Comment by chillingeffect
1 year ago
The invention of the corporation is virtually to eliminate responsibility/culpability from any individual.
Human car crash? Human punishment. Corporate-owned car crash? A fine which reduces salaries some negligible percent.
Yes, corporations have all of the rights of a person, abilities beyond a person, yet few of the responsibilities of a person.
Our failure at "corporate alignment" makes it pretty clear that we're also going to fail at any version of "AI alignment"...
The two will likely facilitate eachother :(
They actually don't have all the rights of a person and they do have those same responsibilities.
If this company was a sole proprietorship, the only recourse this kid would have is to sue the owner, up to bankruptcy.
Since it's a corporation, his recourse is to sue the company, up to bankruptcy.
As for corporations having rights, I can explain it further if necessary but the key understanding is that the singular of "corporations are people" is "a corporation is people" not "a corporation is a person".
You can't put a corporation in prison. But a person you can. This is one of the big problems. The people making the decisions at corporations are shielded from personal consequences by the corporation. A corporation can be shut down but it rarely happens.
Even when Boeing knowingly caused the deaths of hundreds (especially the second crash was entirely preventable if they would have been honest after the first one), all they got were some fines. Those just end up being charged back to their customers, a big one being the government who fined them in the first place.
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If the company is a sole proprietorship, you can sue the person who controls it up to bankruptcy, which will affect their personal life significantly. If the company is a corporation/LLC, you can sue the corporate entity up to the bankruptcy of the corporate entity, while the people controlling the company remain unaffected.
This gets even more perverse. If you're an individual you actually can't just set up an LLC to limit your own liability. There's no manner for an individual to say "I'm putting on a hat and acting solely as the LLC" - rather as the owner you need to find and employ enough judgement-proof patsies that the whole thing becomes a "group project" and you can say you personally weren't aware of whatever problem gave rise to liability. In other words, the very design of corporations/LLCs encourages avoiding responsibility.
You're correct with the nitpick about the Supreme Council's justification, but that justification is still poor reasoning. Corporations are government-created liability shields. How they can direct their employees should be limited, to avoid trampling on those individuals' own natural rights. A person or group of people who want to exercise their personal natural rights through hired employees can always forgo the government-created liability shield and go sole proprietorship / gen partnership.
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Unfortunately the company has a big war chest, and I have a small war chest, and was priced out of court through legal shenanigans and delays the corporations lawyers could afford.
Just bring back fucking pistol deals. I have a better chance of defending myself there.
I remember reading a quote from someone to the effect of "I'll support corporate personhood after I see Texas execute a corporation". I'm definitely misremembering but you get the sentiment, haha
Don't forget paying their way out of crimes and no applicability to three strikes laws.