5 ms·

>Corporations can be wholly owned by other corporations. [...] How's that an association of people? If you follow that tread long enough, you will eventually f

>Corporations can be wholly owned by other corporations. [...] How's that an association of people? If you follow that tread long enough, you will eventually find people running the show. You will not find robots, sentient trees, or rocks sitting around a board table.

Retric 12y ago
It would be fairly easy to create a bot that makes random corporations. Legally I don't think there is anything that would separate them from actual corporations. Granted, their corporate officers would presumably need to be people. But, HFT demonstrates bot's can make legally binding decisions so that might be a grey area.
- icebraining 12y ago
  Someone is still responsible for those bots.
  - Retric 12y ago
    What if the bot creator dies before the bot makes a decision. We could even go so far as to have a cosmic ray flip one or more bits in memory that causes this to be released into the wild.
    - icebraining 12y ago
      Then the sole shareholder of the company dies. I'm sure there's plenty of case law regarding this situation.
      - Retric 12y ago
        Sure, but shareholders are rarely responsible for a companies actions: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Piercing_the_corporate_veil http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Piercing_the_corporate_veil Anyway, my point is if bot's can create and run companies then at some point they could gain the use of corporate personhood.
deleted 12y ago
[deleted]
jacquesm 12y ago
Hm... now you have me wondering if I could slip a circular chain of ownership past the chambers of commerce here. I'm pretty sure you could bootstrap this: Person 'X' incorporates company 'A' and receives the shares. Company 'A' incorporates company 'B'. Company 'B' makes some money. Company 'B' buys the shares of company 'A' from person 'X'. Presto, no more people involved, just two companies owning each other. It might even be possible to have company 'A' buy the shares of company 'A' directly of the person that incorporated it, so it would own itself. You'd have to fiddle with the valuation during the transaction because you're using the company capital to do the purchase, essentially ending with a valuation (temporarily) of zero when the transaction has completed after which the company would have to create some more income to become liquid again. Tricky. Very much tempted to try this.
- Retric 12y ago
  "You'd have to fiddle with the valuation during the transaction” Just have company B use some leverage aka get a loan to buy A. That way it's valuation does not need to change pre or post purchase. PS: Wondering if this has happened somewhere such as Japan where they have some very convoluted ownership diagrams.
  - jacquesm 12y ago
    Good point! I wonder how you'd go about the usual annual shareholder meetings and things like that. Without a real person to represent even a single one of the shares it would be pretty hard to get a vote on anything. Board of directors would be a bit problematic, hiring a CEO could be done but who would do the hiring?
    - Retric 12y ago
      This is not uncommon situation when some venture fund owns a large share in a company they just appoint someone to sit on the board. The appointee need not actually own shares they just represent shares, so company A sends Sam to be on B's board and company B sends Ted to sit on A's board. The funny thing taxes would just end up eating up any profit as B sends say 70% of their profit to A as a dividend which sends 70% of 70% to B as a dividend and repeat.

Retric 12y ago

It would be fairly easy to create a bot that makes random corporations. Legally I don't think there is anything that would separate them from actual corporations. Granted, their corporate officers would presumably need to be people. But, HFT demonstrates bot's can make legally binding decisions so that might be a grey area.

icebraining 12y ago
Someone is still responsible for those bots.
- Retric 12y ago
  What if the bot creator dies before the bot makes a decision. We could even go so far as to have a cosmic ray flip one or more bits in memory that causes this to be released into the wild.
  - icebraining 12y ago
    Then the sole shareholder of the company dies. I'm sure there's plenty of case law regarding this situation.
    - Retric 12y ago
      Sure, but shareholders are rarely responsible for a companies actions: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Piercing_the_corporate_veil http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Piercing_the_corporate_veil Anyway, my point is if bot's can create and run companies then at some point they could gain the use of corporate personhood.

deleted 12y ago

[deleted]

jacquesm 12y ago

Hm... now you have me wondering if I could slip a circular chain of ownership past the chambers of commerce here. I'm pretty sure you could bootstrap this: Person 'X' incorporates company 'A' and receives the shares. Company 'A' incorporates company 'B'. Company 'B' makes some money. Company 'B' buys the shares of company 'A' from person 'X'. Presto, no more people involved, just two companies owning each other. It might even be possible to have company 'A' buy the shares of company 'A' directly of the person that incorporated it, so it would own itself. You'd have to fiddle with the valuation during the transaction because you're using the company capital to do the purchase, essentially ending with a valuation (temporarily) of zero when the transaction has completed after which the company would have to create some more income to become liquid again. Tricky. Very much tempted to try this.

Retric 12y ago
"You'd have to fiddle with the valuation during the transaction” Just have company B use some leverage aka get a loan to buy A. That way it's valuation does not need to change pre or post purchase. PS: Wondering if this has happened somewhere such as Japan where they have some very convoluted ownership diagrams.
- jacquesm 12y ago
  Good point! I wonder how you'd go about the usual annual shareholder meetings and things like that. Without a real person to represent even a single one of the shares it would be pretty hard to get a vote on anything. Board of directors would be a bit problematic, hiring a CEO could be done but who would do the hiring?
  - Retric 12y ago
    This is not uncommon situation when some venture fund owns a large share in a company they just appoint someone to sit on the board. The appointee need not actually own shares they just represent shares, so company A sends Sam to be on B's board and company B sends Ted to sit on A's board. The funny thing taxes would just end up eating up any profit as B sends say 70% of their profit to A as a dividend which sends 70% of 70% to B as a dividend and repeat.