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[timotheus]

This is really to open a discussion here, based off this:

The major thing I've heard is that a corporation as an entity is granted all the rights of a regular person, but cannot be held accountable for crimes the same way a person is due to actual blame being distributed between shareholders and executives who are very rarely directly and solely responsible for any wrongdoing.  So they enjoy all the legal benefits of personhood, but none of the downsides.  Plus, corporations have more resources at their disposal than individual people, which makes for an incredibly unfair imbalance whenever there are legal disputes between the two.

This is one of the issues that the Occupy group feels is important. My question is, how would corporations be dealt with legally instead? If they aren't granted the rights of a person, where are lawsuits pointed to? Are the top executives responsible, in a criminal sense, for wrongdoing that the company does? (IE, if a company inadvertently does something / makes a product that kills someone, the top exec's are charged with manslaughter?)

Do we restrict companies to not go over a certain size, from an employee and asset point of view?

I look forward to hearing what people think!

[penguinofhonor]

How is this handled in other countries?

[Levi]

I suppose you could always just have the government punish the shareholders, that would seem the most technically correct thing to do.

Although that'll be the end of my investing days.     

[Neonivek]

I suppose you could always just have the government punish the shareholders, that would seem the most technically correct thing to do.

Although that'll be the end of my investing days.     

Allowing the people who run a company to be charged with the actions of the company under their charge including the workers would go a long way.

Of course it would probably be worse.

[Flying Dice]

We should go the other route. We need to pursue technologies that will allow us to either assimilate all employees and executives of a corporation into a hivemind, or develop specialized A.I. to control all aspects of the corporation. Then the corporation is an individual entity and can be treated as such.


...


I am Tony Hayward of BP. Resistance is futile. You will be assimilated.

[Zrk2]

I think we need to make corporations actually responsible for their actions, via significant fines and total suspension of activities for a set period of time in leiu of jail time. Of course this has the flaw that it fucks over the employees while their company is frozen and can't pay them.

[Max White]

If companies are subject to the same set of laws that humans are, how is it that a human can own a company but not another human?
I think people have been cherry picking laws here.

[Levi]

I suppose you could always just have the government punish the shareholders, that would seem the most technically correct thing to do.

Although that'll be the end of my investing days.     

Allowing the people who run a company to be charged with the actions of the company under their charge including the workers would go a long way.

Of course it would probably be worse.

Sure, but the shareholders could always just appoint another patsy to be head of the corp.  In theory, it should be the shareholders who have final responsibility as they have the power to remove/appoint all the people who make the decisions for a corporation.

[i2amroy]

I'm sorry, but in my mind that would be similar to saying that you as a voter are automatically personally responsible for everything your government does since you elected the people. Heck, you might not even have voted for the person who is in charge but against them, yet in that example you would then be held responsible for what they did.

[mainiac]

This is one of the issues that the Occupy group feels is important. My question is, how would corporations be dealt with legally instead? If they aren't granted the rights of a person, where are lawsuits pointed to? Are the top executives responsible, in a criminal sense, for wrongdoing that the company does? (IE, if a company inadvertently does something / makes a product that kills someone, the top exec's are charged with manslaughter?)

What you are describing there is a personal corporation, a limited liability partnership or a limited liability corporation, three of the most common types of corporation in the US.  Owning such a corporation can leave you liable to the crimes and debts of the corporation.  For obvious reasons, these types of incorporations aren't used by the big publicly listed corporations you are thinking of.

Now there is an argument to be made for corporate entity-hood as without corporate laws, as legal liability might otherwise scare of potential stockholders or stakeholders who would be afraid to invest their capitol or labor to a speculative venture.  But it should be noted that we shouldn't be granting corporate entity-hood because it's moral to hold CEO's unaccountable for their crimes or give them free reign to rack up corporate debt and default scot free.  We do these things because it fosters a more equal market place where people don't need to be afraid to invest in companies that they aren't intimately familiar with.  It's a measure that makes a lot of sense on practical grounds but shouldn't be argued in the moral sense.  But these days people seem to think that it's a moral rather then a practical measure and that is quite frankly perplexing.

[TheBronzePickle]

Corporations are an unfortunately dangerous tool. Like government, they can be absolutely wonderful and useful when run properly. Also like government, they have the unfortunate tendency to be run really, really horribly and become incredibly destructive because of it. The best you can do fairly is to try to punish the person or people who caused the problem and hope they or their replacements don't cause the problem again.

[Aqizzar]

Sure, but the shareholders could always just appoint another patsy to be head of the corp.  In theory, it should be the shareholders who have final responsibility as they have the power to remove/appoint all the people who make the decisions for a corporation.

The solution to that legal conundrum is easy - when a corporation is charged with a crime, whoever was in charge of the company at the time it was committed is responsible.  That's how the law already works, in the rare cases that a specific person is charged at all, when the prosecution decides that a specific person is to blame instead of the company as a whole.


Anyway, for further information on the rights of corporate speech, just Google the phrase "Citizens United" and you'll learn more than you ever wanted to.  It was a Supreme Court decision about two years ago, wherein it was ruled that spending money to advertise for political campaigns, as long as the candidate being spent for does not directly interact with the spender, is free speech and cannot be limited in any way or dollar amount.  And by the way, corporations are people.  I elaborated on it a bit back when it was handed down, but I didn't really know what to think about it at the time.  It was essentially an expansion of a prior ruling, Buckley v Valeo, which first established the "money equals speech" idea.

That was ten months before the 2010 Congressional elections, which wound up shattering all prior records of "non-affiliated" campaign spending.  Stephen Colbert has since been running a very informative series describing the founding of his "Colbert SuperPAC", a new legal construction just formed since the decision.  Basically, a Political Action Committee is a specific type of federally corporation that exists to spend money on political campaigning.  "Super" PACs (they're actually called that in law) can take unlimited money from other corporations in addition to individuals, never have disclose the identity of their donors, and don't have to disclose the dollar amounts or how its spent until six months after the election they spend money in.  All it takes for a PAC to be a Super PAC is a one page letter of intent to the Federal Election Commission.

And if you honestly think that the FEC even can or wants to enforce ideas like "non-affiliation", feel free to Google the galaxy of PACs that formed around Sarah Palin a year ago, or the ones buying all of Herman Cain's books now.

There are a smattering of "citizens groups" campaigning for a new Constitutional amendment to reverse all this stuff.  These are the ones that get the most press, and I can already see problems with them.  It requires a fairly careful legal hash to make sure no rights are denied to legit people without extending them to the wrong kind of non-people.  The first line about "living human beings" for example necessarily excludes constitutional protection a dead person's estate or endangered species laws.  More importantly of course, it's really hard to amend the Constitution, and by definition, all the money in the world would be lined up against such a campaign.

[Levi]

I'm sorry, but in my mind that would be similar to saying that you as a voter are automatically personally responsible for everything your government does since you elected the people. Heck, you might not even have voted for the person who is in charge but against them, yet in that example you would then be held responsible for what they did.

Nah, its totally different.  Its my choice to put my money into a corporation that might be doing shady things for my profit.  You don't get to choose your government, you just pick one and hope they get in(from a pretty limited set of choices).

[Levi]

Sure, but the shareholders could always just appoint another patsy to be head of the corp.  In theory, it should be the shareholders who have final responsibility as they have the power to remove/appoint all the people who make the decisions for a corporation.

The solution to that legal conundrum is easy - when a corporation is charged with a crime, whoever was in charge of the company at the time it was committed is responsible.  That's how the law already works, in the rare cases that a specific person is charged at all, when the prosecution decides that a specific person is to blame instead of the company as a whole.

How does that help though?  The shareholders wouldn't care if the CEO is charged and punished, as they can just put in a new one.  The shareholders are the ones who encourage profit no matter the cost, and the CEO is the one who decides the best way to do that.

[Aqizzar]

Sure, but the shareholders could always just appoint another patsy to be head of the corp.  In theory, it should be the shareholders who have final responsibility as they have the power to remove/appoint all the people who make the decisions for a corporation.

The solution to that legal conundrum is easy - when a corporation is charged with a crime, whoever was in charge of the company at the time it was committed is responsible.  That's how the law already works, in the rare cases that a specific person is charged at all, when the prosecution decides that a specific person is to blame instead of the company as a whole.

How does that help though?  The shareholders wouldn't care if the CEO is charged and punished, as they can just put in a new one.  The shareholders are the ones who encourage profit no matter the cost, and the CEO is the one who decides the best way to do that.

It'll convince the people they put in charge not to fuck around, unless the new guy is stone cold retarded anyway.  That's the point of a law.  You think CEOs like being charged with crimes?