idiggory, King of Bards wrote:
Their issue is specifically that it allows for corporate leaders to exploit a company for ends that hurt everyone else, without having to suffer at all for it.
idiggory, King of Bards wrote:
You still haven't done anything to refute my original objection.
I thought I had.
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You merely suggested that a corporate leader wouldn't want to use his corporation to exploit the people, because his wealth is still based on shares of the company. Which is largely not the case.
You're correct. That's not the case. It's also not what I said. His control of a corporation is directly related to his financial interest in the corporation. If he owns 80% of the shares, he suffers 80% of the financial fallout from making poor decisions. And if he does something illegal, he can be charged with a crime.
Ignoring for the moment that corporate personhood status involves a lot more than just economic responsibility for the actions of the corporation itself with regard to the shareholders, I'm curious what you think is wrong about this? Do you think that shareholders should be subject to greater responsibility than the value of the shares they hold? If so, why?
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The top (human) shareholder for Wal-Mart has 10,498,480 shares. That's .05% of the company.
Of his estimated 21 billion in assets, Walmart accounts for about 500 million of it. That's 3%.
And what do you suppose he's doing with the other 97% of his wealth? Most of it's also going to be invested in shares of various things on the market, right? I guess I'm just not getting why you think a person's total wealth has anything at all to do with things. The ability of a corporation to do harm is related to the total assets/power/whatever of that corporation. A shareholders responsibility for the actions of the corporation is based on the relative share of the corporation he owns.
Doing it any other way would be incredibly unfair, don't you agree? And while you're making cases which assume some sort of "leader" involved, lots of people own shares in corporations. So if you buy one share of IBM, and then the next day IBM has a plant explode killing a bunch of people, those affected should be able to sue you personally for the damages irregardless of your interest in the corporation itself? That seems a bit ridiculous. Let's assume for the sake of argument that you are a billionaire, but only own that one share of stock. They can go after you based on your total unrelated assets? And what if you're not a billionaire? Same deal?
Or are you proposing that we have two different sets of laws for people above or below some arbitrary dollar number you decide makes someone "wealthy"?
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Yeah, he's NEVER going to use his company to exploit people, for fear of it taking his money with it.
It's not his company if he only owns .05% of the stock though. And why would he do this? I'm still not following this assumption that rich people's motivations are to hurt people. Their motivation is to make money. The interest in the company is based on how much you invested in it. If the company does actions which cause it to suffer economic negatives (like lawsuits), then the value of your investment will decrease. The motivation is to *not* ***** people over and to *not* get sued.
Unless you're assuming that a guy with 21B in net worth will just **** away $500M because it's worth it to him to hurt people? That seems like an incredibly bizarre assumption to make. He's going to want to make that $500M investment grow. Harm to the corporation he's invested in harms the investment he has in the corporation. It has nothing to do with how much other money he has elsewhere and the rules you're arguing about would change for all of those as well, wouldn't it?
Let's not forget that this is just one aspect of the issue. I listed of 3 or 4 different reasons why treating corporations like persons under the law is a good thing. The positives vastly outweigh any negatives IMO.
