Re: corporate vs. state

[R. A. Hettinga]

At 7:20 AM + 3/26/04, Justin wrote:
>Those "nasty latin words" are "ceteris paribus".

Thank you.

On a network full of experts the price of error is bandwidth.

Cheers,
RAH

-- 
-
R. A. Hettinga 
The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation 
44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA
"... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity,
[predicting the end of the world] has not been found agreeable to
experience." -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire'

Re: corporate vs. state

[R. A. Hettinga]

At 11:44 AM + 3/26/04, Anonymous via panta wrote:
> three rounds in the base of Bob Hettinga's geodesic skull

Glock for the bed. AR for the Closet. Mossberg for the door?

:-).

Collective punishment, indeed...

Cheers,
RAH

-- 
-
R. A. Hettinga 
The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation 
44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA
"... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity,
[predicting the end of the world] has not been found agreeable to
experience." -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire'

Re: corporate vs. state

[mfidelman]

On 26 Mar 2004, Frog wrote:

> Harmon Seaver wrote:
> 
> >  If a "voluntary association" injures me, 
> 
> Associations - corporate or otherwise - are abstract, intangible
> entities.  They don't perform actions.  People do.

Corporations act as "legal persons" - they can enter into contracts, own 
assetts, sue people, etc.  

The problem emerges when a corporation enters into battle with an 
individual - it's pretty hard to fight a lawsuit when the "person" on the 
other side of the table has billions of dollars, thousands of lawyers, and 
is willing and able to protract the battle over dozens of years.  It's 
even worse when your opponent has the resources to lobby to change laws.

Can you say RIAA?

Re: corporate vs. state

[Anonymous via panta]

Harmon Seaver wrote:
> > >If a member of a club, to which you belong, commits an act of
> > > violence, are you liable for that act?
>
>No, but if the "club", as an entity, does such, you should be. If
> the corporation pollutes, all and sundry owners and employees should
> be equally liable. Or maybe liability adjusted to investment or wage,

What exactly do you mean when you say that the club "as an entity" commits an act?  
That the club/corporation assembled its members into some kind of Voltron 
super-mecha-bot, which went on a rampage through the rainforests of Tokyo?

A corporation is not a physical entity.  It is abstract, a name for a group of people. 
 A corporation can no more act as an entity, than "cybershamanix.com" or "Islam" or 
"the cypherpunk movement".  Employees or members of those groups can act; people can 
claim to act "in the name of" those groups.  But that is not the same thing as the 
group itself acting as an entity.

What you really mean is that if some employees of a corporation commit a crime, you'd 
like to see the other employees punished also.  Guilt by association.

Many in the US government are pushing the idea that an abstract entity is a concrete 
being that can commit crimes and be punished.  And not just the War On Terror; all 
these "conspiracy to provide material support" and "jihad training" charges are about 
building a case against some arbitrary group, and then arguing that the accused is 
liable for crimes committed by others associated with that group.

When Tim May puts three rounds in the base of Bob Hettinga's geodesic skull, the feds 
kicking in your door will tell you that The Cypherpunks did it.  Be sure to remind 
them that you deserve equal punishment.

> i.e., the biggest stockholders and highest paid employees get the
> longest sentences. The concept that no one is actually responsible
> for the criminal acts of a corporation is patently absurd. 

"limited liability" doesn't shield employees or agents of a company from punishment 
for crimes they commit.  It serves to prevent one employee from being punished for the 
actions of another.

Re: corporate vs. state

[Justin]

R. A. Hettinga (2004-03-26 02:20Z) wrote:
> blah blah (those nasty latin words ceterus paribus) blah blah

Those "nasty latin words" are "ceteris paribus".

-- 
That woman deserves her revenge... and... we deserve to die.
 -- Budd, "Kill Bill Vol. 1"

Re: corporate vs. state

[Harmon Seaver]

On Thu, Mar 25, 2004 at 09:43:53PM -0800, Major Variola (ret) wrote:
> 
> At 12:39 AM 3/26/04 -, Frog wrote:
> >Harmon Seaver wrote:
> >>  each and every person involved in it should be liable.
> >
> >If a member of a club, to which you belong, commits an act of violence,
> are you liable for that act?
> 

   No, but if the "club", as an entity, does such, you should be. If the
corporation pollutes, all and sundry owners and employees should be equally
liable. Or maybe liability adjusted to investment or wage, i.e., the biggest
stockholders and highest paid employees get the longest sentences. 
   The concept that no one is actually responsible for the criminal acts of a
corporation is patently absurd. It means that they only recourse for justice is
thru anarchistic action, guerilla warfare, and constant terrorism. Essentially a
return to the dark ages -- just as we now see before us.


-- 
Harmon Seaver   
CyberShamanix
http://www.cybershamanix.com

Re: corporate vs. state, TD's education

[Bob Jonkman]

This is what Major Variola (ret) <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> said
about "corporate vs. state, TD's education" on 25 Mar 2004 at 9:16

> Get this through your head: a corporation can't initiate force against
> you. You may not like their product, practices, or price, but no one
> is coercing you at gunpoint.
> 

Maybe in the good ol' USA, but apparently not so elsewhere.  The 
following quote is from a CBC radio show, "Dispatches", about 3/4 
down the page at http://www.cbc.ca/dispatches/thisseason.html

= Start quote =

"In the Congo,...a mining company can pay its taxes and fees to the 
local warlord, knowing full well that the money will be used to arm 
guerillas and kill more people. All perfectly legal. All perfectly 
immoral."

That's a passage from the new book, "Making A Killing: How And Why 
Corporations Use Armed Force To Do Business."

Canadian author Madelaine Drohan has examined the corporate use of 
violence and private militias down through the years, and concludes, 
"you can't trust corporations to wield armed force."

While the cases she documents are all in Africa, in our interview she 
reminds us that Canada was opened up by British fur companies 
operating on the same principle.

= End quote =

The RealAudio transcript is at 
http://www.cbc.ca/dispatches/audio/031022_drohan.rm


-- -- -- --
Bob Jonkman <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>  

Re: corporate vs. state

[Major Variola (ret)]

At 12:39 AM 3/26/04 -, Frog wrote:
>Harmon Seaver wrote:
>>  each and every person involved in it should be liable.
>
>If a member of a club, to which you belong, commits an act of violence,
are you liable for that act?

Excellent question.  The gestap^H^H^H^H Feds think you are --membership
in a group, some of the members of which perform violence, can get
you RICOd etc.  A rather clever form of intimidation on their part,
don't you think?

Of course, the reverse might also be applied.  Your ordinary govt clerk
might be
liable for the actions of her employer.

Is "just following orders" a legit defense?

Re: corporate vs. state, TD's education

[Harmon Seaver]

On Thu, Mar 25, 2004 at 11:46:29PM +, Justin wrote:
> 
> Why should it be impermissible for corporations to be "persons" under
> the law when parents can be "persons" on behalf of their minor children?

   Why should they be?

> 
> In both situations, one or more people are "persons" only to represent
> others.  Does a parent have any more right to act on behalf of others
> than a company does?
> 
> -- 

   No, why should they? 

-- 
Harmon Seaver   
CyberShamanix
http://www.cybershamanix.com

Re: corporate vs. state

[R. A. Hettinga]

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Hash: SHA1

At 8:59 PM -0500 3/25/04, R. A. Hettinga wrote:
>Boom. An anonymously-voted limited liability business entity.
>
>Look, ma. No state.

Oh. One more thing.

It'll *never* happen until the risk-adjusted (those nasty latin words
ceterus paribus) cost of doing so is *significantly* cheaper than
doing so with lawyers, legislatures and a monopoly composed of lots
of guys with guns.

Fine. Make it cheaper. Moore's Law creates geodesic networks, so
let's have geodesic internet bearer transactions.

I always throw around "three orders of magnitude" (divide the cost by
a thousand, for you philosophy majors out there :-)) as a WAG. It's
the price-point where I would wager that if functionally anonymous
bearer transactions were that cheap, for the same level of risk, that
book-entry transactions would go the way of the intaglio bearer bond,
armored transport of same, and clearing house vaults as a percentage
of modern total transactions by transaction count and dollar volume.

Cheers,
RAH

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-- 
-
R. A. Hettinga 
The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation 
44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA
"... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity,
[predicting the end of the world] has not been found agreeable to
experience." -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire'

Re: corporate vs. state

[R. A. Hettinga]

-BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-
Hash: SHA1

First off, yes, corporations are creatures of the state. So, what
else is new?

They are an easy way to achieve limited liability. In the UK after
the South Sea Bubble popped (and in France, after the same thing
happened to the Mississippi Company did the same, see "Millionaire",
the story of John Law and the first central bank in France), they
banned joint stock companies and had to jump through many hoops to
get the same effect involving limited liability partnerships (trusts)
of various kinds.

After the US started to kick everyone's butt, the LSE and the Paris
Bourse woke up and changed the law.

Limited liability, fungible equity shares and efficient secondary
markets are still necessary if you want to raise lots of money to do
things with.

So far.

:-).

Cypherpunks are about using cryptography and code to replace law and
force-monopoly.

The way to do limited liability with financial cryptography is, of
course, fairly trivial in theory, and maybe we'll get to practice it
someday.

You do a Shamir secret-spilt of a key with m-of-n copies, and set n
to be a majority of m. Vote that key with a board, and you have a
board vote. Vote one or several keys to elect the board using
something like a zero-knowledge proof of knowledge with your
blind-signature bearer certificates to claim your key-pieces
according to the amount of shares you have.

Boom. An anonymously-voted limited liability business entity.

Look, ma. No state.

Kewl.

Cheers,
RAH

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-- 
-
R. A. Hettinga 
The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation 
44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA
"... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity,
[predicting the end of the world] has not been found agreeable to
experience." -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire'

Re: corporate vs. state

[Frog]

Harmon Seaver wrote:

>  If a "voluntary association" injures me, 

Associations - corporate or otherwise - are abstract, intangible entities.  They don't 
perform actions.  People do.

>  each and every person involved in it should be liable. 

If a member of a club, to which you belong, commits an act of violence, are you liable 
for that act?

Re: corporate vs. state, TD's education

[Justin]

Harmon Seaver (2004-03-25 23:06Z) wrote:

> On Thu, Mar 25, 2004 at 05:27:14PM -0500, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
> > 
> > On Thu, 25 Mar 2004, Harmon Seaver wrote:
> > 
> > >Nonsense -- corporations are not humans, they have zero rights.
> > 
> > Unfortunately, there are a whole slew of Supreme Court decisions that say 
> > otherwise - mostly applying the 14th amendment (you know, freeing the 
> > slaves) to grant free speech and other constitutional protections to 
> > corporations.
> 
>Correct, that is unfortunate -- and it certainly is additional evidence (as
> if anyone needed more) that the Supremes are just another criminal gang. 

Why should it be impermissible for corporations to be "persons" under
the law when parents can be "persons" on behalf of their minor children?

In both situations, one or more people are "persons" only to represent
others.  Does a parent have any more right to act on behalf of others
than a company does?

-- 
That woman deserves her revenge... and... we deserve to die.
 -- Budd, "Kill Bill"

Re: corporate vs. state, TD's education

[Justin]

[EMAIL PROTECTED] (2004-03-25 22:27Z) wrote:

> 
> On Thu, 25 Mar 2004, Harmon Seaver wrote:
> 
> >Nonsense -- corporations are not humans, they have zero rights.
> 
> Unfortunately, there are a whole slew of Supreme Court decisions that say 
> otherwise - mostly applying the 14th amendment (you know, freeing the 
> slaves) to grant free speech and other constitutional protections to 
> corporations.

"Persons", not "humans".  Nobody has ever claimed that corporations are
human.

-- 
That woman deserves her revenge... and... we deserve to die.
 -- Budd, "Kill Bill"

Re: corporate vs. state

[Harmon Seaver]

On Thu, Mar 25, 2004 at 02:42:13PM -0800, Major Variola (ret) wrote:
> 
> 2. Humans don't lose their rights when they form voluntary associations.
> 
> That's all the corporate decisions are saying.
> 
Humans don't lose their rights, but they also shouldn't lose their
responsibility either. If a "voluntary association" injures me, each and every
person involved in it should be liable. 


-- 
Harmon Seaver   
CyberShamanix
http://www.cybershamanix.com

Re: corporate vs. state, TD's education

[Harmon Seaver]

On Thu, Mar 25, 2004 at 05:27:14PM -0500, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
> 
> On Thu, 25 Mar 2004, Harmon Seaver wrote:
> 
> >Nonsense -- corporations are not humans, they have zero rights.
> 
> Unfortunately, there are a whole slew of Supreme Court decisions that say 
> otherwise - mostly applying the 14th amendment (you know, freeing the 
> slaves) to grant free speech and other constitutional protections to 
> corporations.

   Correct, that is unfortunate -- and it certainly is additional evidence (as
if anyone needed more) that the Supremes are just another criminal gang. 



-- 
Harmon Seaver   
CyberShamanix
http://www.cybershamanix.com

Re: corporate vs. state

[Major Variola (ret)]

At 05:27 PM 3/25/04 -0500, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
>On Thu, 25 Mar 2004, Harmon Seaver wrote:
>
>>Nonsense -- corporations are not humans, they have zero rights.
>
>Unfortunately, there are a whole slew of Supreme Court decisions that
say
>otherwise - mostly applying the 14th amendment (you know, freeing the
>slaves) to grant free speech and other constitutional protections to
>corporations.

1. The 14th says that anything Congress is prohibited from doing, states

(and other local govs) are too.  Slavery is merely a historical aside.
(Were the 14th not there, California could ban speech, support
religions, deny the right to keep and bear arms..)

2. Humans don't lose their rights when they form voluntary associations.

That's all the corporate decisions are saying.

Unfortunately, the *opposite* is practiced.  I, as an individual, can
choose
not to hire , but a group of people together are threatened
with violence should they care to choose similarly.

Freedom isn't being able to do what you like, it's allowing someone else

to do or say something you hate and supporting their right to do so.
Marshall Clow

Re: corporate vs. state, TD's education

[mfidelman]

On Thu, 25 Mar 2004, Harmon Seaver wrote:

>Nonsense -- corporations are not humans, they have zero rights.

Unfortunately, there are a whole slew of Supreme Court decisions that say 
otherwise - mostly applying the 14th amendment (you know, freeing the 
slaves) to grant free speech and other constitutional protections to 
corporations.

RE: corporate vs. state

[Major Variola (ret)]

At 02:02 PM 3/25/04 -0500, Tyler Durden wrote:
>Think I'm gonna have to disagree with ya' hear partner.
>For one, in the old days Corporations regularly hired goons to mow down

>striking coalminers and whatnot.

You have no right to trespass simply because you once worked there.

Neither does anyone have a right to unreasonable force.

>OK, those days are all gone, right? Wrong. Halliburton and Bechtel have
both
>hired mercs for their Iraq operations.

Who gives a rat's ass about what someone does in a foreign land?
US law only applies in the US, despite the current US Regime's
behavior to the contrary.

And BTW, what is wrong with hired police ("mercs") esp. when the local
police don't work?   Do you have a problem with private security guards
in the US, as long as
they don't involve you in unconsensual transactions?  Do you have a
problem
with weaponsbearing citizens, again, if they don't involve you in
unconsensual transactions?

Note that if some company makes enemies overseas, its not the US as a
whole
that has earned the airplane-in-the-skyscraper feedback.   Its the
official US regime behavior that Gen. Washington warned about: Trade
with all, make treaties with none, and beware of foreign entanglements.


>However, a corporation doesn't actually have to hire the goons these
days in
>order to get the job done, not when it's much cheaper to call upon the
>publically-available pool of goons that function as a government in
some
>places.

Anyone who abuses the power of the (gullible) State to coerce others
deserves killing.

The fact that some corporations may leverage existing thuggery to
>get their job done doesn't make them any less complicit. But this is
all
>besides my main point...

Its not thuggery to protect your own property or freedoms.  If someone
is guilty of true thuggery --ie coercion-- then the State is obligated
to act to protect the thuggees.  The State only gets involved when a
transaction is not mutually consensual; if the State gets involved in
mutually consensual transactions the State deserves killing -er,
preemptive regime change.

Re: corporate vs. state, TD's education

[Harmon Seaver]

On Thu, Mar 25, 2004 at 02:02:25PM -0500, Tyler Durden wrote:
> 
> >Get this through your head: a corporation can't initiate force against
> >you.
> >You may not like their product, practices, or price, but no one is
> >coercing you at gunpoint.
> 
> Think I'm gonna have to disagree with ya' hear partner.
> For one, in the old days Corporations regularly hired goons to mow down 
> striking coalminers and whatnot.
> 
   That's for sure -- you should read the history of the strike back around the
early 1900's on Minnesota's Iron Range. The goons would surround a whole small
town, then go from house to house beating *everyone*, even children, with
axehandles. Killed a lot of people too. 


> OK, those days are all gone, right? Wrong. Halliburton and Bechtel have 
> both hired mercs for their Iraq operations. (In fact, I was on a call a 
> couple of weeks ago where a Halliburton official was describing the 
> casualties they take on a regular basis. These don't get reported much in 
> the news, though, for obvious reason...)
> 
   Not to mention all the goons they still hire all over the 3rd world to break
strikes, kill organizers and labor leaders, etc. 


> However, a corporation doesn't actually have to hire the goons these days 
> in order to get the job done, not when it's much cheaper to call upon the 
> publically-available pool of goons that function as a government in some 
> places. The fact that some corporations may leverage existing thuggery to 
> get their job done doesn't make them any less complicit. But this is all 
> besides my main point...
> 
> 
> >PS: you are a corporation, I am a corporation, together we could
> >be a corporation, with 100K others we could be too.  Doesn't
> >matter; all have the same rights to act, and be left alone.

   Nonsense -- corporations are not humans, they have zero rights. Together we
could be a partnership, with 100K others we could be a partnership as
well. Corporations where the owners (shareholders) and employees are not liable
for the crimes and debts of the corp should be illegal. And there's nothing at
all socialistic or statist about that -- in fact, it's more that corporations
require statism to even exiest. 
   

> 
> Well, this is where I suspect a little knee-jerk. I'm no socialist: in no 
> way am I saying that "Corporations are inherently evil". (In fact, I'm 
> hoping to continue profiting admirably as the result of my participation in 
> the capitalist system.) What I think bares investigation is whether or not, 
> here in the US, a subset of the big corporations are so tied in with the 
> political engine as to be complicit in the violations we both agree are 
> occurring.
> 
> As Max said so eloquently, this is not to imply that "we should make some 
> laws and eliminate these big evil corporations". Or maybe it is (I 

Why not? If Thomas Jefferson and George Washington had their way,
corporations would be illegal in the US. 



-- 
Harmon Seaver   
CyberShamanix
http://www.cybershamanix.com

RE: corporate vs. state, TD's education

[Tyler Durden]

Ah Variola...do I detect a wee bit of Knee-jerk in your otherwise 
consistently iconoclastic views? Let's take a looksee...

Get this through your head: a corporation can't initiate force against
you.
You may not like their product, practices, or price, but no one is
coercing you at gunpoint.
Think I'm gonna have to disagree with ya' hear partner.
For one, in the old days Corporations regularly hired goons to mow down 
striking coalminers and whatnot.

OK, those days are all gone, right? Wrong. Halliburton and Bechtel have both 
hired mercs for their Iraq operations. (In fact, I was on a call a couple of 
weeks ago where a Halliburton official was describing the casualties they 
take on a regular basis. These don't get reported much in the news, though, 
for obvious reason...)

However, a corporation doesn't actually have to hire the goons these days in 
order to get the job done, not when it's much cheaper to call upon the 
publically-available pool of goons that function as a government in some 
places. The fact that some corporations may leverage existing thuggery to 
get their job done doesn't make them any less complicit. But this is all 
besides my main point...


PS: you are a corporation, I am a corporation, together we could
be a corporation, with 100K others we could be too.  Doesn't
matter; all have the same rights to act, and be left alone.
Well, this is where I suspect a little knee-jerk. I'm no socialist: in no 
way am I saying that "Corporations are inherently evil". (In fact, I'm 
hoping to continue profiting admirably as the result of my participation in 
the capitalist system.) What I think bares investigation is whether or not, 
here in the US, a subset of the big corporations are so tied in with the 
political engine as to be complicit in the violations we both agree are 
occurring.

As Max said so eloquently, this is not to imply that "we should make some 
laws and eliminate these big evil corporations". Or maybe it is (I 
dunno...I'm a stoopid Cypherpunk...). But I don't think it's inherently 
inconsistent to point out that there may be a direct correlation between the 
activities of our particular State and the interests of a subset of Large, 
Old-money-dominated US Coporations.

-TD







>In fact, it's easy to argue that the
>current Oil Crusade in Iraq is precisely for the purpose of protecting
a set
>of dinosaur industries in the US. That's not the kind of capitalism I
think
>most Cypherpunks espouse.
The state can legitimately only use taxpayers' armies to defend citizens
in the
country, not other countries, not its perceived-by-some self-interest,
not
corporations.  All the oil colonialism is illegitimate for that reason,
as well
as illegal as Congress has not declared war.


_
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