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On January 15 2014 02:40 IgnE wrote:Show nested quote +On January 14 2014 21:52 WhiteDog wrote:On January 14 2014 20:48 nunez wrote:On January 14 2014 06:33 JonnyBNoHo wrote:
In a nutshell there's a black box between Marxist / Communist (if there's a preferred label let me know) economic theories and actual economic production that ties everything together and makes the economy work in the real world. My suspicion is that the black box is, ultimately, a totalitarian regime and until I hear a plausible alternative I'm sticking to my suspicion. ![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/iLzY9L7.png)
Jonny's nutshellinput
a vague collection of theories. system
a black box, by definition we can not reason about its contents. output
the actual economic production that ties everything together and make the economy work in the real world.
theorem
if and only if the vague collection of theories are "marxist / communist theories", then the black box is a totalitarian regime and that's why "marxist / communist theories" won't work. proof
until a plausible (see Jonny's law of plausability) alternative is heard for what's inside this black box that you can't reason about the contents of, this theorem holds. this concludes the proof. Haha brilliant. It's the same scheme I actually make for my student when I talk about the firm in microeconomics. In the beginning, there was no justification for the existence of the firm (since the market is the most efficient, why the need to create a collectivity to product ?) and the firm was "a black box" when you add input and where output came out. Of course transaction costs changed everything but that's another subject. Jonny don't know shit about Marxism, but well. On January 14 2014 12:06 IgnE wrote:On January 14 2014 10:55 xDaunt wrote:On January 14 2014 10:46 mcc wrote:On January 14 2014 10:33 xDaunt wrote:On January 14 2014 09:28 mcc wrote:On January 14 2014 06:30 xDaunt wrote:On January 14 2014 06:18 KwarK wrote:On January 14 2014 06:15 xDaunt wrote:
[quote]
I guess you're willing to give National Socialism another go, too, then? If they said "we'll do it without the xenophobia, the invading Poland, the persecution of minorities and the creation of a dictatorship" then I wouldn't go "well, I heard you say it and all sounds are lies". Now maybe some of those things are intrinsically linked to national socialism but the traits of Stalinism are not intrinsically linked to communism, indeed they generally predate communist rule. I'm just talking off-the-cuff here, but it seems to me that inherent to any communist regime is a need to disregard the rule of law (the "revolution") so as to effect communist policy on the rubble of the previous system. How else do you get a communist redistribution of wealth and power without trampling the rights of those at the top (and the middle, and pretty much everyone else to one degree or another, but I digress...)? I know that it's rather cute to say that "absolute power corrupts absolutely," but there is no communism without the wielding of that absolute power that stretches beyond the confines of traditional law. The inherent danger there is obvious. That is because you also confuse communism with part of the movement. Many communists do not argue for violent revolution. Many communist parties participate in democratic process as constructive participants. The fact that you do not know does not mean that it does not exist. And if you change the rule of law by democratic process of changing the constitution there is no reason why nationalization and redistribution would necessitate breaking the rule of law or violence. I'm aware that there are some communists who prefer to work through democratic channels to attain their goals. I just don't see them ever getting that far any time in the near future without a hefty dosage of abuse of power. At some point communism requires an abolition of the traditional western concept of property rights. That isn't going to happen peacefully. That is completely another matter and rather subjective judgement. The point is that there is nothing violent or "evil" in the goals and ideas of communists in general. That cannot be said for fascists and especially not for nazis. There you have things that are inherent to the ideology that cannot be taken away without it stopping being nazism or fascism. You could maybe get the obviously ugly parts out of the way, but they are both based on tribalism and thus have inherent issues involved in it. When the means of implementing communism are functionally inseparable from the exercise of "evil" as I have pointed out, it can't be said that communism is inherently benign. Uncoincidentally, history has proven me right so far. Kwark focuses too much on the "autocratic" nature of Stalinism and Maoism, that was, admittedly, an aspect of the cultures from which they sprung. The real problem with Stalinism and other manifestations of communism in the historical record (excepting somewhat Cuba) is that they were all designed to compete with capitalism for the manufacture of things. Mao and Stalin actually succeeded somewhat on that end. Both totally revamped their industrial economies, willfully bringing both countries out of agriculture-based peasant societies, Maoism especially. The autocratic structure is not only a byproduct of the culture, but out of the necessity to try and compete militarily and economically with a capitalist system that has a huge head start in the development of capital. Unfortunately production per se does not correlate very well with the standard metric of economic success. Compare Germany at the turn of the 20th century to Britain. Germany was growing its production and trade capacity for real things at 6x the rate of Britain, and yet was barely making a dent in the economic GDP gap between the two countries. Capital owners in Germany fortunately found a use for all that production with the coming of WWI but sadly lost whatever lead they had hoped to gain by losing the war in devastating fashion. Likewise in China and the USSR, simply expanding production per se, implementing modern industrial techniques, and the like, did not help them close the gap in terms of sheer capital accumulation with the west. You have the fall of the USSR eventually, and China adopting a mixed command/liberal economy in order to compete. You do at least have to hand it to Mao for sparking the fastest economic growth and development the world has ever seen, even if his successors eventually decided to switch to a mixed system in order to continue accumulating capital at supra-Western rates. Any "new" communism would have to abandon the unsustainable constant growth paradigm. People like jonny are deluded into thinking that constant growth can be maintained, and so don't understand why anyone would want to vote/adopt/work for a "communist" politics. The core problem is that Marxism was never a theory of the state or a theory on how to govern. It was a militant theory, engaged in a scientific critic of "the capital" with a relatively incomplete plan on "what to do after the revolution". The only book, written by Marx, that actually talk about the after is more a polemic than a real program (The Critic of the Gotha Program). Add to that the fact that Marx only finished the first book of the capital (which was a critic of the classical economy). Jonny is ridiculous because if there is one thing that actually define Marxism it is the refusal of the "black box" and the definite decision, from Marx, to take seriously reality in all its form, leading him to explain economy with politics and politics with economy. In France, there are different type of marxist : there are the "Marxism" (linked to communist party), the "Marxologues" (the ones that read Marx, are far leftist, but are against the communist party) and finally the "Marxians" (people who consider Marx as one of the most brilliant mind but are not leftist - most of them are free marketists). Just that should lead anyone into understanding that "Marxism" is not a clear theory, it's a cosmos. For exemple, you talk about the necessity for a far left movement to "abandon the unsustainable constant growth paradigm" but actually Marx himself in his 1844 Manuscript, already proposed a theory of the environment that refute the idea of productivism - the environment was "the inorganic body of Man" and as such needed protection. I never meant to imply that I thought Marx didn't consider sustainability/environment issues. My point was that whatever Marx said about it, Stalinism could not be said to have cared much about those issues, and that any desirable "Marxist" system would have to incorporate such concerns.
Yeah, but since Marx never actually thought about what to do after the revolution, it let a place for Lenine, Staline, Trotsky and Mao, and it will always let a place for such figure - and the power they carry - because a theory of the after completly cleansed from its imperfection and utopian dream is impossible. History will never end.
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On January 15 2014 04:44 Mohdoo wrote:
Here's to hoping Christie being toast means we'll get another tea-party centered GOP primary in 2016. I'd love to see them try that again, lol.
I am split on that one.
For the entertainment value, yes. For America (and stable, good politics in the world), not so much.
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On January 15 2014 04:44 Mohdoo wrote:
Here's to hoping Christie being toast means we'll get another tea-party centered GOP primary in 2016. I'd love to see them try that again, lol.
It's sort of in the interest of the Tea Party to not win national elections, since then they would actually have to govern. The movement benefits a lot more from just primarying Republicans who are willing to compromise while conceding national elections. This allows it to maintain its impractical political positions while motivating the conservative base to donate a ton of money.
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On January 14 2014 22:56 KwarK wrote:Show nested quote +On January 14 2014 16:55 DeepElemBlues wrote:Assuming that they keep the money the same place they keep the liability. If they separate the two then you're out of luck.
There's no place the company can put the money to keep it safe from a judge ordering them to hand it over. Unless it's in numbered accounts in some Kazakhstan bank and no one can prove that it is theirs. That's something that annoys me about corporate personhood. The advocates of it explain that a corporation is, at its heart, a group of people acting collectively and therefore should be respected and protected under the law as if it's a person. And yet if a corporation does something criminal or negligent the shareholders, who have been established to collectively be the corporation, are not held accountable. Shareholders aren't held accountable because most of the time shareholders do not hold an active position of authority within the company and it would be a great miscarriage of justice to punish people for something they had no active part in. Shareholder authority is delegated to the board and shareholder authority usually doesn't extend much past "we can fire the board." If your group is collectively negligent, or employ someone to be negligent on your behalf, you should be accountable. People would be far more involved in making sure their corporations acted responsibly in society if they didn't have all the rights and none of the accountability of the people involved. It's hardly fair to suggest that shareholders hire people to be negligent on their behalf when negligence occurs. Shareholders usually don't hire anyone except the board, and they hire them to increase their dividends and share price, not be negligent and have the government hit the company for millions or billions of dollars and have the value of their stock plummet. Let's say Wal-Mart commits some horrible crime, are you really suggesting 83-year old Mitzy Perkins from Creekbottom Junction, Iowa, who owns 100 shares of Wal-Mart stock, bears some responsibility? What did she or any shareholder do but buy stock? Mens rea, sir, you can't just throw it out the window because you feel like things would be better if you could spank people who had no actual connection to the crime. It is not likely that if you could, shareholders would become more vigilant in their oversight of the company. The more likely outcome of your suggestion would be that far fewer people would become shareholders, increasing the concentration of wealth and power in the hands of a few. Which would, things being as they are, probably make it harder for successful punishment of wrongdoing. That's bad, right? Cause it's not like you can have another shell company handle the storage for a nominal fee and then lease their services to the main company who then denies all responsibility in the case of a leak. Quit being so naive. If a company can create a legal barrier between its obligations and its assets it will. The idea that you can be a shareholder in a business while not actively taking any responsibility for what the business does in your name is the problem I seek to address. It would not be a miscarriage of justice to hold people accountable for what their business does, just because they're negligent in running the thing doesn't mean they don't own it. Yes, shareholders hire the board to increase their dividends or share price, not to act responsibly, ethically or in the long term interests of society. Well done, gold star. The reason they do this is because the arrangement allows them to act (because as we know the corporation really is just them, that's why it gets personhood) unethically and irresponsibly without ever having any repercussions. You've correctly identified that the shareholders don't give a shit about acting responsibly, and why would they, they're not accountable. So yes, if Mitzy Perkins is negligent and allowing criminal shit to happen in her name then yes, Mitzy Perkins bears a portion of the responsibility. That's what ownership entails. If you don't want to be responsible for something don't buy it, this should really be very obvious. The practice of absentee shareholders pushing their boards to maximise dividends while offloading costs to the public and acting in criminal ways would be ended. Banks that irresponsibly lost the savings of their depositors only to declare bankrupt and require the state to reimburse all the deposits would be held accountable. They're absentee landlords who simultaneously grant an agent with their rights and deny any responsibility for what the agent does with those rights. And as for "but if we didn't allow them to reap the rewards of antisocial and irresponsible practices without ever being held to account then they wouldn't do it and the only shareholders would be the ones who actually care how it's run", yeah, that's pretty much the point.
Kwark, I have a question. Would you say then that parents are responsible for raising their child?
If you answered yes, then whatever the child, regardless of age, does is actually the parent's responsibility?
If you answered yes to that then it follows that when their child has kids since the parents were responsible for raising the child what the child of the child does is actually the grandparent's fault?
If you say yes to that. Then isn't it really the great great great great great great great great grandparents fault?
Then no one is able to be blamed that currently lives so there is in fact no way to punish people.
That's kind of what a stockholder is. You give some money to a company in the thinking that they'll do something worthwhile, raising a kid is a lot like that but you also give love and compassion and have a great deal more to do with the actual outcome. Now in this idea the child grown up is the board they make decisions for themselves, and the parent (majority stockholders) can say, "that's not good" and fire the board.
The great great great great great great great great great grandparent is that one stock holder who holds less than .0000000001% of the stock. Sure she has some impact on the company but she didn't tell them to act like that, in fact she can't tell them to do anything. She is so far removed, on her own, that she has no power.
You might as well hold all of society accountable for things that go wrong, because lets face it, this society is where most of us were raised.
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On January 15 2014 04:42 Nyxisto wrote:
It's funny how "I didn't know what the people who work for me did" has somehow become a viable excuse for people in leadership positions. Even if Christie didn't know what was going on (which seems highly unlikely) he's still responsible for what happens in his department. That's like the whole idea of people in charge, you have more power but you also are responsible if someone down the food chain screws up.
Yeah there's no getting around that Christie bears some responsibility. fwiw I don't think he's tried to argue that he isn't responsible at all.
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On January 14 2014 22:56 KwarK wrote:Show nested quote +On January 14 2014 16:55 DeepElemBlues wrote:Assuming that they keep the money the same place they keep the liability. If they separate the two then you're out of luck.
There's no place the company can put the money to keep it safe from a judge ordering them to hand it over. Unless it's in numbered accounts in some Kazakhstan bank and no one can prove that it is theirs. That's something that annoys me about corporate personhood. The advocates of it explain that a corporation is, at its heart, a group of people acting collectively and therefore should be respected and protected under the law as if it's a person. And yet if a corporation does something criminal or negligent the shareholders, who have been established to collectively be the corporation, are not held accountable. Shareholders aren't held accountable because most of the time shareholders do not hold an active position of authority within the company and it would be a great miscarriage of justice to punish people for something they had no active part in. Shareholder authority is delegated to the board and shareholder authority usually doesn't extend much past "we can fire the board." If your group is collectively negligent, or employ someone to be negligent on your behalf, you should be accountable. People would be far more involved in making sure their corporations acted responsibly in society if they didn't have all the rights and none of the accountability of the people involved. It's hardly fair to suggest that shareholders hire people to be negligent on their behalf when negligence occurs. Shareholders usually don't hire anyone except the board, and they hire them to increase their dividends and share price, not be negligent and have the government hit the company for millions or billions of dollars and have the value of their stock plummet. Let's say Wal-Mart commits some horrible crime, are you really suggesting 83-year old Mitzy Perkins from Creekbottom Junction, Iowa, who owns 100 shares of Wal-Mart stock, bears some responsibility? What did she or any shareholder do but buy stock? Mens rea, sir, you can't just throw it out the window because you feel like things would be better if you could spank people who had no actual connection to the crime. It is not likely that if you could, shareholders would become more vigilant in their oversight of the company. The more likely outcome of your suggestion would be that far fewer people would become shareholders, increasing the concentration of wealth and power in the hands of a few. Which would, things being as they are, probably make it harder for successful punishment of wrongdoing. That's bad, right? Cause it's not like you can have another shell company handle the storage for a nominal fee and then lease their services to the main company who then denies all responsibility in the case of a leak. Quit being so naive. If a company can create a legal barrier between its obligations and its assets it will. The idea that you can be a shareholder in a business while not actively taking any responsibility for what the business does in your name is the problem I seek to address. It would not be a miscarriage of justice to hold people accountable for what their business does, just because they're negligent in running the thing doesn't mean they don't own it. Yes, shareholders hire the board to increase their dividends or share price, not to act responsibly, ethically or in the long term interests of society. Well done, gold star. The reason they do this is because the arrangement allows them to act (because as we know the corporation really is just them, that's why it gets personhood) unethically and irresponsibly without ever having any repercussions. You've correctly identified that the shareholders don't give a shit about acting responsibly, and why would they, they're not accountable. So yes, if Mitzy Perkins is negligent and allowing criminal shit to happen in her name then yes, Mitzy Perkins bears a portion of the responsibility. That's what ownership entails. If you don't want to be responsible for something don't buy it, this should really be very obvious. The practice of absentee shareholders pushing their boards to maximise dividends while offloading costs to the public and acting in criminal ways would be ended. Banks that irresponsibly lost the savings of their depositors only to declare bankrupt and require the state to reimburse all the deposits would be held accountable. They're absentee landlords who simultaneously grant an agent with their rights and deny any responsibility for what the agent does with those rights. And as for "but if we didn't allow them to reap the rewards of antisocial and irresponsible practices without ever being held to account then they wouldn't do it and the only shareholders would be the ones who actually care how it's run", yeah, that's pretty much the point.
And this simplistic ploy, you actually believe that it is effective in shielding a corporation from governmental wrath? No gold star for you Kwarky. No gold star at all. Sadly, no, naivete does not enter into it here. Someone with a lack of erudition trying to cover it up with quick thinking may just be. It is quite possible, and common, in both criminal and civil court for the shell company to be bypassed altogether and those alleged to be responsible to be sued or charged directly. Now maybe in the UK things are different, but in America, your scheme of setting up a shell corporation to avoid liability is about as useful as wrapping paper would be at stopping a bullet. If companies could actually do this and get away with consistently, corporate lawyers would spend little time on doing anything else.
Your claim as to why corporate "personhood" exists is badly flawed by being very overly broad. Again we find assertions being presented as fact; no, shareholders do not "do this" because it allows them to act unethically and irresponsibly. Unless you possess a crystal ball or are one of those Soviet psychic killer children, it is highly unlikely that you *know* that that is why shareholders buy stock. It is just another example of your tendency to place thoughts favorable to your manufactured self-righteous indignation into the heads of others.
You cannot hold someone responsible for acts they did not commit and had no part in committing. Shareholders have indirect authority, at most, over the actions of the corporation they hold stock in. You contend that they hold a larger responsibility; fine. That is not an opinion that has been given much, if any, credence by the courts. It flies in the face of almost a thousand years of English common law and jurisprudence (but I am being redundant). You cannot charge people with a crime they had no participation in. There is a common and quite accepted way for shareholders to be punished for corporate malfeasance: the loss of the value of their stock. Now this is not sufficient for you, but you have yet to make a convincing argument as to why people who had no direct participation in a crime hold responsibility for it.
There is also, unsurprisingly, a large problem with this contention of "absentee shareholders." Shareholders do not hire "agents" to act irresponsibly and unethically on their behalf. Absent evidence of enough cases of such to make such a claim, it is, like so many of your arguments, a pure figment of your imagination. It is a common portion of corporate bylaws, approved by the shareholders (and which by law must be approved by the shareholders, that is the shareholders must approve the bylaws and any revisions to them), that such "agents" not act unethically, irresponsibly, or illegally. It is a very basic method of CYA for shareholders. We find you wishing to place responsibility on people who had no direct participation in a crime and specifically admonished their "agents" not to do so, because you fantasize that if you could bring the pain to them, they would shape up and conform to your wishes. To which I say, pfffffffffffffffffft. They'd resent you and tell you where to go and what to do with yourself when you got there, and they would, at the earliest opportunity in a democracy, make good on that dictate. i.e., they'd toss you out on your ass, or elect people who would do so. The real world is not this forum.
It is highly unlikely, again, that your instinct to lay about with the heavy hand of punishment would end corporate malfeasance or encourage greater shareholder vigilance. The common shareholder has not the time, the resources, or even the authority to police the day-to-day actions of the corporation. What you are saying is that a significant burden should be placed upon stockholders on the chance that it will result in better corporate behavior. Again, this is highly unlikely. Far more likely is that your attempt to treat the real world as if it were the Teamliquid.net forum - where things are comparatively very simple as to investigation and punishment of wrongdoing - would result in the rich and powerful holding a larger proportion of the stock in a given company as they do now, and history has shown that that situation results in more of what today would be called corporate malfeasance, rather than less. History also shows that such a situation results in making it harder for the government or a private entity to hold such corporations accountable for malfeasance. Unintended consequences always accompany any scheme.
Unfortunately for your argument, in the real world you can't place the onus of criminal responsibility on people who have committed no criminal acts and expect them to accept it or to continue their behavior as before, save for modifying that behavior in precisely the way you wish. Human beings do not work that way. You can imagine that in your fantasy world, some powerful and irreproachable figure - perhaps yourself? - would be able to browbeat millions of people into acting the way you wish, but again, in the real world, people will not and should not accept such nonsense.
Why would anyone not having the resources and influence to mitigate possible punishment ever buy stock in your situation? F. Coddington Voorhees V, with hundreds of millions moldering in his bank accounts and the finest lawyers in the nation on speed-dial, might find the opportunities of such a situation outweighing the risks, but Joe Blow will not. And so, an avenue for Joe to increase his wealth is shut off, and F. Coddington gets more opportunities to make some more money molder. And the corporation? Being controlled more firmly by the rich and influential, it has much less to worry about as to governmental or civil punishment. Even if Kwarky were Corporate Malfeasance Punisher-in-Chief. Now maybe if in addition to that Kwarky also occupied the bench of every court in the land, such a Kwarky would have the power to resist regulatory capture and backroom influence-peddling. Otherwise? Sadly, no. The republic and empire of Rome are gone, we don't commonly give such power to individuals anymore.
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United States42785 Posts
On January 15 2014 05:26 Nacl(Draq) wrote:Show nested quote +On January 14 2014 22:56 KwarK wrote:On January 14 2014 16:55 DeepElemBlues wrote:Assuming that they keep the money the same place they keep the liability. If they separate the two then you're out of luck.
There's no place the company can put the money to keep it safe from a judge ordering them to hand it over. Unless it's in numbered accounts in some Kazakhstan bank and no one can prove that it is theirs. That's something that annoys me about corporate personhood. The advocates of it explain that a corporation is, at its heart, a group of people acting collectively and therefore should be respected and protected under the law as if it's a person. And yet if a corporation does something criminal or negligent the shareholders, who have been established to collectively be the corporation, are not held accountable. Shareholders aren't held accountable because most of the time shareholders do not hold an active position of authority within the company and it would be a great miscarriage of justice to punish people for something they had no active part in. Shareholder authority is delegated to the board and shareholder authority usually doesn't extend much past "we can fire the board." If your group is collectively negligent, or employ someone to be negligent on your behalf, you should be accountable. People would be far more involved in making sure their corporations acted responsibly in society if they didn't have all the rights and none of the accountability of the people involved. It's hardly fair to suggest that shareholders hire people to be negligent on their behalf when negligence occurs. Shareholders usually don't hire anyone except the board, and they hire them to increase their dividends and share price, not be negligent and have the government hit the company for millions or billions of dollars and have the value of their stock plummet. Let's say Wal-Mart commits some horrible crime, are you really suggesting 83-year old Mitzy Perkins from Creekbottom Junction, Iowa, who owns 100 shares of Wal-Mart stock, bears some responsibility? What did she or any shareholder do but buy stock? Mens rea, sir, you can't just throw it out the window because you feel like things would be better if you could spank people who had no actual connection to the crime. It is not likely that if you could, shareholders would become more vigilant in their oversight of the company. The more likely outcome of your suggestion would be that far fewer people would become shareholders, increasing the concentration of wealth and power in the hands of a few. Which would, things being as they are, probably make it harder for successful punishment of wrongdoing. That's bad, right? Cause it's not like you can have another shell company handle the storage for a nominal fee and then lease their services to the main company who then denies all responsibility in the case of a leak. Quit being so naive. If a company can create a legal barrier between its obligations and its assets it will. The idea that you can be a shareholder in a business while not actively taking any responsibility for what the business does in your name is the problem I seek to address. It would not be a miscarriage of justice to hold people accountable for what their business does, just because they're negligent in running the thing doesn't mean they don't own it. Yes, shareholders hire the board to increase their dividends or share price, not to act responsibly, ethically or in the long term interests of society. Well done, gold star. The reason they do this is because the arrangement allows them to act (because as we know the corporation really is just them, that's why it gets personhood) unethically and irresponsibly without ever having any repercussions. You've correctly identified that the shareholders don't give a shit about acting responsibly, and why would they, they're not accountable. So yes, if Mitzy Perkins is negligent and allowing criminal shit to happen in her name then yes, Mitzy Perkins bears a portion of the responsibility. That's what ownership entails. If you don't want to be responsible for something don't buy it, this should really be very obvious. The practice of absentee shareholders pushing their boards to maximise dividends while offloading costs to the public and acting in criminal ways would be ended. Banks that irresponsibly lost the savings of their depositors only to declare bankrupt and require the state to reimburse all the deposits would be held accountable. They're absentee landlords who simultaneously grant an agent with their rights and deny any responsibility for what the agent does with those rights. And as for "but if we didn't allow them to reap the rewards of antisocial and irresponsible practices without ever being held to account then they wouldn't do it and the only shareholders would be the ones who actually care how it's run", yeah, that's pretty much the point. Kwark, I have a question. Would you say then that parents are responsible for raising their child? If you answered yes, then whatever the child, regardless of age, does is actually the parent's responsibility? If you answered yes to that then it follows that when their child has kids since the parents were responsible for raising the child what the child of the child does is actually the grandparent's fault? If you say yes to that. Then isn't it really the great great great great great great great great grandparents fault? Then no one is able to be blamed that currently lives so there is in fact no way to punish people. That's kind of what a stockholder is. You give some money to a company in the thinking that they'll do something worthwhile, raising a kid is a lot like that but you also give love and compassion and have a great deal more to do with the actual outcome. Now in this idea the child grown up is the board they make decisions for themselves, and the parent (majority stockholders) can say, "that's not good" and fire the board. The great great great great great great great great great grandparent is that one stock holder who holds less than .0000000001% of the stock. Sure she has some impact on the company but she didn't tell them to act like that, in fact she can't tell them to do anything. She is so far removed, on her own, that she has no power. You might as well hold all of society accountable for things that go wrong, because lets face it, this society is where most of us were raised.
Children aren't property. They're not owned by their parents. They're actually capable of free will and independent action, especially as they get older. Corporations on the other hand either need to grow up and be treated as independent entities rather than insisting that because they're owned by people they are people or be treated like property and have the owners held accountable.
I don't accept your premise. I find your premise incredibly stupid and if you can't see the difference between not holding a human being's parents accountable for the actions of that independent, sentient human being and holding the owners of a business accountable for the non sentient, dependent business they own then I think you need to seek help.
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Following reports that hundreds of millions of consumers may have had their personal information compromised due to security breaches, Democrats are telling House Oversight Chairman Darrell Issa (R-CA) to put his money where his mouth is: you investigated HealthCare.gov, now what about Target?
Neiman Marcus on Saturday became the latest retailer to disclose that hackers stole credit card information from its customers, following a wide-spread breach from Target Corp. Now Democrats are calling for a House Oversight Committee and Government Reform hearing in the same spirit of an extensive Republican investigation examining security risks associated with the federal health marketplace portal, HealthCare.gov.
"Unfortunately, while the Committee was conducting its investigation during this time period last fall, up to 110 million Americans were subjected to one of the most massive information technology breaches in history when their credit, debit, and other personal information reportedly was compromised at Target stores and online in November and December," Ranking Member Elijah Cummings wrote in a Wednesday letter addressed to Issa.
The House on Friday passed a bill with bipartisan support that would require the administration to notify within two days anyone impacted by such a security breach on HealthCare.gov. Democrats, including the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services, countered by claiming the bill was intended to mislead about the Affordable Care Act.
Source
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United States42785 Posts
On January 15 2014 05:32 DeepElemBlues wrote:Show nested quote +On January 14 2014 22:56 KwarK wrote:On January 14 2014 16:55 DeepElemBlues wrote:Assuming that they keep the money the same place they keep the liability. If they separate the two then you're out of luck.
There's no place the company can put the money to keep it safe from a judge ordering them to hand it over. Unless it's in numbered accounts in some Kazakhstan bank and no one can prove that it is theirs. That's something that annoys me about corporate personhood. The advocates of it explain that a corporation is, at its heart, a group of people acting collectively and therefore should be respected and protected under the law as if it's a person. And yet if a corporation does something criminal or negligent the shareholders, who have been established to collectively be the corporation, are not held accountable. Shareholders aren't held accountable because most of the time shareholders do not hold an active position of authority within the company and it would be a great miscarriage of justice to punish people for something they had no active part in. Shareholder authority is delegated to the board and shareholder authority usually doesn't extend much past "we can fire the board." If your group is collectively negligent, or employ someone to be negligent on your behalf, you should be accountable. People would be far more involved in making sure their corporations acted responsibly in society if they didn't have all the rights and none of the accountability of the people involved. It's hardly fair to suggest that shareholders hire people to be negligent on their behalf when negligence occurs. Shareholders usually don't hire anyone except the board, and they hire them to increase their dividends and share price, not be negligent and have the government hit the company for millions or billions of dollars and have the value of their stock plummet. Let's say Wal-Mart commits some horrible crime, are you really suggesting 83-year old Mitzy Perkins from Creekbottom Junction, Iowa, who owns 100 shares of Wal-Mart stock, bears some responsibility? What did she or any shareholder do but buy stock? Mens rea, sir, you can't just throw it out the window because you feel like things would be better if you could spank people who had no actual connection to the crime. It is not likely that if you could, shareholders would become more vigilant in their oversight of the company. The more likely outcome of your suggestion would be that far fewer people would become shareholders, increasing the concentration of wealth and power in the hands of a few. Which would, things being as they are, probably make it harder for successful punishment of wrongdoing. That's bad, right? Cause it's not like you can have another shell company handle the storage for a nominal fee and then lease their services to the main company who then denies all responsibility in the case of a leak. Quit being so naive. If a company can create a legal barrier between its obligations and its assets it will. The idea that you can be a shareholder in a business while not actively taking any responsibility for what the business does in your name is the problem I seek to address. It would not be a miscarriage of justice to hold people accountable for what their business does, just because they're negligent in running the thing doesn't mean they don't own it. Yes, shareholders hire the board to increase their dividends or share price, not to act responsibly, ethically or in the long term interests of society. Well done, gold star. The reason they do this is because the arrangement allows them to act (because as we know the corporation really is just them, that's why it gets personhood) unethically and irresponsibly without ever having any repercussions. You've correctly identified that the shareholders don't give a shit about acting responsibly, and why would they, they're not accountable. So yes, if Mitzy Perkins is negligent and allowing criminal shit to happen in her name then yes, Mitzy Perkins bears a portion of the responsibility. That's what ownership entails. If you don't want to be responsible for something don't buy it, this should really be very obvious. The practice of absentee shareholders pushing their boards to maximise dividends while offloading costs to the public and acting in criminal ways would be ended. Banks that irresponsibly lost the savings of their depositors only to declare bankrupt and require the state to reimburse all the deposits would be held accountable. They're absentee landlords who simultaneously grant an agent with their rights and deny any responsibility for what the agent does with those rights. And as for "but if we didn't allow them to reap the rewards of antisocial and irresponsible practices without ever being held to account then they wouldn't do it and the only shareholders would be the ones who actually care how it's run", yeah, that's pretty much the point. And this simplistic ploy, you actually believe that it is effective in shielding a corporation from governmental wrath? No gold star for you Kwarky. No gold star at all. Sadly, no, naivete does not enter into it here. Someone with a lack of erudition trying to cover it up with quick thinking may just be. It is quite possible, and common, in both criminal and civil court for the shell company to be bypassed altogether and those alleged to be responsible to be sued or charged directly. Now maybe in the UK things are different, but in America, your scheme of setting up a shell corporation to avoid liability is about as useful as wrapping paper would be at stopping a bullet. If companies could actually do this and get away with consistently, corporate lawyers would spend little time on doing anything else. Your claim as to why corporate "personhood" exists is badly flawed by being very overly broad. Again we find assertions being presented as fact; no, shareholders do not "do this" because it allows them to act unethically and irresponsibly. Unless you possess a crystal ball or are one of those Soviet psychic killer children, it is highly unlikely that you *know* that that is why shareholders buy stock. It is just another example of your tendency to place thoughts favorable to your manufactured self-righteous indignation into the heads of others. You cannot hold someone responsible for acts they did not commit and had no part in committing. Shareholders have indirect authority, at most, over the actions of the corporation they hold stock in. You contend that they hold a larger responsibility; fine. That is not an opinion that has been given much, if any, credence by the courts. It flies in the face of almost a thousand years of English common law and jurisprudence (but I am being redundant). You cannot charge people with a crime they had no participation in. There is a common and quite accepted way for shareholders to be punished for corporate malfeasance: the loss of the value of their stock. Now this is not sufficient for you, but you have yet to make a convincing argument as to why people who had no direct participation in a crime hold responsibility for it. There is also, unsurprisingly, a large problem with this contention of "absentee shareholders." Shareholders do not hire "agents" to act irresponsibly and unethically on their behalf. Absent evidence of enough cases of such to make such a claim, it is, like so many of your arguments, a pure figment of your imagination. It is a common portion of corporate bylaws, approved by the shareholders (and which by law must be approved by the shareholders, that is the shareholders must approve the bylaws and any revisions to them), that such "agents" not act unethically, irresponsibly, or illegally. It is a very basic method of CYA for shareholders. We find you wishing to place responsibility on people who had no direct participation in a crime and specifically admonished their "agents" not to do so, because you fantasize that if you could bring the pain to them, they would shape up and conform to your wishes. To which I say, pfffffffffffffffffft. They'd resent you and tell you where to go and what to do with yourself when you got there, and they would, at the earliest opportunity in a democracy, make good on that dictate. i.e., they'd toss you out on your ass, or elect people who would do so. The real world is not this forum. It is highly unlikely, again, that your instinct to lay about with the heavy hand of punishment would end corporate malfeasance or encourage greater shareholder vigilance. The common shareholder has not the time, the resources, or even the authority to police the day-to-day actions of the corporation. What you are saying is that a significant burden should be placed upon stockholders on the chance that it will result in better corporate behavior. Again, this is highly unlikely. Far more likely is that your attempt to treat the real world as if it were the Teamliquid.net forum - where things are comparatively very simple as to investigation and punishment of wrongdoing - would result in the rich and powerful holding a larger proportion of the stock in a given company as they do now, and history has shown that that situation results in more of what today would be called corporate malfeasance, rather than less. History also shows that such a situation results in making it harder for the government or a private entity to hold such corporations accountable for malfeasance. Unintended consequences always accompany any scheme. Unfortunately for your argument, in the real world you can't place the onus of criminal responsibility on people who have committed no criminal acts and expect them to accept it or to continue their behavior as before, save for modifying that behavior in precisely the way you wish. Human beings do not work that way. You can imagine that in your fantasy world, some powerful and irreproachable figure - perhaps yourself? - would be able to browbeat millions of people into acting the way you wish, but again, in the real world, people will not and should not accept such nonsense. Why would anyone not having the resources and influence to mitigate possible punishment ever buy stock in your situation? F. Coddington Voorhees V, with hundreds of millions moldering in his bank accounts and the finest lawyers in the nation on speed-dial, might find the opportunities of such a situation outweighing the risks, but Joe Blow will not. And so, an avenue for Joe to increase his wealth is shut off, and F. Coddington gets more opportunities to make some more money molder. And the corporation? Being controlled more firmly by the rich and influential, it has much less to worry about as to governmental or civil punishment. Even if Kwarky were Corporate Malfeasance Punisher-in-Chief. Now maybe if in addition to that Kwarky also occupied the bench of every court in the land, such a Kwarky would have the power to resist regulatory capture and backroom influence-peddling. Otherwise? Sadly, no. The republic and empire of Rome are gone, we don't commonly give such power to individuals anymore.
It must be wonderful to be able to conclude that corporations cannot act irresponsibly or neglect broader social obligations a priori. You better let reality know.
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On January 15 2014 06:09 KwarK wrote:Show nested quote +On January 15 2014 05:26 Nacl(Draq) wrote:On January 14 2014 22:56 KwarK wrote:On January 14 2014 16:55 DeepElemBlues wrote:Assuming that they keep the money the same place they keep the liability. If they separate the two then you're out of luck.
There's no place the company can put the money to keep it safe from a judge ordering them to hand it over. Unless it's in numbered accounts in some Kazakhstan bank and no one can prove that it is theirs. That's something that annoys me about corporate personhood. The advocates of it explain that a corporation is, at its heart, a group of people acting collectively and therefore should be respected and protected under the law as if it's a person. And yet if a corporation does something criminal or negligent the shareholders, who have been established to collectively be the corporation, are not held accountable. Shareholders aren't held accountable because most of the time shareholders do not hold an active position of authority within the company and it would be a great miscarriage of justice to punish people for something they had no active part in. Shareholder authority is delegated to the board and shareholder authority usually doesn't extend much past "we can fire the board." If your group is collectively negligent, or employ someone to be negligent on your behalf, you should be accountable. People would be far more involved in making sure their corporations acted responsibly in society if they didn't have all the rights and none of the accountability of the people involved. It's hardly fair to suggest that shareholders hire people to be negligent on their behalf when negligence occurs. Shareholders usually don't hire anyone except the board, and they hire them to increase their dividends and share price, not be negligent and have the government hit the company for millions or billions of dollars and have the value of their stock plummet. Let's say Wal-Mart commits some horrible crime, are you really suggesting 83-year old Mitzy Perkins from Creekbottom Junction, Iowa, who owns 100 shares of Wal-Mart stock, bears some responsibility? What did she or any shareholder do but buy stock? Mens rea, sir, you can't just throw it out the window because you feel like things would be better if you could spank people who had no actual connection to the crime. It is not likely that if you could, shareholders would become more vigilant in their oversight of the company. The more likely outcome of your suggestion would be that far fewer people would become shareholders, increasing the concentration of wealth and power in the hands of a few. Which would, things being as they are, probably make it harder for successful punishment of wrongdoing. That's bad, right? Cause it's not like you can have another shell company handle the storage for a nominal fee and then lease their services to the main company who then denies all responsibility in the case of a leak. Quit being so naive. If a company can create a legal barrier between its obligations and its assets it will. The idea that you can be a shareholder in a business while not actively taking any responsibility for what the business does in your name is the problem I seek to address. It would not be a miscarriage of justice to hold people accountable for what their business does, just because they're negligent in running the thing doesn't mean they don't own it. Yes, shareholders hire the board to increase their dividends or share price, not to act responsibly, ethically or in the long term interests of society. Well done, gold star. The reason they do this is because the arrangement allows them to act (because as we know the corporation really is just them, that's why it gets personhood) unethically and irresponsibly without ever having any repercussions. You've correctly identified that the shareholders don't give a shit about acting responsibly, and why would they, they're not accountable. So yes, if Mitzy Perkins is negligent and allowing criminal shit to happen in her name then yes, Mitzy Perkins bears a portion of the responsibility. That's what ownership entails. If you don't want to be responsible for something don't buy it, this should really be very obvious. The practice of absentee shareholders pushing their boards to maximise dividends while offloading costs to the public and acting in criminal ways would be ended. Banks that irresponsibly lost the savings of their depositors only to declare bankrupt and require the state to reimburse all the deposits would be held accountable. They're absentee landlords who simultaneously grant an agent with their rights and deny any responsibility for what the agent does with those rights. And as for "but if we didn't allow them to reap the rewards of antisocial and irresponsible practices without ever being held to account then they wouldn't do it and the only shareholders would be the ones who actually care how it's run", yeah, that's pretty much the point. Kwark, I have a question. Would you say then that parents are responsible for raising their child? If you answered yes, then whatever the child, regardless of age, does is actually the parent's responsibility? If you answered yes to that then it follows that when their child has kids since the parents were responsible for raising the child what the child of the child does is actually the grandparent's fault? If you say yes to that. Then isn't it really the great great great great great great great great grandparents fault? Then no one is able to be blamed that currently lives so there is in fact no way to punish people. That's kind of what a stockholder is. You give some money to a company in the thinking that they'll do something worthwhile, raising a kid is a lot like that but you also give love and compassion and have a great deal more to do with the actual outcome. Now in this idea the child grown up is the board they make decisions for themselves, and the parent (majority stockholders) can say, "that's not good" and fire the board. The great great great great great great great great great grandparent is that one stock holder who holds less than .0000000001% of the stock. Sure she has some impact on the company but she didn't tell them to act like that, in fact she can't tell them to do anything. She is so far removed, on her own, that she has no power. You might as well hold all of society accountable for things that go wrong, because lets face it, this society is where most of us were raised. Children aren't property. They're not owned by their parents. They're actually capable of free will and independent action, especially as they get older. Corporations on the other hand either need to grow up and be treated as independent entities rather than insisting that because they're owned by people they are people or be treated like property and have the owners held accountable. I don't accept your premise. I find your premise incredibly stupid and if you can't see the difference between not holding a human being's parents accountable for the actions of that independent, sentient human being and holding the owners of a business accountable for the non sentient, dependent business they own then I think you need to seek help.
My understanding is that Islamic law held back the development of both Western style finance and corporate entities in the Middle East. Are there any useful parallels that we can draw from that? Or do cultural / political differences make comparisons too hard?
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United States42785 Posts
On January 15 2014 06:21 JonnyBNoHo wrote:Show nested quote +On January 15 2014 06:09 KwarK wrote:On January 15 2014 05:26 Nacl(Draq) wrote:On January 14 2014 22:56 KwarK wrote:On January 14 2014 16:55 DeepElemBlues wrote:Assuming that they keep the money the same place they keep the liability. If they separate the two then you're out of luck.
There's no place the company can put the money to keep it safe from a judge ordering them to hand it over. Unless it's in numbered accounts in some Kazakhstan bank and no one can prove that it is theirs. That's something that annoys me about corporate personhood. The advocates of it explain that a corporation is, at its heart, a group of people acting collectively and therefore should be respected and protected under the law as if it's a person. And yet if a corporation does something criminal or negligent the shareholders, who have been established to collectively be the corporation, are not held accountable. Shareholders aren't held accountable because most of the time shareholders do not hold an active position of authority within the company and it would be a great miscarriage of justice to punish people for something they had no active part in. Shareholder authority is delegated to the board and shareholder authority usually doesn't extend much past "we can fire the board." If your group is collectively negligent, or employ someone to be negligent on your behalf, you should be accountable. People would be far more involved in making sure their corporations acted responsibly in society if they didn't have all the rights and none of the accountability of the people involved. It's hardly fair to suggest that shareholders hire people to be negligent on their behalf when negligence occurs. Shareholders usually don't hire anyone except the board, and they hire them to increase their dividends and share price, not be negligent and have the government hit the company for millions or billions of dollars and have the value of their stock plummet. Let's say Wal-Mart commits some horrible crime, are you really suggesting 83-year old Mitzy Perkins from Creekbottom Junction, Iowa, who owns 100 shares of Wal-Mart stock, bears some responsibility? What did she or any shareholder do but buy stock? Mens rea, sir, you can't just throw it out the window because you feel like things would be better if you could spank people who had no actual connection to the crime. It is not likely that if you could, shareholders would become more vigilant in their oversight of the company. The more likely outcome of your suggestion would be that far fewer people would become shareholders, increasing the concentration of wealth and power in the hands of a few. Which would, things being as they are, probably make it harder for successful punishment of wrongdoing. That's bad, right? Cause it's not like you can have another shell company handle the storage for a nominal fee and then lease their services to the main company who then denies all responsibility in the case of a leak. Quit being so naive. If a company can create a legal barrier between its obligations and its assets it will. The idea that you can be a shareholder in a business while not actively taking any responsibility for what the business does in your name is the problem I seek to address. It would not be a miscarriage of justice to hold people accountable for what their business does, just because they're negligent in running the thing doesn't mean they don't own it. Yes, shareholders hire the board to increase their dividends or share price, not to act responsibly, ethically or in the long term interests of society. Well done, gold star. The reason they do this is because the arrangement allows them to act (because as we know the corporation really is just them, that's why it gets personhood) unethically and irresponsibly without ever having any repercussions. You've correctly identified that the shareholders don't give a shit about acting responsibly, and why would they, they're not accountable. So yes, if Mitzy Perkins is negligent and allowing criminal shit to happen in her name then yes, Mitzy Perkins bears a portion of the responsibility. That's what ownership entails. If you don't want to be responsible for something don't buy it, this should really be very obvious. The practice of absentee shareholders pushing their boards to maximise dividends while offloading costs to the public and acting in criminal ways would be ended. Banks that irresponsibly lost the savings of their depositors only to declare bankrupt and require the state to reimburse all the deposits would be held accountable. They're absentee landlords who simultaneously grant an agent with their rights and deny any responsibility for what the agent does with those rights. And as for "but if we didn't allow them to reap the rewards of antisocial and irresponsible practices without ever being held to account then they wouldn't do it and the only shareholders would be the ones who actually care how it's run", yeah, that's pretty much the point. Kwark, I have a question. Would you say then that parents are responsible for raising their child? If you answered yes, then whatever the child, regardless of age, does is actually the parent's responsibility? If you answered yes to that then it follows that when their child has kids since the parents were responsible for raising the child what the child of the child does is actually the grandparent's fault? If you say yes to that. Then isn't it really the great great great great great great great great grandparents fault? Then no one is able to be blamed that currently lives so there is in fact no way to punish people. That's kind of what a stockholder is. You give some money to a company in the thinking that they'll do something worthwhile, raising a kid is a lot like that but you also give love and compassion and have a great deal more to do with the actual outcome. Now in this idea the child grown up is the board they make decisions for themselves, and the parent (majority stockholders) can say, "that's not good" and fire the board. The great great great great great great great great great grandparent is that one stock holder who holds less than .0000000001% of the stock. Sure she has some impact on the company but she didn't tell them to act like that, in fact she can't tell them to do anything. She is so far removed, on her own, that she has no power. You might as well hold all of society accountable for things that go wrong, because lets face it, this society is where most of us were raised. Children aren't property. They're not owned by their parents. They're actually capable of free will and independent action, especially as they get older. Corporations on the other hand either need to grow up and be treated as independent entities rather than insisting that because they're owned by people they are people or be treated like property and have the owners held accountable. I don't accept your premise. I find your premise incredibly stupid and if you can't see the difference between not holding a human being's parents accountable for the actions of that independent, sentient human being and holding the owners of a business accountable for the non sentient, dependent business they own then I think you need to seek help. My understanding is that Islamic law held back the development of both Western style finance and corporate entities in the Middle East. Are there any useful parallels that we can draw from that? Or do cultural / political differences make comparisons too hard?
Not sure what the relevance of this is to anything but they have rules regarding usury. So did Christianity for that matter, and many Christian groups still do require special arrangements be made for banking and insurance, although most have chosen practicality over what their religion says. But in the olden days we needed Jews to do all our banking for us because it was a sin.
Anyway, they have workarounds, a fuller explanation of them can be seen here.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Islamic_banking
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On January 15 2014 06:09 KwarK wrote:Show nested quote +On January 15 2014 05:26 Nacl(Draq) wrote:On January 14 2014 22:56 KwarK wrote:On January 14 2014 16:55 DeepElemBlues wrote:Assuming that they keep the money the same place they keep the liability. If they separate the two then you're out of luck.
There's no place the company can put the money to keep it safe from a judge ordering them to hand it over. Unless it's in numbered accounts in some Kazakhstan bank and no one can prove that it is theirs. That's something that annoys me about corporate personhood. The advocates of it explain that a corporation is, at its heart, a group of people acting collectively and therefore should be respected and protected under the law as if it's a person. And yet if a corporation does something criminal or negligent the shareholders, who have been established to collectively be the corporation, are not held accountable. Shareholders aren't held accountable because most of the time shareholders do not hold an active position of authority within the company and it would be a great miscarriage of justice to punish people for something they had no active part in. Shareholder authority is delegated to the board and shareholder authority usually doesn't extend much past "we can fire the board." If your group is collectively negligent, or employ someone to be negligent on your behalf, you should be accountable. People would be far more involved in making sure their corporations acted responsibly in society if they didn't have all the rights and none of the accountability of the people involved. It's hardly fair to suggest that shareholders hire people to be negligent on their behalf when negligence occurs. Shareholders usually don't hire anyone except the board, and they hire them to increase their dividends and share price, not be negligent and have the government hit the company for millions or billions of dollars and have the value of their stock plummet. Let's say Wal-Mart commits some horrible crime, are you really suggesting 83-year old Mitzy Perkins from Creekbottom Junction, Iowa, who owns 100 shares of Wal-Mart stock, bears some responsibility? What did she or any shareholder do but buy stock? Mens rea, sir, you can't just throw it out the window because you feel like things would be better if you could spank people who had no actual connection to the crime. It is not likely that if you could, shareholders would become more vigilant in their oversight of the company. The more likely outcome of your suggestion would be that far fewer people would become shareholders, increasing the concentration of wealth and power in the hands of a few. Which would, things being as they are, probably make it harder for successful punishment of wrongdoing. That's bad, right? Cause it's not like you can have another shell company handle the storage for a nominal fee and then lease their services to the main company who then denies all responsibility in the case of a leak. Quit being so naive. If a company can create a legal barrier between its obligations and its assets it will. The idea that you can be a shareholder in a business while not actively taking any responsibility for what the business does in your name is the problem I seek to address. It would not be a miscarriage of justice to hold people accountable for what their business does, just because they're negligent in running the thing doesn't mean they don't own it. Yes, shareholders hire the board to increase their dividends or share price, not to act responsibly, ethically or in the long term interests of society. Well done, gold star. The reason they do this is because the arrangement allows them to act (because as we know the corporation really is just them, that's why it gets personhood) unethically and irresponsibly without ever having any repercussions. You've correctly identified that the shareholders don't give a shit about acting responsibly, and why would they, they're not accountable. So yes, if Mitzy Perkins is negligent and allowing criminal shit to happen in her name then yes, Mitzy Perkins bears a portion of the responsibility. That's what ownership entails. If you don't want to be responsible for something don't buy it, this should really be very obvious. The practice of absentee shareholders pushing their boards to maximise dividends while offloading costs to the public and acting in criminal ways would be ended. Banks that irresponsibly lost the savings of their depositors only to declare bankrupt and require the state to reimburse all the deposits would be held accountable. They're absentee landlords who simultaneously grant an agent with their rights and deny any responsibility for what the agent does with those rights. And as for "but if we didn't allow them to reap the rewards of antisocial and irresponsible practices without ever being held to account then they wouldn't do it and the only shareholders would be the ones who actually care how it's run", yeah, that's pretty much the point. Kwark, I have a question. Would you say then that parents are responsible for raising their child? If you answered yes, then whatever the child, regardless of age, does is actually the parent's responsibility? If you answered yes to that then it follows that when their child has kids since the parents were responsible for raising the child what the child of the child does is actually the grandparent's fault? If you say yes to that. Then isn't it really the great great great great great great great great grandparents fault? Then no one is able to be blamed that currently lives so there is in fact no way to punish people. That's kind of what a stockholder is. You give some money to a company in the thinking that they'll do something worthwhile, raising a kid is a lot like that but you also give love and compassion and have a great deal more to do with the actual outcome. Now in this idea the child grown up is the board they make decisions for themselves, and the parent (majority stockholders) can say, "that's not good" and fire the board. The great great great great great great great great great grandparent is that one stock holder who holds less than .0000000001% of the stock. Sure she has some impact on the company but she didn't tell them to act like that, in fact she can't tell them to do anything. She is so far removed, on her own, that she has no power. You might as well hold all of society accountable for things that go wrong, because lets face it, this society is where most of us were raised. Children aren't property. They're not owned by their parents. They're actually capable of free will and independent action, especially as they get older. Corporations on the other hand either need to grow up and be treated as independent entities rather than insisting that because they're owned by people they are people or be treated like property and have the owners held accountable. I don't accept your premise. I find your premise incredibly stupid and if you can't see the difference between not holding a human being's parents accountable for the actions of that independent, sentient human being and holding the owners of a business accountable for the non sentient, dependent business they own then I think you need to seek help.
The point was that it was stupid. You can't hold people accountable for other people's actions because people have free will was what I was trying to get at. Your ad hominem is getting both excessive and disrespectful, as it is by nature. I don't really understand why you attack people the way you do.
The business is run by individuals, remember a group is a group of individuals each of them can make independent situations. I would suggest, you know, while we're suggesting things to each other, you take a break and relax. This is a discussion. Not a fist fight.
And when the board makes an independent situation, meaning they didn't ask the stock holders if they should do it, that results in something going horribly wrong the board should be held accountable, not the person who gave the board money. If money is the requirement with who should be blamed then giving money to a drunk makes you accountable for him driving drunk later.
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United States42785 Posts
On January 15 2014 06:32 Nacl(Draq) wrote:Show nested quote +On January 15 2014 06:09 KwarK wrote:On January 15 2014 05:26 Nacl(Draq) wrote:On January 14 2014 22:56 KwarK wrote:On January 14 2014 16:55 DeepElemBlues wrote:Assuming that they keep the money the same place they keep the liability. If they separate the two then you're out of luck.
There's no place the company can put the money to keep it safe from a judge ordering them to hand it over. Unless it's in numbered accounts in some Kazakhstan bank and no one can prove that it is theirs. That's something that annoys me about corporate personhood. The advocates of it explain that a corporation is, at its heart, a group of people acting collectively and therefore should be respected and protected under the law as if it's a person. And yet if a corporation does something criminal or negligent the shareholders, who have been established to collectively be the corporation, are not held accountable. Shareholders aren't held accountable because most of the time shareholders do not hold an active position of authority within the company and it would be a great miscarriage of justice to punish people for something they had no active part in. Shareholder authority is delegated to the board and shareholder authority usually doesn't extend much past "we can fire the board." If your group is collectively negligent, or employ someone to be negligent on your behalf, you should be accountable. People would be far more involved in making sure their corporations acted responsibly in society if they didn't have all the rights and none of the accountability of the people involved. It's hardly fair to suggest that shareholders hire people to be negligent on their behalf when negligence occurs. Shareholders usually don't hire anyone except the board, and they hire them to increase their dividends and share price, not be negligent and have the government hit the company for millions or billions of dollars and have the value of their stock plummet. Let's say Wal-Mart commits some horrible crime, are you really suggesting 83-year old Mitzy Perkins from Creekbottom Junction, Iowa, who owns 100 shares of Wal-Mart stock, bears some responsibility? What did she or any shareholder do but buy stock? Mens rea, sir, you can't just throw it out the window because you feel like things would be better if you could spank people who had no actual connection to the crime. It is not likely that if you could, shareholders would become more vigilant in their oversight of the company. The more likely outcome of your suggestion would be that far fewer people would become shareholders, increasing the concentration of wealth and power in the hands of a few. Which would, things being as they are, probably make it harder for successful punishment of wrongdoing. That's bad, right? Cause it's not like you can have another shell company handle the storage for a nominal fee and then lease their services to the main company who then denies all responsibility in the case of a leak. Quit being so naive. If a company can create a legal barrier between its obligations and its assets it will. The idea that you can be a shareholder in a business while not actively taking any responsibility for what the business does in your name is the problem I seek to address. It would not be a miscarriage of justice to hold people accountable for what their business does, just because they're negligent in running the thing doesn't mean they don't own it. Yes, shareholders hire the board to increase their dividends or share price, not to act responsibly, ethically or in the long term interests of society. Well done, gold star. The reason they do this is because the arrangement allows them to act (because as we know the corporation really is just them, that's why it gets personhood) unethically and irresponsibly without ever having any repercussions. You've correctly identified that the shareholders don't give a shit about acting responsibly, and why would they, they're not accountable. So yes, if Mitzy Perkins is negligent and allowing criminal shit to happen in her name then yes, Mitzy Perkins bears a portion of the responsibility. That's what ownership entails. If you don't want to be responsible for something don't buy it, this should really be very obvious. The practice of absentee shareholders pushing their boards to maximise dividends while offloading costs to the public and acting in criminal ways would be ended. Banks that irresponsibly lost the savings of their depositors only to declare bankrupt and require the state to reimburse all the deposits would be held accountable. They're absentee landlords who simultaneously grant an agent with their rights and deny any responsibility for what the agent does with those rights. And as for "but if we didn't allow them to reap the rewards of antisocial and irresponsible practices without ever being held to account then they wouldn't do it and the only shareholders would be the ones who actually care how it's run", yeah, that's pretty much the point. Kwark, I have a question. Would you say then that parents are responsible for raising their child? If you answered yes, then whatever the child, regardless of age, does is actually the parent's responsibility? If you answered yes to that then it follows that when their child has kids since the parents were responsible for raising the child what the child of the child does is actually the grandparent's fault? If you say yes to that. Then isn't it really the great great great great great great great great grandparents fault? Then no one is able to be blamed that currently lives so there is in fact no way to punish people. That's kind of what a stockholder is. You give some money to a company in the thinking that they'll do something worthwhile, raising a kid is a lot like that but you also give love and compassion and have a great deal more to do with the actual outcome. Now in this idea the child grown up is the board they make decisions for themselves, and the parent (majority stockholders) can say, "that's not good" and fire the board. The great great great great great great great great great grandparent is that one stock holder who holds less than .0000000001% of the stock. Sure she has some impact on the company but she didn't tell them to act like that, in fact she can't tell them to do anything. She is so far removed, on her own, that she has no power. You might as well hold all of society accountable for things that go wrong, because lets face it, this society is where most of us were raised. Children aren't property. They're not owned by their parents. They're actually capable of free will and independent action, especially as they get older. Corporations on the other hand either need to grow up and be treated as independent entities rather than insisting that because they're owned by people they are people or be treated like property and have the owners held accountable. I don't accept your premise. I find your premise incredibly stupid and if you can't see the difference between not holding a human being's parents accountable for the actions of that independent, sentient human being and holding the owners of a business accountable for the non sentient, dependent business they own then I think you need to seek help. The point was that it was stupid. You can't hold people accountable for other people's actions because people have free will was what I was trying to get at. Your ad hominem is getting both excessive and disrespectful, as it is by nature. I don't really understand why you attack people the way you do. The business is run by individuals, remember a group is a group of individuals each of them can make independent situations. I would suggest you take a break and relax. This is a discussion. Not a fist fight.
Then we agree, your argument is stupid. I'm not sure why you're deliberately making stupid arguments for me to shoot down then backtracking and taking my side but whatever.
Legally a business has rights derived from corporate personhood because it is judged to be a collection of individuals acting together. However that only goes the one way, when it wants free speech it argues that really it's not the business speaking but the shareholders, when it acts in a negligent way then that's nothing to do with the shareholders because clearly the business is its own separate entity.
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United States42785 Posts
On January 15 2014 06:32 Nacl(Draq) wrote:
If money is the requirement with who should be blamed then giving money to a drunk makes you accountable for him driving drunk later.
You don't own drunk people. You can own a business. Jesus. Is this what passes for logic where you live?
But if I gave my slave a load of alcohol and car keys and he drove drunk I would absolutely be held accountable for his actions because he's my slave. That's how property works.
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On January 15 2014 06:38 KwarK wrote:Show nested quote +On January 15 2014 06:32 Nacl(Draq) wrote:On January 15 2014 06:09 KwarK wrote:On January 15 2014 05:26 Nacl(Draq) wrote:On January 14 2014 22:56 KwarK wrote:On January 14 2014 16:55 DeepElemBlues wrote:Assuming that they keep the money the same place they keep the liability. If they separate the two then you're out of luck.
There's no place the company can put the money to keep it safe from a judge ordering them to hand it over. Unless it's in numbered accounts in some Kazakhstan bank and no one can prove that it is theirs. That's something that annoys me about corporate personhood. The advocates of it explain that a corporation is, at its heart, a group of people acting collectively and therefore should be respected and protected under the law as if it's a person. And yet if a corporation does something criminal or negligent the shareholders, who have been established to collectively be the corporation, are not held accountable. Shareholders aren't held accountable because most of the time shareholders do not hold an active position of authority within the company and it would be a great miscarriage of justice to punish people for something they had no active part in. Shareholder authority is delegated to the board and shareholder authority usually doesn't extend much past "we can fire the board." If your group is collectively negligent, or employ someone to be negligent on your behalf, you should be accountable. People would be far more involved in making sure their corporations acted responsibly in society if they didn't have all the rights and none of the accountability of the people involved. It's hardly fair to suggest that shareholders hire people to be negligent on their behalf when negligence occurs. Shareholders usually don't hire anyone except the board, and they hire them to increase their dividends and share price, not be negligent and have the government hit the company for millions or billions of dollars and have the value of their stock plummet. Let's say Wal-Mart commits some horrible crime, are you really suggesting 83-year old Mitzy Perkins from Creekbottom Junction, Iowa, who owns 100 shares of Wal-Mart stock, bears some responsibility? What did she or any shareholder do but buy stock? Mens rea, sir, you can't just throw it out the window because you feel like things would be better if you could spank people who had no actual connection to the crime. It is not likely that if you could, shareholders would become more vigilant in their oversight of the company. The more likely outcome of your suggestion would be that far fewer people would become shareholders, increasing the concentration of wealth and power in the hands of a few. Which would, things being as they are, probably make it harder for successful punishment of wrongdoing. That's bad, right? Cause it's not like you can have another shell company handle the storage for a nominal fee and then lease their services to the main company who then denies all responsibility in the case of a leak. Quit being so naive. If a company can create a legal barrier between its obligations and its assets it will. The idea that you can be a shareholder in a business while not actively taking any responsibility for what the business does in your name is the problem I seek to address. It would not be a miscarriage of justice to hold people accountable for what their business does, just because they're negligent in running the thing doesn't mean they don't own it. Yes, shareholders hire the board to increase their dividends or share price, not to act responsibly, ethically or in the long term interests of society. Well done, gold star. The reason they do this is because the arrangement allows them to act (because as we know the corporation really is just them, that's why it gets personhood) unethically and irresponsibly without ever having any repercussions. You've correctly identified that the shareholders don't give a shit about acting responsibly, and why would they, they're not accountable. So yes, if Mitzy Perkins is negligent and allowing criminal shit to happen in her name then yes, Mitzy Perkins bears a portion of the responsibility. That's what ownership entails. If you don't want to be responsible for something don't buy it, this should really be very obvious. The practice of absentee shareholders pushing their boards to maximise dividends while offloading costs to the public and acting in criminal ways would be ended. Banks that irresponsibly lost the savings of their depositors only to declare bankrupt and require the state to reimburse all the deposits would be held accountable. They're absentee landlords who simultaneously grant an agent with their rights and deny any responsibility for what the agent does with those rights. And as for "but if we didn't allow them to reap the rewards of antisocial and irresponsible practices without ever being held to account then they wouldn't do it and the only shareholders would be the ones who actually care how it's run", yeah, that's pretty much the point. Kwark, I have a question. Would you say then that parents are responsible for raising their child? If you answered yes, then whatever the child, regardless of age, does is actually the parent's responsibility? If you answered yes to that then it follows that when their child has kids since the parents were responsible for raising the child what the child of the child does is actually the grandparent's fault? If you say yes to that. Then isn't it really the great great great great great great great great grandparents fault? Then no one is able to be blamed that currently lives so there is in fact no way to punish people. That's kind of what a stockholder is. You give some money to a company in the thinking that they'll do something worthwhile, raising a kid is a lot like that but you also give love and compassion and have a great deal more to do with the actual outcome. Now in this idea the child grown up is the board they make decisions for themselves, and the parent (majority stockholders) can say, "that's not good" and fire the board. The great great great great great great great great great grandparent is that one stock holder who holds less than .0000000001% of the stock. Sure she has some impact on the company but she didn't tell them to act like that, in fact she can't tell them to do anything. She is so far removed, on her own, that she has no power. You might as well hold all of society accountable for things that go wrong, because lets face it, this society is where most of us were raised. Children aren't property. They're not owned by their parents. They're actually capable of free will and independent action, especially as they get older. Corporations on the other hand either need to grow up and be treated as independent entities rather than insisting that because they're owned by people they are people or be treated like property and have the owners held accountable. I don't accept your premise. I find your premise incredibly stupid and if you can't see the difference between not holding a human being's parents accountable for the actions of that independent, sentient human being and holding the owners of a business accountable for the non sentient, dependent business they own then I think you need to seek help. The point was that it was stupid. You can't hold people accountable for other people's actions because people have free will was what I was trying to get at. Your ad hominem is getting both excessive and disrespectful, as it is by nature. I don't really understand why you attack people the way you do. The business is run by individuals, remember a group is a group of individuals each of them can make independent situations. I would suggest you take a break and relax. This is a discussion. Not a fist fight. Then we agree, your argument is stupid. I'm not sure why you're deliberately making stupid arguments for me to shoot down then backtracking and taking my side but whatever. Legally a business has rights derived from corporate personhood because it is judged to be a collection of individuals acting together. However that only goes the one way, when it wants free speech it argues that really it's not the business speaking but the shareholders, when it acts in a negligent way then that's nothing to do with the shareholders because clearly the business is its own separate entity.
The argument was the point that you can't hold individuals accountable for other individuals actions.
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On January 15 2014 06:39 KwarK wrote:Show nested quote +On January 15 2014 06:32 Nacl(Draq) wrote:
If money is the requirement with who should be blamed then giving money to a drunk makes you accountable for him driving drunk later. You don't own drunk people. You can own a business. Jesus. Is this what passes for logic where you live? But if I gave my slave a load of alcohol and car keys and he drove drunk I would absolutely be held accountable for his actions because he's my slave. That's how property works.
So money has no business in owning things. So owning things is owning things. Ok, I see the point.
So if you owned .000001% of that slave and then someone else, who owned more than 50% of him, told him to drive drunk. Would you be responsible?
Again, attacking the person instead of the topic is considered ad hominem and is generally considered rude. That's fine. I can deal with it.
(and oddly enough, if you own a bar and that bar gives alcohol to someone and that person later drives drunk, then the owner of the bar is held responsible. So in actuality even though you don't own the person you are responsible. This is how US law works anyway.)
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Norway28674 Posts
maybe there's something wrong with the very premise that the sole purpose of a corporation is to make money for the shareholders
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On January 15 2014 06:32 KwarK wrote:Show nested quote +On January 15 2014 06:21 JonnyBNoHo wrote:On January 15 2014 06:09 KwarK wrote:On January 15 2014 05:26 Nacl(Draq) wrote:On January 14 2014 22:56 KwarK wrote:On January 14 2014 16:55 DeepElemBlues wrote:Assuming that they keep the money the same place they keep the liability. If they separate the two then you're out of luck.
There's no place the company can put the money to keep it safe from a judge ordering them to hand it over. Unless it's in numbered accounts in some Kazakhstan bank and no one can prove that it is theirs. That's something that annoys me about corporate personhood. The advocates of it explain that a corporation is, at its heart, a group of people acting collectively and therefore should be respected and protected under the law as if it's a person. And yet if a corporation does something criminal or negligent the shareholders, who have been established to collectively be the corporation, are not held accountable. Shareholders aren't held accountable because most of the time shareholders do not hold an active position of authority within the company and it would be a great miscarriage of justice to punish people for something they had no active part in. Shareholder authority is delegated to the board and shareholder authority usually doesn't extend much past "we can fire the board." If your group is collectively negligent, or employ someone to be negligent on your behalf, you should be accountable. People would be far more involved in making sure their corporations acted responsibly in society if they didn't have all the rights and none of the accountability of the people involved. It's hardly fair to suggest that shareholders hire people to be negligent on their behalf when negligence occurs. Shareholders usually don't hire anyone except the board, and they hire them to increase their dividends and share price, not be negligent and have the government hit the company for millions or billions of dollars and have the value of their stock plummet. Let's say Wal-Mart commits some horrible crime, are you really suggesting 83-year old Mitzy Perkins from Creekbottom Junction, Iowa, who owns 100 shares of Wal-Mart stock, bears some responsibility? What did she or any shareholder do but buy stock? Mens rea, sir, you can't just throw it out the window because you feel like things would be better if you could spank people who had no actual connection to the crime. It is not likely that if you could, shareholders would become more vigilant in their oversight of the company. The more likely outcome of your suggestion would be that far fewer people would become shareholders, increasing the concentration of wealth and power in the hands of a few. Which would, things being as they are, probably make it harder for successful punishment of wrongdoing. That's bad, right? Cause it's not like you can have another shell company handle the storage for a nominal fee and then lease their services to the main company who then denies all responsibility in the case of a leak. Quit being so naive. If a company can create a legal barrier between its obligations and its assets it will. The idea that you can be a shareholder in a business while not actively taking any responsibility for what the business does in your name is the problem I seek to address. It would not be a miscarriage of justice to hold people accountable for what their business does, just because they're negligent in running the thing doesn't mean they don't own it. Yes, shareholders hire the board to increase their dividends or share price, not to act responsibly, ethically or in the long term interests of society. Well done, gold star. The reason they do this is because the arrangement allows them to act (because as we know the corporation really is just them, that's why it gets personhood) unethically and irresponsibly without ever having any repercussions. You've correctly identified that the shareholders don't give a shit about acting responsibly, and why would they, they're not accountable. So yes, if Mitzy Perkins is negligent and allowing criminal shit to happen in her name then yes, Mitzy Perkins bears a portion of the responsibility. That's what ownership entails. If you don't want to be responsible for something don't buy it, this should really be very obvious. The practice of absentee shareholders pushing their boards to maximise dividends while offloading costs to the public and acting in criminal ways would be ended. Banks that irresponsibly lost the savings of their depositors only to declare bankrupt and require the state to reimburse all the deposits would be held accountable. They're absentee landlords who simultaneously grant an agent with their rights and deny any responsibility for what the agent does with those rights. And as for "but if we didn't allow them to reap the rewards of antisocial and irresponsible practices without ever being held to account then they wouldn't do it and the only shareholders would be the ones who actually care how it's run", yeah, that's pretty much the point. Kwark, I have a question. Would you say then that parents are responsible for raising their child? If you answered yes, then whatever the child, regardless of age, does is actually the parent's responsibility? If you answered yes to that then it follows that when their child has kids since the parents were responsible for raising the child what the child of the child does is actually the grandparent's fault? If you say yes to that. Then isn't it really the great great great great great great great great grandparents fault? Then no one is able to be blamed that currently lives so there is in fact no way to punish people. That's kind of what a stockholder is. You give some money to a company in the thinking that they'll do something worthwhile, raising a kid is a lot like that but you also give love and compassion and have a great deal more to do with the actual outcome. Now in this idea the child grown up is the board they make decisions for themselves, and the parent (majority stockholders) can say, "that's not good" and fire the board. The great great great great great great great great great grandparent is that one stock holder who holds less than .0000000001% of the stock. Sure she has some impact on the company but she didn't tell them to act like that, in fact she can't tell them to do anything. She is so far removed, on her own, that she has no power. You might as well hold all of society accountable for things that go wrong, because lets face it, this society is where most of us were raised. Children aren't property. They're not owned by their parents. They're actually capable of free will and independent action, especially as they get older. Corporations on the other hand either need to grow up and be treated as independent entities rather than insisting that because they're owned by people they are people or be treated like property and have the owners held accountable. I don't accept your premise. I find your premise incredibly stupid and if you can't see the difference between not holding a human being's parents accountable for the actions of that independent, sentient human being and holding the owners of a business accountable for the non sentient, dependent business they own then I think you need to seek help. My understanding is that Islamic law held back the development of both Western style finance and corporate entities in the Middle East. Are there any useful parallels that we can draw from that? Or do cultural / political differences make comparisons too hard? Not sure what the relevance of this is to anything but they have rules regarding usury. So did Christianity for that matter, and many Christian groups still do require special arrangements be made for banking and insurance, although most have chosen practicality over what their religion says. But in the olden days we needed Jews to do all our banking for us because it was a sin. Anyway, they have workarounds, a fuller explanation of them can be seen here. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Islamic_banking
Yeah I know they have workarounds. I was pointing more towards the reluctance to create corporate entities than the usury aspect. Timur Kuran has argued that such reluctance held back Middle Eastern development. I'm wondering what you think of that.
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On January 15 2014 06:41 Liquid`Drone wrote:
maybe there's something wrong with the very premise that the sole purpose of a corporation is to make money for the shareholders
That's crazy talk, it is not as though we live in a society or anything!
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On January 15 2014 06:41 Liquid`Drone wrote:
maybe there's something wrong with the very premise that the sole purpose of a corporation is to make money for the shareholders
Eh? Is that how it works in Norway or something?
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EPT
