4 ms·

Because they want the other benefits of the corporate form. Why should they have to choose between the benefits of the corporate structure and exercising the ri

by rayiner 5mo ago

Because they want the other benefits of the corporate form. Why should they have to choose between the benefits of the corporate structure and exercising the rights the municipality has given property owners?

ceejayoz 5mo ago
> Why should they have to choose between the benefits of the corporate structure and exercising the rights the municipality has given property owners? Why shouldn't they? They're trading one benefit for another. The individual house owners don't get all the benefits of an LLC for similar reasons.
- rayiner 5mo ago
  > They're trading one benefit for another Why? What’s the logical basis for this idea that they should have to choose between these benefits?
  - ceejayoz 5mo ago
    What's the logical basis for this idea that LLCs should have more benefits than an individual homeowner but give up nothing in return?
EnergyAmy 5mo ago
Because corporations aren't people. Full stop.
- bit-anarchist 5mo ago
  To the extent that is relevant to law and ethics, they are. Juridical people, as it goes.
  - wat10000 5mo ago
    Hold up. Law, OK, partially. But ethics? What ethical framework treats corporations as people?
    - bit-anarchist 5mo ago
      The one that backs the law, for instance. But, more broadly, corporations, specially ones ruled by shareholders/contracts, tend to have a will of their own, and "people" in ethics is more about will and desire than biology.
      - wat10000 5mo ago
        What is "the one that backs the law"? I don't buy it at all. For example, it's generally considered to be unethical to kill a person aside from limited circumstances such as self defense. Killing a person because they're no longer useful to you is Right Out in every ethical framework I've ever heard of. Are you implying that dissolving a corporation is unethical?
        bit-anarchist 5mo ago
        > What is "the one that backs the law"? Depends on each jurisdiction. You'd have to look at which frameworks informed the laws that back each corporation. On the topic of corporate dissolution, I see less as killing and more as natural death. When a corp dissolves in accordance to its norms and general ethics (or the jurisdiction it's under, at least), that's equivalent to someone naturally dying. The constituents no longer wish to participate and follow the binding rules that define the corp to dissolve it, enacting its "will", if you will (pun intended). Something akin to murder would be a "hostile take over into a dissolution" situation, where a rogue member decides to unilaterally dissolve the corp in defiance of the other members despite having no legal justification, neither in the binding norms of the corp nor in their personal rights (although that's generally implied, as, in theory, no contract can violate this). I think we can agree that the latter case would indeed be unethical, if not illegal. Also, killing people strictly because they are not useful to you is covered by a "rule by might" ethics framework. Not one I agree with, but it exists.
  - EnergyAmy 5mo ago
    They're not, and the terminology shouldn't be confused. "Juridical people" tries to sneak in priors about what "people" means. People, of course, have rights. Corporations are not people, including "juridical people". They are legal fiction with absolutely no rights. Every action they take is permission granted to them by the people.
    - bit-anarchist 5mo ago
      You have it backwards. As you acknowledged elsewhere, "juridical people" is an abstraction over a group of people. To be more precise, a collective acting towards a unified goal (with a set of norms binding them together). Even the naive perspective over this recognizes that the corporation has "rights" by being proxies of their constituents, so you are correct in saying "Every action they take is permission granted to them by the people." However, a more careful analysis recognizes that the exercised rights of a corp comes from a combination of the rights of its members, often in intermingled way (due to binding norms of the corp) that doesn't map directly into a singular individual. As such, it's common to abstract it as the "rights of the corporation". You can look at the individual rights (sometimes you have to), but that's like looking at humans by their individual cells. Certainly doable, but cumbersome most of the time. Also, I find the phrase "They are legal fiction with absolutely no rights" funny. As if rights weren't legal fiction themselves. Not that this means much either, ethics and law are about "what ought to be done", and that's - objectively - as fictional as you can get.
      - EnergyAmy 5mo ago
        You're confusing them again, which is why sneaking in priors with the term "people" is bad. "granted to them by the people" means "We The People", society, etc, not the people in control of the legal fiction. > being proxies of their constituents These proxies have no rights. People can exercise their rights as people. Or, they can create legal fictions with no rights. That legal fiction inherits no rights from the owners, which is where the analogy fails. There's no intermingling/combination/whatever to call "rights", because there's nothing. Every action that legal fiction takes is a permission granted to it by society that continues to tolerate its existence. That tolerance is finite. When that tolerance ends, so does the legal fiction's existence. Unlike with people, there are no moral quandaries with revoking the privilege of existence. Rights being inherent to people is an interesting but separate topic. We've generally agreed as a society that people have rights.

by rayiner 5mo ago

ceejayoz 5mo ago

> Why should they have to choose between the benefits of the corporate structure and exercising the rights the municipality has given property owners? Why shouldn't they? They're trading one benefit for another. The individual house owners don't get all the benefits of an LLC for similar reasons.

rayiner 5mo ago
> They're trading one benefit for another Why? What’s the logical basis for this idea that they should have to choose between these benefits?
- ceejayoz 5mo ago
  What's the logical basis for this idea that LLCs should have more benefits than an individual homeowner but give up nothing in return?

EnergyAmy 5mo ago

Because corporations aren't people. Full stop.

bit-anarchist 5mo ago
To the extent that is relevant to law and ethics, they are. Juridical people, as it goes.
- wat10000 5mo ago
  Hold up. Law, OK, partially. But ethics? What ethical framework treats corporations as people?
  - bit-anarchist 5mo ago
    The one that backs the law, for instance. But, more broadly, corporations, specially ones ruled by shareholders/contracts, tend to have a will of their own, and "people" in ethics is more about will and desire than biology.
    - wat10000 5mo ago
      What is "the one that backs the law"? I don't buy it at all. For example, it's generally considered to be unethical to kill a person aside from limited circumstances such as self defense. Killing a person because they're no longer useful to you is Right Out in every ethical framework I've ever heard of. Are you implying that dissolving a corporation is unethical?
      - bit-anarchist 5mo ago
        > What is "the one that backs the law"? Depends on each jurisdiction. You'd have to look at which frameworks informed the laws that back each corporation. On the topic of corporate dissolution, I see less as killing and more as natural death. When a corp dissolves in accordance to its norms and general ethics (or the jurisdiction it's under, at least), that's equivalent to someone naturally dying. The constituents no longer wish to participate and follow the binding rules that define the corp to dissolve it, enacting its "will", if you will (pun intended). Something akin to murder would be a "hostile take over into a dissolution" situation, where a rogue member decides to unilaterally dissolve the corp in defiance of the other members despite having no legal justification, neither in the binding norms of the corp nor in their personal rights (although that's generally implied, as, in theory, no contract can violate this). I think we can agree that the latter case would indeed be unethical, if not illegal. Also, killing people strictly because they are not useful to you is covered by a "rule by might" ethics framework. Not one I agree with, but it exists.
- EnergyAmy 5mo ago
  They're not, and the terminology shouldn't be confused. "Juridical people" tries to sneak in priors about what "people" means. People, of course, have rights. Corporations are not people, including "juridical people". They are legal fiction with absolutely no rights. Every action they take is permission granted to them by the people.
  - bit-anarchist 5mo ago
    You have it backwards. As you acknowledged elsewhere, "juridical people" is an abstraction over a group of people. To be more precise, a collective acting towards a unified goal (with a set of norms binding them together). Even the naive perspective over this recognizes that the corporation has "rights" by being proxies of their constituents, so you are correct in saying "Every action they take is permission granted to them by the people." However, a more careful analysis recognizes that the exercised rights of a corp comes from a combination of the rights of its members, often in intermingled way (due to binding norms of the corp) that doesn't map directly into a singular individual. As such, it's common to abstract it as the "rights of the corporation". You can look at the individual rights (sometimes you have to), but that's like looking at humans by their individual cells. Certainly doable, but cumbersome most of the time. Also, I find the phrase "They are legal fiction with absolutely no rights" funny. As if rights weren't legal fiction themselves. Not that this means much either, ethics and law are about "what ought to be done", and that's - objectively - as fictional as you can get.
    - EnergyAmy 5mo ago
      You're confusing them again, which is why sneaking in priors with the term "people" is bad. "granted to them by the people" means "We The People", society, etc, not the people in control of the legal fiction. > being proxies of their constituents These proxies have no rights. People can exercise their rights as people. Or, they can create legal fictions with no rights. That legal fiction inherits no rights from the owners, which is where the analogy fails. There's no intermingling/combination/whatever to call "rights", because there's nothing. Every action that legal fiction takes is a permission granted to it by society that continues to tolerate its existence. That tolerance is finite. When that tolerance ends, so does the legal fiction's existence. Unlike with people, there are no moral quandaries with revoking the privilege of existence. Rights being inherent to people is an interesting but separate topic. We've generally agreed as a society that people have rights.