[bit-anarchist]

The one that backs the law, for instance. But, more broadly, corporations, specially ones ruled by shareholders/contracts, tend to have a will of their own, and "people" in ethics is more about will and desire than biology.

[EnergyAmy]

It's a dangerous game to anthropomorphize legal fictions by using terms like attributing "will" to them. Likewise by sneaking in priors with the term "people". It's best to stick to calling them legal fiction.

It might help to picture them as literally a piece of paper. It would be pretty silly to say that piece of paper has a "will of its own" or "rights" or calling it a "person", wouldn't it?

If I scribble "i am a person" on a piece of paper, it's still just a piece of paper. If I get a bunch of people to join in and scribble something on the same piece of paper, it's still just a piece of paper. There's no confusion over "rights" or "will". It's a piece of paper.

[bit-anarchist]

The usage of the term "will" isn't unwarranted nor simply an anthropomorphization for the sake of it. Long story short, it's the recognition that both individuals and corps (through their agents, not to be confused by their members) can enter into conflict. A legal conflict can only emerge between entities that have a "will". This isn't something I ascribed onto them, this is something I observed in them given the definitions I'm working with. I suspect our conflict lies in them.

The anthropomorphization simply emerges out of a shared property in this context. Keep in mind I haven't said anything about biology.

[wat10000]

What is "the one that backs the law"?

I don't buy it at all. For example, it's generally considered to be unethical to kill a person aside from limited circumstances such as self defense. Killing a person because they're no longer useful to you is Right Out in every ethical framework I've ever heard of. Are you implying that dissolving a corporation is unethical?

[bit-anarchist]

> What is "the one that backs the law"?

Depends on each jurisdiction. You'd have to look at which frameworks informed the laws that back each corporation.

On the topic of corporate dissolution, I see less as killing and more as natural death. When a corp dissolves in accordance to its norms and general ethics (or the jurisdiction it's under, at least), that's equivalent to someone naturally dying. The constituents no longer wish to participate and follow the binding rules that define the corp to dissolve it, enacting its "will", if you will (pun intended).

Something akin to murder would be a "hostile take over into a dissolution" situation, where a rogue member decides to unilaterally dissolve the corp in defiance of the other members despite having no legal justification, neither in the binding norms of the corp nor in their personal rights (although that's generally implied, as, in theory, no contract can violate this). I think we can agree that the latter case would indeed be unethical, if not illegal.

Also, killing people strictly because they are not useful to you is covered by a "rule by might" ethics framework. Not one I agree with, but it exists.

[wat10000]

Why would it be a natural death when it's destroyed by another person?

Really this comes down to sloppy usage of words. You said the phrase yourself: "juridical people." You need that qualifier on it, "juridical," to distinguish from actual human beings. Because they're not the same. "Corporations are people" -> corporations are legal entities that share some of the same rights, privileges, and responsibilities as human beings. "Corporations aren't people" -> corporations are a distinct concept from human beings, including ethically and legally.

Legally, the argument comes down to how precise you're being. Is there an implied qualifier? Is the statement meant to convey that corporations are legally the same as natural persons (they aren't) or just that they are some sort of legal entity? And the whole dispute here is because people are interpreting it differently.

To rephrase the comment some replies above: "Because corporations aren't natural people."

All the discussion about corporate personhood is off the mark, because corporate personhood only means that corporations have some of the rights that natural persons have, and voting is not generally among them. Although apparently it is in one town in Delaware.

[bit-anarchist]

Because the another personin question is one the constituents acting in behalf of the corporation itself. Perhaps it's closer to suicide, but still, it's not just "another person", but, in a sense, a part of the corporation itself.

I think the dispute is more about interpretation. Ultimately, what I've shown is more of a perspective (one I believe it's useful due to the legal interplay of rights that happen inside), but one can just look at corporations by looking at their members, agents and the rules they've agreed prior and I suspect it would be equivalent to treating corporations as real people, presuming jusnaturalism.

Given that voting is a right currently derived from a more juspositivistic perspective, the justifications behind who's considered a "natural person" and who gets to vote are pretty arbitrary.

[wat10000]

If you could just look at corporations by looking at their members then there would be no need for a legal fiction, because the law could also just look at the members.

But that's not at all what happens. "Meta, Inc." is not just a shorthand way of naming all the shareholders of Meta, Inc. It is a separate legal entity, owned by but not identical to the shareholders.

Why do people bother making corporations in the first place? It's precisely because they want a legal entity that is not themselves. Typically this is so that, for example, the corporation's liabilities are not legally the owner's liabilities. In other words, you form an LLC so that your customers can't sue and take your house.

Your approach is IMO far too philosophical. Corporations are a totally pragmatic construct. They exist because they provide a structure that we as a society consider to be useful in order to promote commerce, innovation, and all that stuff. Nothing about that structure is set up that way because it logically follows from the rights and duties of the owners. It's set up that way because it's supposed to facilitate commerce.

[bit-anarchist]

I agree that corporations aren't just shorthands for their shareholders. That's why I think the qualifiers "towards a unified goal" and "under a binding normative instrument" are important. Specially the latter one.

LLCs, in particular, are just one type of corporation and tend to have a well defined set of laws and agreements backing them, with the primary purpose of limiting liabilities towards the owners. Personally, I'm favor of revising the way these liabilities are limited as to internalize externalities.

That being said, the corporation's liabilities not being, necessarily, the constituents' isn't inspired solely on LLC law, but also organic theory.

But, yeah, my approach is pretty philosophical because it is a "philosophy-first, pragmatism-second" one.

[EnergyAmy]

Which is why elsewhere I make the argument that we should strongly reject the terminology of "people" in any relation to corporations. It leads people down bad mental thought processes by sneaking in priors.

Corporations are not "X people". Corporations are not people, period. Natural people are just people.

[bit-anarchist]

I had the same logic as you previously, actually. But, eventually, I realized the terminology is not as misleading as it appears.

Try defining what is "people". What is "natural people". Why do "natural people" have "rights". What is a "corporation". How does a "corporation" differ from any other legal fiction. So on.

[EnergyAmy]

People are humans. Natural people are people, and therefore humans. Humans have rights because we all want to live in a society where it's not OK to murder people without consequences.

Corporations are pieces of paper we've scribbled on. Because they are pieces of paper, they cannot be harmed.

This is the primary difference between corporations and people.

People can be harmed through the pieces of paper they've scribbled on. That is material. But do not mistake that for the paper being harmed. It can't be. It's just a piece of paper.