[chillingeffect]

The invention of the corporation is virtually to eliminate responsibility/culpability from any individual.

Human car crash? Human punishment. Corporate-owned car crash? A fine which reduces salaries some negligible percent.

[perplex3d]

Yes, corporations have all of the rights of a person, abilities beyond a person, yet few of the responsibilities of a person.

[eichin]

Our failure at "corporate alignment" makes it pretty clear that we're also going to fail at any version of "AI alignment"...

[jononor]

The two will likely facilitate eachother :(

[parineum]

They actually don't have all the rights of a person and they do have those same responsibilities.

If this company was a sole proprietorship, the only recourse this kid would have is to sue the owner, up to bankruptcy.

Since it's a corporation, his recourse is to sue the company, up to bankruptcy.

As for corporations having rights, I can explain it further if necessary but the key understanding is that the singular of "corporations are people" is "a corporation is people" not "a corporation is a person".

[wkat4242]

You can't put a corporation in prison. But a person you can. This is one of the big problems. The people making the decisions at corporations are shielded from personal consequences by the corporation. A corporation can be shut down but it rarely happens.

Even when Boeing knowingly caused the deaths of hundreds (especially the second crash was entirely preventable if they would have been honest after the first one), all they got were some fines. Those just end up being charged back to their customers, a big one being the government who fined them in the first place.

[Gormo]

> You can't put a corporation in prison. But a person you can. This is one of the big problems.

It really isn't -- we're talking about a category of activities that involves only financial liability or civil torts in the first place, regardless of whether the parties involved are organizations or individuals. You can't put people in prison for civil torts.

Prison is irrelevant to 98% of the discussion here. And the small fraction of cases in the status quo that do involve criminal liability -- even within organizations -- absolutely do assign that liability to specific individuals, and absolutely can involve criminal penalties including jail time. Actual criminal conduct is precisely where the courts "pierce the veil" and hold individuals accountable.

> Even when Boeing knowingly caused the deaths of hundreds (especially the second crash was entirely preventable if they would have been honest after the first one), all they got were some fines.

All anyone would ever get in a lawsuit is some fines. The matter is inherently a civil one. And if there were any indications of criminal conduct, criminal liability can be applied -- as it often is -- to the individuals who engaged in it regardless of whether they are operating within an organization or on their own initiative.

The only real difference is that when you sue a large corporation, you're much more able to actually collect the damages you win than you would be if you were just suing one guy operating by himself. If the aim of justice is remunerative, not just punitive, then this is a much superior situation.

> Those just end up being charged back to their customers, a big one being the government who fined them in the first place.

Who would be paying to settle the matter in your preferred situation? It sounds like the most likely outcome is that the victims would just eat the costs they've already incurred, since there'd be little chance of collecting damages, and taxpayers would bear the burden of paying for the punishment of whomever ends up holding the hot potato after all the scapegoating and blame deflection plays out.

[parineum]

> Even when Boeing knowingly caused the deaths

Since corporations aren't people, Boeing didn't know anything.

Did someone at Boeing have all of that knowledge?

[wkat4242]

I'm sure the top leadership was well aware of what happened after the first crash yes. They should have immediately gone public and would have prevented the second crash.

Don't forget that hiding MCAS from pilots and the FAA was a conscious decision. It wasn't something that 'just happened'. The decision to not make it depend on redundant AoA sensors by default too.

My point is, I can imagine that the MCAS suicidal side-effect was something unexpected (it was a technical failure edge-case in a specific and rare scenario) and I get that not anticipating it could have been a mistake, not a conscious decision. But after the first crash they should have owned up to it and not waited for a second crash.

[rkomorn]

And who even cares if they knew?

Extenuating circumstances, at best.

[GuinansEyebrows]

> Since corporations aren't people, Boeing didn't know anything.

you have to recognize that a statement like this means that decision-makers at boeing either knew or were negligent in their duties.

[parineum]

Which is a hell of a thing to say without evidence.

[account42]

A drunk driver doesn't get to claim that they didn't know someone was in front of their car.

[zdragnar]

You need a judge and jury for prison sentences for criminal convictions.

If the government decides to prosecute the matter as a civil infraction, or doesn't even bother prosecuting but just has an executive agency hand out a fine, that's not a matter of the corporation shielding people, that's a matter of the government failing to prosecute or secure a conviction.

[mindslight]

If the company is a sole proprietorship, you can sue the person who controls it up to bankruptcy, which will affect their personal life significantly. If the company is a corporation/LLC, you can sue the corporate entity up to the bankruptcy of the corporate entity, while the people controlling the company remain unaffected.

This gets even more perverse. If you're an individual you actually can't just set up an LLC to limit your own liability. There's no manner for an individual to say "I'm putting on a hat and acting solely as the LLC" - rather as the owner you need to find and employ enough judgement-proof patsies that the whole thing becomes a "group project" and you can say you personally weren't aware of whatever problem gave rise to liability. In other words, the very design of corporations/LLCs encourages avoiding responsibility.

You're correct with the nitpick about the Supreme Council's justification, but that justification is still poor reasoning. Corporations are government-created liability shields. How they can direct their employees should be limited, to avoid trampling on those individuals' own natural rights. A person or group of people who want to exercise their personal natural rights through hired employees can always forgo the government-created liability shield and go sole proprietorship / gen partnership.

[Gormo]

> If the company is a sole proprietorship, you can sue the person who controls it up to bankruptcy, which will affect their personal life significantly.

I'm sure it will. But how do you collect $30M in damages from a single individual whose entire net worth is e.g. $1M? What if the sole proprietor actually owns no assets whatsoever, because he's set up a bunch of arrangements where he leases everything from third parties, and contracts out his business operations to a different set of third parties, etc.?

I don't get why so many people are so intent on trying to attribute the motivations to maximize one's own take, deflect blame for harm away from themselves, and cover up their questionable activities to some specific organizational model. All of those motivations come from the human beings involved -- they were always present and always will be -- and those same human beings will manipulate whatever rules or institutions are involved to the greatest extent that they can.

Blaming a particular organizational model for the malicious intentions of the people who are just using that model as a tool is a deep, deep error.

> If you're an individual you actually can't just set up an LLC to limit your own liability.

What are you talking about? Of course you can. People do it all the time.

> rather as the owner you need to find and employ enough judgement-proof patsies that the whole thing becomes a "group project" and you can say you personally weren't aware of whatever problem gave rise to liability.

You're conflating entirely unrelated concepts of liability here. Limited liability as it relates to LLCs and corporations is for financial liability. It means that the organizations debts are not the shareholders' debts. It has nothing to do with legal liability for one's own purposeful conduct, whether tortious or criminal.

The kind of liability protection that you think corporations enjoy but single-member LLCs don't -- protection from the liability for individual criminal behavior -- does not exist for anyone at all.

> A person or group of people who want to exercise their personal natural rights through hired employees can always forgo the government-created liability shield and go sole proprietorship / gen partnership.

The ownership structure of a business has nothing at all to do with how it hires employees and directs their activities. The same law of agency and doctrine of vicarious liability applies to all agent-principal relationships regardless of whether the principal is a corporation or a sole proprietorship.

[mindslight]

> how do you collect $30M in damages from a single individual

It's not about getting made whole from damages, it's about the incentives for the business owner. A sole proprietor has their own skin fully in the game, whereas an LLC owner does not (only modulo things customarily shielded from bankruptcy like retirement savings and primary dwelling, and asset protection strategies for the extremely rich, like charitable foundations)

> I don't get why so many people are so intent on trying to attribute the motivations to maximize one's own take, deflect blame for harm away from themselves, and cover up their questionable activities to some specific organizational model

Because this specific legal structure (not organizational model, that is orthogonal) is a powerful tool for deflecting blame.

> You're conflating entirely unrelated concepts of liability here... It has nothing to do with legal liability for one's own purposeful conduct, whether tortious or criminal

The point is that these concepts are quite intertwined for small businesses, and only become distinct when there are enough people involved to make a nobody's-fault "group project". Let's say I want to own a piece of rental property and think putting it in an LLC will protect my personal life from all the random things that might happen playing host to other people's lives. Managing one property doesn't take terribly much time so I do it myself. Now it snows, the tenant does a crappy job of shoveling, and someone slips on the sidewalk up front, gets hurt, and sues. Since I'm personally involved in supervising the condition of the property, there is now a theory of personal liability for me that I should have been aware of the poor conditions of the sidewalk. (This same liability applies to the tenant, or anyone that was hired to shovel, but they're usually judgement proof, sympathetic, etc).

Same thing with making repairs to the property, etc - any direct involvement (supplying anything but investment capital) opens up avenues for personal liability, negating the LLC protections.

> The same law of agency and doctrine of vicarious liability applies

The point is that LLC/corporate structures allow for much higher levels of scaling, allowing them to apply higher levels of coercion to their employees. Since these limited liability structures are purely creations of government (rather than something existing outside of government), it's straightforwardly justifiable to regulate what activities they may engage in to mitigate this coercion.

[cool_man_bob]

Unfortunately the company has a big war chest, and I have a small war chest, and was priced out of court through legal shenanigans and delays the corporations lawyers could afford.

Just bring back fucking pistol deals. I have a better chance of defending myself there.

[b00ty4breakfast]

I remember reading a quote from someone to the effect of "I'll support corporate personhood after I see Texas execute a corporation". I'm definitely misremembering but you get the sentiment, haha

[CyberDildonics]

Don't forget paying their way out of crimes and no applicability to three strikes laws.