Corporate personhood is a centuries old idea. It is what enables you to sign a c...

jessaustin · on Feb 20, 2020

It is what enables you to sign a contract with a company, for example.

We'd be better off if we couldn't do this. Predatory credit would disappear.

stordoff · on Feb 20, 2020

How do I order something if I can't make a contract with a company? It's a contract of sale.

jessaustin · on Feb 20, 2020

It doesn't have to be. Fraud is still a crime. If I send the firm a BTC and they don't send me back a BTC worth of goods, how long will they remain in business?

kube-system · on Feb 20, 2020

Well yeah, an absolute ton of things would disappear if we essentially made every company a sole proprietorship.

jessaustin · on Feb 20, 2020

That's another option, but it's not what I was talking about. If corporations exist, then sure we can let them create contracts among themselves.

kube-system · on Feb 21, 2020

Most corporations would have a very difficult (i.e. impossible) time tracking down all of their owners for a signature on those contracts.

That's why we allow them to be a legal person. So Comcast can sign a contract to purchase a new toner cartridge, rather than requiring a signature from each owner of each of their 4.5 billion shares outstanding.

strictnein · on Feb 20, 2020

The entire financial system would disappear.

jessaustin · on Feb 20, 2020

Wouldn't most of that be handled by corporations making agreements among themselves? I don't think "the entire financial system" is really based on hooking individual people on unsustainable credit.

Ajedi32 · on Feb 21, 2020

So if I want to buy a house, but don't have enough to cover 100% of the cost in a single down payment I'm just SOL?

I guess I could rent instead, except that would require a contract as well. I get the impression you haven't really thought this through.

kube-system · on Feb 21, 2020

No, the entire financial system is based on companies being able to enter into contracts directly, rather than requiring each of their owners to be individually involved in every transaction.

Ajedi32 · on Feb 20, 2020

As would employment. (I can't be employed by a company if I can't sign a contract with it.)

jessaustin · on Feb 20, 2020

This isn't so. Most employment is at-will. This works fine, because lots of laws govern what employers may do to employees, and anyway slavery is illegal so any employee may leave at any time. 95% of any employment contract is various attempts to get around those legal protections for the employee.

This is an especially pernicious case of the normal Stockholm Syndrome we see whenever the special status of corporations is challenged. No firm is 100% robots yet. If we withdraw our consent, they have to raise wages and improve working conditions until we relent.

Ajedi32 · on Feb 21, 2020

The law only protects you from actual crimes. There are hundreds of other small provisions which have to be negotiated as part of a contract to be enforceable from a legal perspective.

This is especially true for freelancers, who don't have a single employer and are instead usually paid for deliverables as specified in a contract. Being able to quit anytime doesn't help if you've already spent weeks or months working on a project and never get paid because the company decides on a whim that they don't need your deliverable anymore.