[EnergyAmy]

You're confusing them again, which is why sneaking in priors with the term "people" is bad. "granted to them by the people" means "We The People", society, etc, not the people in control of the legal fiction.

> being proxies of their constituents

These proxies have no rights. People can exercise their rights as people. Or, they can create legal fictions with no rights. That legal fiction inherits no rights from the owners, which is where the analogy fails. There's no intermingling/combination/whatever to call "rights", because there's nothing.

Every action that legal fiction takes is a permission granted to it by society that continues to tolerate its existence. That tolerance is finite. When that tolerance ends, so does the legal fiction's existence. Unlike with people, there are no moral quandaries with revoking the privilege of existence.

Rights being inherent to people is an interesting but separate topic. We've generally agreed as a society that people have rights.

[bit-anarchist]

That's a lot of statements, so I'll dissect them.

> People can exercise their rights as people. Or, they can create legal fictions with no rights.

How exactly do you think they can create these legal fictions? Through their rights. That's how corporations inherit them. Keep in mind I'm not focusing on LLCs, but the more broader concept, that also includes an organized society under a common set of rules.

> There's no intermingling/combination/whatever to call "rights", because there's nothing.

There's clearly something, as "Microsoft" and "Google" are distinct entities. To imply there's nothing is to imply there's no difference.

> Every action that legal fiction takes is a permission granted to it by society that continues to tolerate its existence.

Who is "society" here? Everyone? Clearly not, or else this trial would not have reached this conclusion while others complain in the internet about its results. Generally, it refers to a group of people bound by a set of rules (the constituion, laws, etc.), i.e. a corporation. So it's a bit funny that a legal fiction decides whether other legal fictions exist.

> Rights being inherent to people is an interesting but separate topic.

We are in a discussion about whether corporations have rights or not. It ultimately will touch on the source of rights and where they are derived from.

> We've generally agreed as a society that people have rights.

Which doesn't do much against rights being legal fiction. Or corporations having rights.

[EnergyAmy]

I'm also focused on the broader principle, not just specifically any one structure such as LLCs.

I have the legal right as a person to write on a piece of paper "i am a person". That piece of paper does not inherit any rights by my doing so.

Me writing "Microsoft" on one paper and "Google" on another paper certainly means that those two pieces of paper are distinct. Neither one, however, has rights.

What I meant by intermingling/combination/whatever is that, there are no rights to inherit, because a piece of paper has no rights, inherited or otherwise. That includes intermingled rights of people. People may have complex intermingled rights on certain subjects. That is not applicable to legal fictions, because they don't have rights and can't inherit rights.

I think it will become clear as you picture the silly idea of writing "I'm a piece of paper and I have rights" and then expecting that to mean anything. Work backwards from there.

[bit-anarchist]

Is the piece of paper a collective of people? Does the piece of paper have agents to enact the decisions of its rulling body? You seem to be forgetting the primary reason why corporations have rights in this perspective.

There's, objectively, an intermingling of rights happening inside an corporation, which derives directly from the "under a normative instrument" part of the definition of a corporation, which creates legal interactions between the rights of the members. That's simply a fact.

And, again, may I remind you, "rights", "laws", "norms", etc. are legal fiction. They don't have an actual corporeal body. Arguably, corporations have more of one given that they have agents, and the actions they do, on behalf of the corporation, is very material.

[EnergyAmy]

You're trying to make sense of a broken worldview. Hopefully the absurdity is becoming clear.

No, it's just a piece of paper.

Yes, rights/laws/norms/etc are legal fiction. Harm is material. Without harm, there's not much purpose to a legal system. A bad legal system lets someone harm someone else, and then wave around a piece of paper saying "Oh, it was this piece of paper that did it, not me, I'm not responsible!"

A good legal system recognizes that that's absurd. We currently play along far too much, and Citizens United was a breaking point for many people.

Even in our broken legal system, we recognize this fact: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Piercing_the_corporate_veil

[bit-anarchist]

There are conflicts that always produce harm to one of the sides, regardless of legal system (these emerge from mutually exclusive situations). Thus, by your statements, there are only broken legal systems.

Also, mentioning in the "Citizens United v. FEC" case along with "Piercing the corporate veil" concept is a bit funny, because if you pierce the corporate veil of Citizens United in that court case, and look at it as "the shareholders behind Citizens United v. FEC", you will actually strengthen the majority opinion of the Court.

Honestly, I don't think it's me who has a broken world view, but you. I keep two perspectives in regards to corporations: an individualistic one (which backs the "pierce the corporate veil") and a organic one, inspired by system theory and emergent properties, and I try to not mix them without appropriate care. On the other hand, you seem to hold grievances that are only related, but not directly connected, to corporate personhood. In particular, no offense, your perspective about the law seems rather reductive.