If it's not worth spending money to keep developers on the project, then better to shutter it, and have people move off than just let it sit abandoned indefinitely... right?
I mean, that's what makes sense in the real world...
It's common knowledge that Google has already been using consumer-grade drives for all of their servers. Because if a drive fails, "so what, we have another one over there holding the data..."
This is pretty much similar to what happened with GMail. They came out and said, "here, have a gigabyte for free!" and everyone was like, "yeah, right..."
Google has storage leaking out of its ears, and generates massive amounts of new data every day... sticking other people's data into the pile wouldn't even be a straw that breaks the camel's back... The camel is already hauling a hojillion ton rock, a straw isn't going to do shit.
DISCLAIMER: I worked for Google, this does not in any way reflect Google's official word on this news.
I had a boyfriend with a motorola phone... it absolutely REFUSED to charge if connected into an intelligent host, unless their special software were installed. It was a total pain in the butt...
4. Expansion (massive) of Federal Entitlement Programs
Uh... yeah, no.
The Federal Entitlements have seen record increases in people on them, but that's not because they were expanded, or the rules were loosened at all. There are more people on welfare, because the economy sucks.
While Obamacare is not as progressive as a socialist would implement, that does not mean it is not progressive.
In a land where children work long hours in factories for crappy pay, a law that would limit them to only 40 hours a week is still a progressive policy, even though it is not as progressive as what we have already implemented ourselves...
WE ARE TIRED OF ALL THE COPYRIGHT / LOGO / PATENT DISPUTES !!!
I'm sure the OSI is as well. And I'm sure that the OSI likes the logo, and filed regretfully...
Why would they file if they don't want to file?
Trademarks are use-'em-or-lose-'em. If you see something that is potentially infringing, and don't do anything about it, then when someone else comes along and actually does infringe, and you don't like it, they can point to you giving up your rights to your trademark in the previous case, and POOF! There goes your trademark entirely.
It's a shitty situation, but this is where trademark law has left us. For the OSI to have a trademark, they have to sue the OSHWA over this...
They don't seem so evil these days, but I'm sure they would if they could. Or maybe Ballmer's just a big softy compared to Gates? I don't know, I suspect that the competition in mobile and from Google has really dented their ability to be really evil.
I don't know... by their personalities, one would expect Ballmer to be the crazy man... but then it's always the quiet ones, isn't it?
I suspect that your later guess is the more likely culprit. I like to think that Apple put a big dent in things as well.
Actually, you are not allowed to be stop unless the officer suspects that you've committed at least a primary infraction. That is, crossing a center-line without signaling, etc.
This was a big deal in Washington State for about a year, when the legislature made driving while talking on a cell-phone a secondary infraction. The deal was "it's now illegal to drive and talk on your cell-phone", but it turned out that LEOs were not allowed to stop people just for chatting on their cell phones while driving. So, even though the cops knew you were breaking the law, the infraction was not sufficient to justify a stop. Very quickly the legislature went in and revised the statutes in order to ensure that talking on a cell phone while driving was a primary infraction, and so officers could stop you for it.
"But wait, I thought driving was a privilege," indeed it is, but that doesn't mean that we give up our right to be free from arrest/detainment. An officer needs a credible reason to stop you, and detain you... otherwise it's just voluntary, and you can drive off whenever you like. (Key point: regularly ask officers if you're free to leave, because it forces them to declare if you're stopping voluntarily or if they have reasonable suspicion to detain you. Driving or walking, same thing.)
Wikipedia has a good article explaining random checkpoints in the US and it boils down to in Michigan Dept. of State Police v. Sitz (1990) the SCOTUS found that a properly conducted random checkpoint can justify the minor infraction of civil rights, due to this offsetting the public good done by having the checkpoints. The NTSB has since published guidelines for how to properly conduct a random checkpoint, which include that it must be made at the supervisory level, officer discretion has to be eliminated, and public notification prior to the checkpoints has to be made, so that people wishing to avoid random checkpoints can make a choice to avoid driving.
Let's be clear about this: the SCOTUS ruled that random checkpoints WERE an infringement on 4th amendment protections against seizure of person, but as long as the infraction is minimized, the public good done outweighs the infraction.
It has NOTHING to do with "driving is a privilege"...
Wow, this guy has some serious management skillz! Maybe he should be running Spain or Greece or the US?
Dude, the guy has let the entire world crumble underneath him. I don't think that's management skills. Rather, I think people like him HAVE been running Spain, Greece, and the US...
Note that sobriety checkpoints don't have to have probable cause either.
Sobriety checkpoints don't need probably cause, because they're stopping everyone.
If sobriety checkpoints selectively chose who to actually stop, then they would require probable cause for those whom they are stopping.
Short of a cop stopping and frisking every person they walk past, "stop and frisk" requires probable cause. No less in most jurisdictions, they need reasonable suspicion that you are carrying A WEAPON.
Wait... you don't think that an apostrophe, a grave accent, a glottal stop, a prime, and a right single quotation mark are all the same thing, do you? Even poorly-written Perl throwaway code from the 90's understands the difference.
WTF? U+0294 looks nothing like an apostrophe... or do you think that a glottal stop written orthographically as an apostrophe is a separate thing from an apostrophe used for punctuation?
I'm not aware of any ruling or law stating that only people can own property. What is a legal trust?
I'm not sure of what precisely decided it, but it's so old of a position in Common Law traditions, that it's ancient. Kind of like asking "who invented fire?"
A legal trust is a collection of assets held by a trustee for a beneficiary. For all purposes, the trustee owns the assets, but has various requirements of law about how to handle the money. (For instance, a trustee must hold any hard cash in an interest baring account, because it is so obviously in the beneficiary's best interests to earn interest on cash.)
So, the "trust" never at any time owns property of its own, it is rather the collection of properties owned by the trustee on behalf of the beneficiary. Which also means that I can make a trust in the form of a trust to my cat as a beneficiary, which need not be able to hold the property itself, since the trustee will be the one owning the property.
And when a company goes bankrupt, and creditors sue to collect their payments, they should be able to sue as deep as all of the pockets of every shareholder individually holds all together?
Example, shareholder Alice owns 1 share of ACME Corporation worth $1, meanwhile she also owns a beachfront mansion in Florida worth $1 million. Bob is the CEO of ACME Corporation, and runs up millions of dollars of debt, without anything to show for it. (Spends it all on parties and extravagant consumables, like lobster dinners for all of the employees.) As a result ACME Corporation goes bankrupt. Creditors sue the shareholders, and seize Alice's beachfront mansion in Florida in order to cover their losses, because hey, she's a shareholder, so she is liable in full for anything that ACME Corporation does.
As owner of property Alice is the one who decides everything. And she is effectively the employer. Bob is not paying her a paycheck, but rather she is paying Bob a paycheck. On the other hand if all 3 co-owned the assets then they would be partners and none of them are employees.
Except, that Alice is simply renting the property to Bob, and thus specifically stated by contract not liable for Bob's actions with that property, and even if found liable, is indemnified by Bob. Alice now is either untouchable, or even if you can touch her, guaranteed by Bob to not incur any personal loss.
As stated in the hypothetical, Alice specifically does not have any hand in the company. She is merely holding and providing property to Bob.
If I rent a car from a car agency, and in order to avoid a 2-year old in the street, I am forced to clobber a fence. I would be responsible for the fence, because the car agency has no liability in the matter. Bob is holding the toxic waste in tenancy for Alice, and Alice obviously does not consent to Bob dumping it in Derick's yard, so instead, at best Bob is responsible for abusing the tenancy of Alice's property.
The burden of proving who is responsible for Charlie dumping toxic waste does not shift depending on whether he works for a corporation or a non-corporation.
As long as his actions are not criminal, then yes, you're right. My hypothetical was taking too large of a bite there.
Also by your scenario Charlie and Bob were in effect 1/3 owner of the assets and those assets are not protected simply by signing over ownership to Alice while Bob and Charlie continue to use them. Any transfer of ownership that is done merely for the sake of protecting property from being properly forfeited to the victims of a wrongdoing does not have that effect. The transaction can be deemed by the courts to have been invalid under law.
We're already assuming that corporations are not people in the hypothetical. In it though, it is unclear as to whether Charlie should be considered a partner, or simply an employee. The distinction matters in as much as actions that Charlie takes for his own personal gain against the other partners (say, embezzlement) are his own actions, and thus he can only be sued for what he owns, and not all of the partners jointly. If he's ruled a partner, then one could sue for 1/3 of the jointly held property, if he's ruled merely an employee, then he can't be sued for any of the jointly held property. If they were a corporation, then Charlie can only be sued for what he holds individually, and one cannot sue the corporation at all. (Although, if Charlie owns stock in the corporation, then that could be transferred to the plaintiff.)
Basically, in reality, the example that I give is pretty much Alice as a physical manifestation of a corporate legal fiction... really, I suppose the whole point here is that, whether corporations are legally people or not, the same shit is going to go down, just in a different way. Why not simplify all of the scenarios by not requiring people to list even owner of a corporation in a lawsuit individually?
You can easily make a legal system which allows suing corporations without calling them legal persons. It was just laziness that prevented doing a copy of existing laws followed by s/person/corporation/g on one copy.
It's not actually easy to make such a legal system. And your lazy approach would have resulted in text stating: "All corporations are endowed by their Creator the inalienable rights to Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness." So... again, no, it wouldn't be easy, and it's not laziness that keep people from enumerating all rights granted to persons (since the list is specifically open-ended, this isn't even possible), and explicitly granting them to corporations as well. It was an expedient and efficient choice for the time, considering the alternative is intractable.
Sure, because no partnership or sole proprietorship has ever controlled property or been sued... *eyeroll*
They don't. In a partnership, the property is always owned by individual persons, either individually, or collectively. For instance, if a partnership rents an office space, the contract is signed by each partner, and is not valid unless agreed to by each partner (either explicitly, or implicitly). However, each individual partner is a collective owner of the property. When a suit is brought against the "partnership", the suit is brought against each person of the partnership individually and collectively.
This works much the same way, as one would sue a married person. Most suits that are against a person of unknown married status, are against "Bob Smith, and Jane Doe Smith, spouse of Bob Smith" and declares in the statement of facts something to the effect that Bob Smith's actions were done with intent to benefit both Bob Smith and Jane Doe Smith. Notice that each person is being sued separately, and can in fact insist on separate council to represent their own interests, because in some cases Jane Doe Smith can sever herself from the lawsuit. Now, extend this to the case of a publicly held company. Suits against partnerships take the form "Alice Anderson, Bob Barley, Charlie Chaplin, and all other partners of the ACME Partnership", and again, each person is listed separately, and sued essentially separately, and thus entitled to their own council if they feel that their interests do not align. (Namely, say Alice embezzled a bunch of Derick's money, and so Derick brings suit against the Partnership, Bob and Charlie can potentially sever themselves from the suit, because Alice was committing an illegal act, without their knowledge, and thus had no authorization to act on their behalf or benefit. As well, they specifically did not benefit from Alice's actions, because her actions resulted in benefit only to herself.)
In a sole proprietorship it's even easier... the property is owned quite simply by the person themselves, the same way my boyfriend owns his house.
So, let's take a look now at a few different legal entities renting a property. Alice is a housewife, and married to Bob, they are both living with Charlie in a rented apartment. Derick is a sole-proprietor and renting an office space, he has an employees, Eric. Frank, George, and Harry are in a partnership and renting an office space, they have an employee Ingrid. And finally, John, Keith, and Llewellyn own stock in ACME Corporation, who is renting an office space. All of these office spaces are owned by Mike.
All of these entities fail to pay their rent, and are grossly overdue, the tenants vacate the property, but Mike has to sue to collect the cancellation penalty, and past-due rent. As well, let's consider the individuals suing their landlord for some reason.
In the first example, given that only Bob and Charlie have signed the lease, so Mike files "Mike vs. Bob, Jane Doe spouse of Bob, Charlie, Jane Doe spouse of Charlie". Vice versa "Alice, Bob, and Charlie vs. Mike and Jane Doe spouse of Mike".
In the second example, Derick is the one who signed the lease, so Mike files, "Mike vs. Derick". Vice versa, "Derrick, vs. Mike and Jane Doe spouse of Mike"
In the third example, Frank, George, and Harry all signed the lease, and Mike files, "Mike vs. Frank, Jane Doe spouse of Frank, George, Jane Doe spouse of George, Harry, and Jane Doe spouse of Harry". Vice versa, "Frank, George, and Harry vs. Mike and Jane Doe spouse of Mike"
In the fourth example, ACME Corporation signed the lease through its authorized agent John. Mike files, "Mike vs. John, Jane Doe spouse of John, and ACME Corporation". Vice versa, "ACME Corporation vs. Mike and Jane Doe spouse of Mike".
Do you understand the difference here? Yes, people can own property collectively, but say a partnership owns a housing development, and you sue the partnership for an illegal action taken by one partner. The oth
So what you're saying is that corporations must be people because winning a large monetary judgment is more important than justice?
Legal theory holds that "damages" are fundamentally monetary, and that a legal judgement can only grant monetary compensation in order to balance out the harm done. If you do $100 of property damage to my car, then you owe me $100. Fairly simple. ("Equity" was a distinctly different compensation that dealt with things that are non-monetary.)
But seriously. Yes, a real person dumped the toxic waste in my backyard, but the civil justice system doesn't generally care about punishing people for their actions, it's generally worried about returning the situation to the prior state before the damage. What good does it do for me to punish Charlie from the example, when he was operating under orders to dump the toxic waste there? I could not touch the people who were fundamentally responsible, unless I can prove that they were actually causally involved.
If people knew they'd go to jail for doing something illegal while at work, they'd do less illegal shit while at work.
People can still be held liable for criminal actions that they performed, even if those actions were done as an agent of a corporation. One does not gain immunity from criminal prosecution simply by being a corporate drone. Each person is responsible for their own actions.
However, considering that the criminal system is designed to punish people for their criminal actions, and not to compensate victims for the damages done, what you suggest would not be justice either. Sure, some people would go to jail, but what happens to me, now that my backyard is a toxic waste dump... do I have to spend money out of pocket in order to clean it up, with no compensation? Or should I be able to sue the corporation (and thusly, all of the collective persons owning the company, all together as one) in order to receive compensation for my loss?
Corporations legally are treated as a single entity, but not a person.
You're wrong. The term in Common law, is "legal person". It is called a "convenient legal fiction". And even in Civil Law traditions, it's even more explicitly codified. The German Basic Laws state explicitly that corporations are afforded all the same rights as a person in so far as those rights can be applied. It also explicitly calls them "Personen", or "persons".
You example is a false dilemma; why can we not treat corporations as mere legal entities which have the ability to own property and be sued and so forth.
I do admit that I have obscured the details for a third option: a legal entity with less rights than a person, but still retain the ability to enter into contracts, own property, and be sued.
The reason that option was obscured is because of the significant amount of leg work that would be required to do it properly. You would have to codify a new legal entity which is explicitly guaranteed no rights, unless explicitly stated, and then selectively grant it rights. Effectively, you would have to whitelist all the actions and abilities that a corporation could and could not do. Maintaining a proper whitelist is an agonizing amount of work, and typically results in a large number of situations where a corporation will get screwed over, because it is denied a right wrongly. As in: we all think the corporation should have the right, but since it's a "default no" situation, the corporation isn't conferred the right by default, and so even though everyone agrees that corporations should have that right, they don't.
Of course, that is yet again, another false dilemma, because one could instead use a form of blacklist, where corporations are defaulted to a "yes, they have that right", but are explicitly denied certain rights in some explicit list. But then, in this case, there is little improvement over the current system, where corporations will attempt to assert rights that most people feel they should not have, and since the default answer is "yes", they do get those rights. So, sure, we take away corporation's rights to free speech, but what about the right to XY... there is potentially an infinite set of rights, we cannot restrict things properly by excluding them explicitly.
Namely, the alternatives are encumbered by consequence.
Nice straw man argument, nobody is arguing corporations should not be able to own property.
I understand that no one wants to argue that corporations shouldn't be able to own property.
Unfortunately, most people don't argue "corporations and other legal entities should not be entitled to all of the same rights that a natural person has", but argue "corporations shouldn't be people".
I am not making a strawman, but rather showing exactly what a simple solution of "corporations aren't people" would mean. (Which is also not a strawman, because every amendment I've seen that proposes to dissolve corporation personhood, does not construct an alternative method to address the vacuum.)
Slashdot Mirror
I was reminded today, that very often a company will kill the golden goose for a kick ass deep-fried goose and have an awesome quarter...
In other news, the phone book has released hojillions of people's names, addresses and phone numbers.
It's not unreliability...
If it's not worth spending money to keep developers on the project, then better to shutter it, and have people move off than just let it sit abandoned indefinitely... right?
I mean, that's what makes sense in the real world...
https://what-if.xkcd.com/63/
It's common knowledge that Google has already been using consumer-grade drives for all of their servers. Because if a drive fails, "so what, we have another one over there holding the data..."
This is pretty much similar to what happened with GMail. They came out and said, "here, have a gigabyte for free!" and everyone was like, "yeah, right..."
Google has storage leaking out of its ears, and generates massive amounts of new data every day... sticking other people's data into the pile wouldn't even be a straw that breaks the camel's back... The camel is already hauling a hojillion ton rock, a straw isn't going to do shit.
DISCLAIMER: I worked for Google, this does not in any way reflect Google's official word on this news.
They've already been shelling out free porn in exchange for people solving captchas for them... I don't think this will change anything...
I had a boyfriend with a motorola phone... it absolutely REFUSED to charge if connected into an intelligent host, unless their special software were installed. It was a total pain in the butt...
4. Expansion (massive) of Federal Entitlement Programs
Uh... yeah, no.
The Federal Entitlements have seen record increases in people on them, but that's not because they were expanded, or the rules were loosened at all. There are more people on welfare, because the economy sucks.
Failing to implement a single progressive policy
While Obamacare is not as progressive as a socialist would implement, that does not mean it is not progressive.
In a land where children work long hours in factories for crappy pay, a law that would limit them to only 40 hours a week is still a progressive policy, even though it is not as progressive as what we have already implemented ourselves...
WE ARE TIRED OF ALL THE COPYRIGHT / LOGO / PATENT DISPUTES !!!
I'm sure the OSI is as well. And I'm sure that the OSI likes the logo, and filed regretfully...
Why would they file if they don't want to file?
Trademarks are use-'em-or-lose-'em. If you see something that is potentially infringing, and don't do anything about it, then when someone else comes along and actually does infringe, and you don't like it, they can point to you giving up your rights to your trademark in the previous case, and POOF! There goes your trademark entirely.
It's a shitty situation, but this is where trademark law has left us. For the OSI to have a trademark, they have to sue the OSHWA over this...
Really. I pinged a friend who uses iGoogle, and he's just like "Meh".
They don't seem so evil these days, but I'm sure they would if they could. Or maybe Ballmer's just a big softy compared to Gates? I don't know, I suspect that the competition in mobile and from Google has really dented their ability to be really evil.
I don't know... by their personalities, one would expect Ballmer to be the crazy man... but then it's always the quiet ones, isn't it?
I suspect that your later guess is the more likely culprit. I like to think that Apple put a big dent in things as well.
Actually, you are not allowed to be stop unless the officer suspects that you've committed at least a primary infraction. That is, crossing a center-line without signaling, etc.
This was a big deal in Washington State for about a year, when the legislature made driving while talking on a cell-phone a secondary infraction. The deal was "it's now illegal to drive and talk on your cell-phone", but it turned out that LEOs were not allowed to stop people just for chatting on their cell phones while driving. So, even though the cops knew you were breaking the law, the infraction was not sufficient to justify a stop. Very quickly the legislature went in and revised the statutes in order to ensure that talking on a cell phone while driving was a primary infraction, and so officers could stop you for it.
"But wait, I thought driving was a privilege," indeed it is, but that doesn't mean that we give up our right to be free from arrest/detainment. An officer needs a credible reason to stop you, and detain you... otherwise it's just voluntary, and you can drive off whenever you like. (Key point: regularly ask officers if you're free to leave, because it forces them to declare if you're stopping voluntarily or if they have reasonable suspicion to detain you. Driving or walking, same thing.)
Wikipedia has a good article explaining random checkpoints in the US and it boils down to in Michigan Dept. of State Police v. Sitz (1990) the SCOTUS found that a properly conducted random checkpoint can justify the minor infraction of civil rights, due to this offsetting the public good done by having the checkpoints. The NTSB has since published guidelines for how to properly conduct a random checkpoint, which include that it must be made at the supervisory level, officer discretion has to be eliminated, and public notification prior to the checkpoints has to be made, so that people wishing to avoid random checkpoints can make a choice to avoid driving.
Let's be clear about this: the SCOTUS ruled that random checkpoints WERE an infringement on 4th amendment protections against seizure of person, but as long as the infraction is minimized, the public good done outweighs the infraction.
It has NOTHING to do with "driving is a privilege"...
Wow, this guy has some serious management skillz! Maybe he should be running Spain or Greece or the US?
Dude, the guy has let the entire world crumble underneath him. I don't think that's management skills. Rather, I think people like him HAVE been running Spain, Greece, and the US...
Note that sobriety checkpoints don't have to have probable cause either.
Sobriety checkpoints don't need probably cause, because they're stopping everyone.
If sobriety checkpoints selectively chose who to actually stop, then they would require probable cause for those whom they are stopping.
Short of a cop stopping and frisking every person they walk past, "stop and frisk" requires probable cause. No less in most jurisdictions, they need reasonable suspicion that you are carrying A WEAPON.
Wait... you don't think that an apostrophe, a grave accent, a glottal stop, a prime, and a right single quotation mark are all the same thing, do you? Even poorly-written Perl throwaway code from the 90's understands the difference.
WTF? U+0294 looks nothing like an apostrophe... or do you think that a glottal stop written orthographically as an apostrophe is a separate thing from an apostrophe used for punctuation?
Which also means that I can make a trust out of my estate with my cat as a beneficiary
TFTF myself...
I'm not aware of any ruling or law stating that only people can own property. What is a legal trust?
I'm not sure of what precisely decided it, but it's so old of a position in Common Law traditions, that it's ancient. Kind of like asking "who invented fire?"
A legal trust is a collection of assets held by a trustee for a beneficiary. For all purposes, the trustee owns the assets, but has various requirements of law about how to handle the money. (For instance, a trustee must hold any hard cash in an interest baring account, because it is so obviously in the beneficiary's best interests to earn interest on cash.)
So, the "trust" never at any time owns property of its own, it is rather the collection of properties owned by the trustee on behalf of the beneficiary. Which also means that I can make a trust in the form of a trust to my cat as a beneficiary, which need not be able to hold the property itself, since the trustee will be the one owning the property.
Shareholders can and should be sue-able.
And when a company goes bankrupt, and creditors sue to collect their payments, they should be able to sue as deep as all of the pockets of every shareholder individually holds all together?
Example, shareholder Alice owns 1 share of ACME Corporation worth $1, meanwhile she also owns a beachfront mansion in Florida worth $1 million. Bob is the CEO of ACME Corporation, and runs up millions of dollars of debt, without anything to show for it. (Spends it all on parties and extravagant consumables, like lobster dinners for all of the employees.) As a result ACME Corporation goes bankrupt. Creditors sue the shareholders, and seize Alice's beachfront mansion in Florida in order to cover their losses, because hey, she's a shareholder, so she is liable in full for anything that ACME Corporation does.
As owner of property Alice is the one who decides everything. And she is effectively the employer. Bob is not paying her a paycheck, but rather she is paying Bob a paycheck. On the other hand if all 3 co-owned the assets then they would be partners and none of them are employees.
Except, that Alice is simply renting the property to Bob, and thus specifically stated by contract not liable for Bob's actions with that property, and even if found liable, is indemnified by Bob. Alice now is either untouchable, or even if you can touch her, guaranteed by Bob to not incur any personal loss.
As stated in the hypothetical, Alice specifically does not have any hand in the company. She is merely holding and providing property to Bob.
If I rent a car from a car agency, and in order to avoid a 2-year old in the street, I am forced to clobber a fence. I would be responsible for the fence, because the car agency has no liability in the matter. Bob is holding the toxic waste in tenancy for Alice, and Alice obviously does not consent to Bob dumping it in Derick's yard, so instead, at best Bob is responsible for abusing the tenancy of Alice's property.
The burden of proving who is responsible for Charlie dumping toxic waste does not shift depending on whether he works for a corporation or a non-corporation.
As long as his actions are not criminal, then yes, you're right. My hypothetical was taking too large of a bite there.
Also by your scenario Charlie and Bob were in effect 1/3 owner of the assets and those assets are not protected simply by signing over ownership to Alice while Bob and Charlie continue to use them. Any transfer of ownership that is done merely for the sake of protecting property from being properly forfeited to the victims of a wrongdoing does not have that effect. The transaction can be deemed by the courts to have been invalid under law.
We're already assuming that corporations are not people in the hypothetical. In it though, it is unclear as to whether Charlie should be considered a partner, or simply an employee. The distinction matters in as much as actions that Charlie takes for his own personal gain against the other partners (say, embezzlement) are his own actions, and thus he can only be sued for what he owns, and not all of the partners jointly. If he's ruled a partner, then one could sue for 1/3 of the jointly held property, if he's ruled merely an employee, then he can't be sued for any of the jointly held property. If they were a corporation, then Charlie can only be sued for what he holds individually, and one cannot sue the corporation at all. (Although, if Charlie owns stock in the corporation, then that could be transferred to the plaintiff.)
Basically, in reality, the example that I give is pretty much Alice as a physical manifestation of a corporate legal fiction... really, I suppose the whole point here is that, whether corporations are legally people or not, the same shit is going to go down, just in a different way. Why not simplify all of the scenarios by not requiring people to list even owner of a corporation in a lawsuit individually?
You can easily make a legal system which allows suing corporations without calling them legal persons. It was just laziness that prevented doing a copy of existing laws followed by s/person/corporation/g on one copy.
It's not actually easy to make such a legal system. And your lazy approach would have resulted in text stating: "All corporations are endowed by their Creator the inalienable rights to Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness." So... again, no, it wouldn't be easy, and it's not laziness that keep people from enumerating all rights granted to persons (since the list is specifically open-ended, this isn't even possible), and explicitly granting them to corporations as well. It was an expedient and efficient choice for the time, considering the alternative is intractable.
Sure, because no partnership or sole proprietorship has ever controlled property or been sued... *eyeroll*
They don't. In a partnership, the property is always owned by individual persons, either individually, or collectively. For instance, if a partnership rents an office space, the contract is signed by each partner, and is not valid unless agreed to by each partner (either explicitly, or implicitly). However, each individual partner is a collective owner of the property. When a suit is brought against the "partnership", the suit is brought against each person of the partnership individually and collectively.
This works much the same way, as one would sue a married person. Most suits that are against a person of unknown married status, are against "Bob Smith, and Jane Doe Smith, spouse of Bob Smith" and declares in the statement of facts something to the effect that Bob Smith's actions were done with intent to benefit both Bob Smith and Jane Doe Smith. Notice that each person is being sued separately, and can in fact insist on separate council to represent their own interests, because in some cases Jane Doe Smith can sever herself from the lawsuit. Now, extend this to the case of a publicly held company. Suits against partnerships take the form "Alice Anderson, Bob Barley, Charlie Chaplin, and all other partners of the ACME Partnership", and again, each person is listed separately, and sued essentially separately, and thus entitled to their own council if they feel that their interests do not align. (Namely, say Alice embezzled a bunch of Derick's money, and so Derick brings suit against the Partnership, Bob and Charlie can potentially sever themselves from the suit, because Alice was committing an illegal act, without their knowledge, and thus had no authorization to act on their behalf or benefit. As well, they specifically did not benefit from Alice's actions, because her actions resulted in benefit only to herself.)
In a sole proprietorship it's even easier... the property is owned quite simply by the person themselves, the same way my boyfriend owns his house.
So, let's take a look now at a few different legal entities renting a property. Alice is a housewife, and married to Bob, they are both living with Charlie in a rented apartment. Derick is a sole-proprietor and renting an office space, he has an employees, Eric. Frank, George, and Harry are in a partnership and renting an office space, they have an employee Ingrid. And finally, John, Keith, and Llewellyn own stock in ACME Corporation, who is renting an office space. All of these office spaces are owned by Mike.
All of these entities fail to pay their rent, and are grossly overdue, the tenants vacate the property, but Mike has to sue to collect the cancellation penalty, and past-due rent. As well, let's consider the individuals suing their landlord for some reason.
In the first example, given that only Bob and Charlie have signed the lease, so Mike files "Mike vs. Bob, Jane Doe spouse of Bob, Charlie, Jane Doe spouse of Charlie". Vice versa "Alice, Bob, and Charlie vs. Mike and Jane Doe spouse of Mike".
In the second example, Derick is the one who signed the lease, so Mike files, "Mike vs. Derick". Vice versa, "Derrick, vs. Mike and Jane Doe spouse of Mike"
In the third example, Frank, George, and Harry all signed the lease, and Mike files, "Mike vs. Frank, Jane Doe spouse of Frank, George, Jane Doe spouse of George, Harry, and Jane Doe spouse of Harry". Vice versa, "Frank, George, and Harry vs. Mike and Jane Doe spouse of Mike"
In the fourth example, ACME Corporation signed the lease through its authorized agent John. Mike files, "Mike vs. John, Jane Doe spouse of John, and ACME Corporation". Vice versa, "ACME Corporation vs. Mike and Jane Doe spouse of Mike".
Do you understand the difference here? Yes, people can own property collectively, but say a partnership owns a housing development, and you sue the partnership for an illegal action taken by one partner. The oth
So what you're saying is that corporations must be people because winning a large monetary judgment is more important than justice?
Legal theory holds that "damages" are fundamentally monetary, and that a legal judgement can only grant monetary compensation in order to balance out the harm done. If you do $100 of property damage to my car, then you owe me $100. Fairly simple. ("Equity" was a distinctly different compensation that dealt with things that are non-monetary.)
But seriously. Yes, a real person dumped the toxic waste in my backyard, but the civil justice system doesn't generally care about punishing people for their actions, it's generally worried about returning the situation to the prior state before the damage. What good does it do for me to punish Charlie from the example, when he was operating under orders to dump the toxic waste there? I could not touch the people who were fundamentally responsible, unless I can prove that they were actually causally involved.
If people knew they'd go to jail for doing something illegal while at work, they'd do less illegal shit while at work.
People can still be held liable for criminal actions that they performed, even if those actions were done as an agent of a corporation. One does not gain immunity from criminal prosecution simply by being a corporate drone. Each person is responsible for their own actions.
However, considering that the criminal system is designed to punish people for their criminal actions, and not to compensate victims for the damages done, what you suggest would not be justice either. Sure, some people would go to jail, but what happens to me, now that my backyard is a toxic waste dump... do I have to spend money out of pocket in order to clean it up, with no compensation? Or should I be able to sue the corporation (and thusly, all of the collective persons owning the company, all together as one) in order to receive compensation for my loss?
Corporations legally are treated as a single entity, but not a person.
You're wrong. The term in Common law, is "legal person". It is called a "convenient legal fiction". And even in Civil Law traditions, it's even more explicitly codified. The German Basic Laws state explicitly that corporations are afforded all the same rights as a person in so far as those rights can be applied. It also explicitly calls them "Personen", or "persons".
You example is a false dilemma; why can we not treat corporations as mere legal entities which have the ability to own property and be sued and so forth.
I do admit that I have obscured the details for a third option: a legal entity with less rights than a person, but still retain the ability to enter into contracts, own property, and be sued.
The reason that option was obscured is because of the significant amount of leg work that would be required to do it properly. You would have to codify a new legal entity which is explicitly guaranteed no rights, unless explicitly stated, and then selectively grant it rights. Effectively, you would have to whitelist all the actions and abilities that a corporation could and could not do. Maintaining a proper whitelist is an agonizing amount of work, and typically results in a large number of situations where a corporation will get screwed over, because it is denied a right wrongly. As in: we all think the corporation should have the right, but since it's a "default no" situation, the corporation isn't conferred the right by default, and so even though everyone agrees that corporations should have that right, they don't.
Of course, that is yet again, another false dilemma, because one could instead use a form of blacklist, where corporations are defaulted to a "yes, they have that right", but are explicitly denied certain rights in some explicit list. But then, in this case, there is little improvement over the current system, where corporations will attempt to assert rights that most people feel they should not have, and since the default answer is "yes", they do get those rights. So, sure, we take away corporation's rights to free speech, but what about the right to XY... there is potentially an infinite set of rights, we cannot restrict things properly by excluding them explicitly.
Namely, the alternatives are encumbered by consequence.
Nice straw man argument, nobody is arguing corporations should not be able to own property.
I understand that no one wants to argue that corporations shouldn't be able to own property.
Unfortunately, most people don't argue "corporations and other legal entities should not be entitled to all of the same rights that a natural person has", but argue "corporations shouldn't be people".
I am not making a strawman, but rather showing exactly what a simple solution of "corporations aren't people" would mean. (Which is also not a strawman, because every amendment I've seen that proposes to dissolve corporation personhood, does not construct an alternative method to address the vacuum.)