Comment by DeusExMachina
22 days ago
As I read around, this lawsuit raised an important question: can a non-profit become a for-profit company?
To that extent, what Musk was happy or unhappy with is irrelevant. What is actually allowed by the law is more important.
However, it seems that the lawsuit was not phrased that way and Musk just looked for damages to himself. In that frame it's not much of a surprise that things ended this way.
There is a well established procedure for these things, happens in hospitals etc. Not a new question a jury needs to address.
Not related to the story, but that your go-to example of converting to a for-profit organisation is a hospital is horrifying to me
It's also not so easy. The for profit entity essentially has to buy all the previous entity's assets and assume liabilities. Since the assets are considered charitable trusts, the proceeds from the sale then need to go into a new charitable foundation. Regulators also need to approve that the assets were fairly valued and the entire process was free of conflicts of interest. Albeit complicated, the process is pretty straightforward for hospitals. But in OpenAI's case it seems more like they tried to jump through every legal loophole they found.
> can a non-profit become a for-profit company?
Presumably a non-profit can move all its staff and its stuff into a for-profit anyway.
Would Musk have standing for asking that question about non-profit to for profit companies? I think this would be a role for the government rather than a private individual and the Trump admin is not exactly fond of enforcing regulations.
It does not matter what standing Musk has, the question is the important part, not the asker. You can accuse him of hipocrisy and that still makes no difference. He can still be the vehicle for the question to be asked.
The role of the government is to make the laws, and to apply them when violation are reported. It is also to regulate new situations as they arise, for example, if a court decides the law allows a non-profit to become a for-profit and that is deemed as not desirable, new laws can be passed to amend that.
It is the government roles, however, to going around to aks hypothetical questions before they are risen by someone, as there are too many possible hypotheticals, most never materialize, and that would be a conflict of interest. In that case Musk is as good as a vehicle as anyone else because he is bringing to the court a real-life problem that needs to be decided.
The Trump admin is not fond of enforcing regulations as the Biden admin was not fond of enforcing other regulations. That shows you can't expect the govenment to take that role since it's discretionary.
There is a reason standing exists. We don't want a society where anyone can litigate the ill-defined "important questions of society" at will.
I agree with you that this is an important question.
I disagree with you that, "Musk is as good as a vehicle as anyone else because he is bringing to the court a real-life problem that needs to be decided"
Standing is itself a very important and critical concept. If anyone could sue over any “important” public issue without standing, courts would be asked to referee disputes that are normally handled by elections, legislation, agency rulemaking, oversight hearings, and public debate. We don't want the courts to be such arbiters of so many matters and want their purview to be more narrow by design.