well they're courting mountain bikers with the greenway and the mountain biking trails, but actually try to get anywhere and live on a bike. I did. The greenway gets you around completely separated from anywhere you might want to go. You WILL have to get on city streets or ride in the grass, hoping that it's not hiding a 2ft deep ditch. If you get on city streets, you WILL be used for target practice. They might have built infrastructure, but the people haven't changed, and for 25 years I heard people joking about running down cyclists for shits and giggles. People in huge lifted trucks will turn right on red over you while you have a walk sign to cross. It has gradually developed downtown to be a little more urban, but not without major consequences. They have in the past decade destroyed innumberable small apartment complexes, triplexes and duplexes in downtown so that out of town executives and magnates can come buy megamansions on Central Ave, the literal main street through town. There can be no thriving downtown, no business to support the square and its tax base, when these mansions are eating the density that was supporting the tax base. But they added few bike paths and MTB trails, a building you can ride a bike up, and a bunch of Private Equity owned restaurants, so I guess that's worth the systemic displacement of longtime residents and the short sale of the city's future for some biking tourism dollars. OH, and that gaudy display of wealth Alice Walton built, Crystal Bridges. It's nice that they put an installation in specifically to remind the locals just how far above them they are. Crystal Bridges is the Walton's "Bezos Balls". I would have preferred that the woman spend that money at the time paving the ditches in town so people can walk around without stepping in the street. OR JUST PAY LOCAL TAXES!!!! You want retail? Dick's Sporting Goods, Target, Best Buy, Whole Foods, Marshalls, B&N, Pier 1, Staple, Lowes, Kohls, Office Depot, Petco, Ross, Northwest Arkansas Mall and The Pinnacle Hills Promenade are all in Rogers. You want a night out? Good fucking luck in Bentonville, it's a company town, people are gone in the evenings and your options for dinner suck. There are basically no entertainment options in town. There's the movie theater that serves drinks, and I think Great Day Skate Place might count if you don't mind being sober and surrounded by families with kids. Fuck you if you want a club or lounge though. Double fuck you if you can't afford to pay rent in Bentonville (don't forget Walmart has spent half a century depressing real wages in Northwest Arkansas) and have to live in Centerton, Gravette, or Highfill. All the bars and night life are in Springdale and Fayetteville. Want a fancy night out? Ruth's Chris, Theo's, Oak, Bordinos, and Atlas are all in either Rogers or Fayetteville. River Grille technically counts for you, but you have to drive like you're leaving Bentonville for Pea Ridge to get there. Wanna go hiking? Fayetteville. Wanna go golfing? Bella Vista and Rogers. Wanna see a movie that isn't the top 4 newest releases? Rogers, Springdale, Fayetteville. Wanna buy health food? Whole Foods or Cook's in Rogers. You want local history? Go to Pea Ridge National Military Park. Go to the Daisy BB gun museum in Rogers, go to the Shiloh Museum for Ozark History in Springdale. Go to the Siloam Springs museum. Go to the Clinton House in Fayetteville. The Museum of Native American History has only been there for a few years. All these other museums have been entrenched. I guess the Amazeum is cool for kids but you probably look weird if you try to go in yourself. Rogers has the water park, the aquarium, the AMP (major concert venue). Fayetteville hosts the performing arts at Walton Arts Center and the UofA Theater. Fayetteville has all the live music at small bar venues like George's Majestic Lounge. All the karaoke is on Dickson St. There is not even a bowling alley in Bentonville. Bentonville is not great. Bentonville is a shitville void smack dab in a region it refuses to participate in. Bentonville is a puppet of the Waltons and they make it no secret in the Walmart Home Office orientation, that Sam Walton wanted the city to remain small and the lack of any resources to actually live life has been by design. Only in the last 10 years have they even sort of kind of started to renege on that and start to actually build it up some, and that was only because there was major brain drain because no one wanted to live there. Whatever caused you to think Bentonville is great has been the result of a relentless marketing push.
- recursivecaveat 4mo ago> Karsnitz dismissed the lawsuit from Delaware’s Superior Court, citing “the principle of one person/entity/one vote.” What? The principle is "one person, one vote". I'd like to cite the principle of "one person, one vote, unless they're named recursivecaveat in which case 1 trillion votes" to assert my rights in the Fenwick island elections please.
- josefritzishere 4mo ago"All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others".
- tiahura 4mo agoall corporations ultimately resolve down to individuals. either the shareholders or the board.
- ceejayoz 4mo agoThe point of an limited liability company is to limit that aspect substantially.
- davidw 4mo agoHaving corporations be distinct entities whose investors have limited liability is a pretty fundamental to a lot of things. But voting? That is way too far.
- SoftTalker 4mo agoIf a corporation owns property somewhere but none of its owners actually live there, the corporation itself still obviously has an interest in local governance. It sounds like this locality has decided that property ownership qualfies the owner to a vote. Not all the investors in that corporation get to vote, rather the corporate entity, as a singular thing, gets one vote. One can imagine all kinds of abusive scenarios with shell corporations created just to get votes, but sounds like the judge thought that these imaginary scenarios were not demonstrated to be actually happening. Courts typically rule only on demonstrated harm or other actual evidence, not "what if" conjectures.
- deleted 4mo ago[deleted]
- swampthing 4mo agoTo save everyone some trouble, "some Delaware elections" refers to elections in a town that amended its charter to explicitly allow legal entities to vote.
- rayiner 4mo agoMore accurately: the town charter allows non-residents to vote if they own property on the island, even if the property is owned through a corporation.
- swampthing 4mo agoThanks!
- ProllyInfamous 4mo agoI have no problem with individual jurisdictions controlling how their domestic-chartered companies operate/speak/vote — particularly with the recent Hawai'ian example: [in attempts of] reversing Citizens United, by removing political speech from corporate entities. Bravo, Hawaii.
- cco 4mo agoThis ruling is the exact opposite of the recent proposal from Hawaii. That ruling is predicated on the state having control over corporations and how they behave. This ruling in Delaware is affirming a clear path for corporations to have control over the state (county, city etc). With this ruling, it affirms a corporations ability to form air tight rule over municipal governments and operate them as they see fit. Once a corporation manufactures a majority vote in this municipality, they can then amend any rules they see fit, install their own executive leadership and have removed any corporate control over it. In the thin sense these are both jurisdictions controlling how corporations behave, but one cedes complete control to corporations and the other vastly limits a corporation's ability to exert political control.
- ProllyInfamous 4mo ago
- MattCruikshank 4mo agoI was daydreaming about, picture if a corporation buys an entire state. Say, Wyoming or West Virginia. Gemini guesses $180 billion to $250 billion. With that investment, they'd get to control who lives in the state. So, then the corporation gets to control who the Governor is. And the two Senators, and the seat in the Congress. Forgive me if I'm wrong, but doesn't a single Senator have just a tremendous amount of power to block basically any legislation? With pocket vetoes, or silent filibusters? Granted, actually buying a Senator is probably cheaper by a few orders of magnitude.
- ceejayoz 4mo agoSenators can't veto, and filibusters require 40 other Senators to play ball. The Constitution also overrides any attempt to prevent interstate migration.
- bwestergard 4mo ago"The Constitution also overrides any attempt to prevent interstate migration." Sure, but if there is no where you can legally stay, because the sole landowner prohibits it, how do you migrate?
- ceejayoz 4mo agoSure, if we ignore how we get to "the sole landowner" scenario, which is a big hole in the thought experiment.
- dfxm12 4mo agoFWIW, you have a risk of losing your senator every 6 years, and senators don't have power in local matters. Plus, the way things are going with conservatives pushing hard for federalism, owning local matters could become more important, anyway. You might be onto something...
- kjkjadksj 4mo agoLook up Vernon CA history. It is pretty much this where there are a couple city owned residential properties, rest of city is nearly purely industrial, and tenancy of these tightly controlled to shape local election outcomes.
- Hizonner 4mo agoI think I'm just gonna repost this recent link here... https://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/fiction/accelerando/accelerando.html https://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/fiction/acceler...
- booleanbetrayal 4mo agoI don't understand how this thread went from something like #10 on the main page down to #186 in a matter of an hour, despite being more active than most of the threads it is competing with. Can someone more familiar with HN rankings explain this one to me?
- pseudalopex 4mo agoSubmissions with too many comments for their votes receive a penalty. This is to stop flame wars.
- booleanbetrayal 4mo agoI suppose that could make sense. It's still rather unfortunate, as this is a concerning development that could probably use some more awareness around it.
- mrguyorama 4mo agoThis system was designed decades ago "To stop flamewars" and not been changed or fixed or improved in any way despite a drastically changing internet and world. The purpose of a system is what it does, especially when chances to change or improve that system are ignored. Similarly, HN is for "interesting discussion" which is why "politics is banned" even though it is explicitly not because the one time we tried to literally ban politics it was self evident how stupid, unworkable, and self defeating of a policy it is, and it lead to zero "interesting discussion", but whatever hype fad is popular right now fills the entire board to capacity at all times, with nothing more than the standard talking points either way, and somehow the 37th post about "AI slop but by a different Substack account nobody has heard of before" is interesting discussion. "Too many comments for their votes", which is not made transparent to us because god forbid we understand why things happen in our community.
- rho138 4mo agoofc it’s Fenwick Island - it’s a mix of brainrot tourons and “tread on me harder daddy” closeted republicans. Source: local
- jmward01 4mo agoThe problem with companies being treated like people is that they are only afforded the -good- aspects and not the -bad- ones. This is an out for the rich to become 'more equal' by owning companies and having expanded rights that the average person doesn't. If this is really just a delegation of rights then fine. One vote, one person that is actually eligible, and not by right of them owning that company, for that vote explicitly delegates that one instance of that right. Same with campaign finance and all the other 'good parts' companies are getting without the bad parts. If these companies really are people then why aren't they actually being thrown in jail when they commit crimes? Why aren't they on death row when they kill people for money? Rights without responsibility and repercussions is tyranny since -some actual person- is now forced to feel that responsibility and the repercussions that this company pushed off.
- anthk 4mo agoMost corporations in the US are legalized mafias. Well, and in Spain and the rest of Europe, almost literally, with bribes and such. Don't ever talk about some practices from El Corte Inglés, La Liga, estate companies, construction sections and tourism and the like. Basically we don't have proper remote working "thanks" to the construction and estate lobbies. And from media/TV corpos, ahem... Mediaset and Atresmedia, there have been internal wars too. Sometimes even with death threats. And as I said, not just Spain. Germany, France, the Netherlands, even Iceland has tons of shaddy corporate stuff. Do you know what you get when corporates do what they want with no consecuences? The South of Italy. Because I'm pretty sure the North of Italy it's a gem... polished with the misery of shaddy business from the South. For sure they must be tons of money laundering down there. Ditto with some barber shops, smartphone cover/case shops, some laundries, kebabs, TONs of bars and pubs in Spain. I have more than 10 bars around me in less than 100 meters around. Think about it, all of them can't be as profitable except for a major main street where everyone hangs out. On average 1 in 10 or 20 bars in around must be selling more than spirits... If the common folk has to this to survive, just imagine what a billion based corporation could be doing. And the CEO's, welll... pure psychos and OFC with the profiles you would find around Epstein, and not just with pedophilic tendencies -which is power related, not sex-. The small CEO's will resort to cocaine and night clubs with prostitutes. The big ones... just run away from these people. Seriously.