alt Hacker NewsI don’t understand why people have so much trouble understanding that a “corporation” is just a proxy for the humans that own and control the corporation. In this case, non-residents who own a house on the island can vote according to the charter. The charter just says that this doesn’t change because you move ownership of the house into a legal entity that some human then owns and controls.
The actual grievance seems to be unrelated to the corporation itself. People just associate “corporations” with rich people, and they won’t want rich people to vote.
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> they won’t want rich people to vote.
I don't think anyone would object to a rich person casting a single vote and maybe putting a bumper sticker on their car or a sign in their yard. The issue people take with the rich and politics is the outsized influence they wield in elections. The whole "one person one vote" thing falls apart when the rich can throw millions at advertisements and millions at the "charities" run by the politicians they bought.
Does a corporation need healthcare? Can a corporation be jailed? Does a corporation have a finite life in which they can pursue happiness? Does a corporation have offspring it's trying to raise? Does a corporation have hopes and dreams? Does a corporation wish to visit a park or visit with their neighbors? Are you for real?
The problem is voting has historically been limited to, real, living things. This has inherently limited the total amount of votes cast and where.
Corporations are an artificial entity that literally anyone can make. Even things like property ownership are somewhat artificial. Lots can generally be split and joined through a process.
This allowance of artificial entities voting seems to open a rabbit hole of secondary issues.
Setting aside the corporation part, is there precedent for allowing people to vote in multiple residences? In my experience, when you register to vote in one location you are no longer allowed to vote where you were previously registered, regardless of how many places you own houses. Some places cross-reference voter registrations to enforce this, and others don't really check, but it has been the rule everywhere I have lived.
> ... they won’t want rich people to vote.
I think it might be more than that
The problem is corporations mostly don't have the same interests in communities as people and they are motivated by other concerns that can run counter to the good of society. So yea.
"Corporations are controlled by humans, therefore critics are motivated by anti-rich sentiment" is definitely a take
If the corporation is just a proxy for the owners then why is this in court? Why aren't the humans just voting directly? It's well established that it's OK for humans to vote.
When I hear people grouse about the concept corporate rights, I always ask them why they hate New York Times _Co._ v. Sullivan.
This is an impressively awful take, congratulations.
Corporations aren't people and don't have rights or votes.
If you want to have a say in the way a place is run, you can do so in your capacity as a person.
If you want to do so from a legal fiction "proxy", fuck off.
... and if they own 50 houses, each through a separate LLC, they can vote 50 times, even if they do not in fact even live in the area.
... and you can probably come up with a legal way to permanently bind a corporation to vote according to specific rules.
... and larger corporations have totally inhuman internal decision making processes that frequently arrive at conclusions no human would reach.
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Is this rich person also voting in the place where they actually live? I'm not against a rich person voting, I just don't want them to get more than one vote. I haven't read the opinion to see if that's addressed.