Corporation not person in carpool lanes | Hacker News Reader

Corporation not person in carpool lanes

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38 pointsnighthawk51 comments

I think the wiki article on corporate personhood should be read by everyone who is bothered by the "corporations are misnomer" meme.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corporate_personhood

The basis for allowing corporations to assert protection under the U.S. Constitution is that they are organizations of people, and that people should not be deprived of their constitutional rights when they act collectively.[5] In this view, treating corporations as "persons" is a convenient legal fiction that allows corporations to sue and to be sued, provides a single entity for easier taxation and regulation, simplifies complex transactions that would otherwise involve, in the case of large corporations, thousands of people, and that protects the individual rights of the shareholders as well as the right of association.

Such a killjoy, bringing reality to the anti-corporate angry mob party.

comments like these belong on reddit, not here.

Ouch. This may be the only time that an critical comment from a stranger on the Internet has stung this much.

Point taken. I'll try to do better.

I thought it was surrounding the DMV definition for "Person" from the DMV code and not corporation personhood. The defendant did have a thing against personhood but seems the defense was that signs were legally vague in accordance to the DMVs definition of person.

470. "Person" includes a natural person, firm, copartnership, association, limited liability company, or corporation.

http://dmv.ca.gov/pubs/vctop/d01/vc470.htm

You are right, but I do think it ties into the larger "corporations are people" thing that has been bothering people since the campaign finance reform law was overturned.

Yes this is great, but it ignores the fact that a corporation is more than a group of people. It enjoys considerable legal benefits in the form of protection of its owners from various liabilities. In the US they also tend to enjoy considerable tax and other legal benefits.

These are all benefits provided by the US government, and by extension every American.

The beef is:

>people should not be deprived of their constitutional rights when they act collectively

A corporation is more than a group of people acting collectively. A corporation is also a group of people who get together and petition their government for special treatment. This is not a bad thing as it is basically what allows any company of more than a handful of people to even exist. But, if that special treatment comes with strings attached (i.e. restricting what that group of people are allowed to do with their collective resources and in the name of that corporation), I personally do not take issue with that.

I have no problem with a group of people freely getting together and wreaking havoc on the American political system. In fact, I encourage it. But I don't think everyone else must subsidize their activity.

> I have no problem with a group of people freely getting together and wreaking havoc on the American political system. In fact, I encourage it. But I don't think everyone else must subsidize their activity

So, what are your opinions on mandatory union dues, and on whether recipients of government assistance should be allowed to vote?

How are the union dues made mandatory? That's important. And, if there is government involvement in that, is there also some regulation involving how unions are expected to behave? Also important.

I don't have a problem with recipients of government assistance giving up their right to vote in principal, although America would cease to be a democracy at that point. However I don't think the likely outcome (disenfranchisement of the poor, eventual oppression without any means of placation of said poor, probable rebellion) would be good for society, so I don't think we should do it.

Keep in mind, I'm not saying "corporations receive special treatment and so shouldn't be allowed to contribute to political campaigns". I'm saying "corporations receive special treatment, and I have no problem with putting stipulations on that". All I'm arguing against here is the meme that a corporation is "just a group of people". It is not.

If you've ever worked in a union shop in a state that isn't right to work, you have no say in the matter of union dues. If 50% + 1 vote to enact a union you're required to pay the dues.This is of course different in right to work states where you can have so called split shops.

Ouch, I doubt (for example) the farmers would be pleased about that. And they are a pretty huge voting block! Or do you just mean welfare?

If you read the article, it doesn't ignore those facts. Those benefits are the point of corporations, and the "personhood" a side effect.

Sure there are strings attached, but speech goes directly to the rights of the collective. Would you support a law banning corporations from printing newspapers or newsletters? You have to be careful when you start taking away the most basic rights.

Perhaps, but again, I'm not arguing that corporations should or shouldn't be able to do X, only that they have no 'rights' as such. If a group of people want to retain those rights, they can always act collectively without first asking the state for special treatment. And, of course they retain their rights as individual persons, no matter what.

Oh, and I totally read the article? Is this kind of snarky reply just sort of a default thing to do when you disagree with someone now? In that case: if you read the article, you will not find that it addresses these points I have made at all.

I didn't intend to be snarky, I really did assume you didn't read the article becasue you said the article ignored the legal and tax benefits, and the it does mention both.

If you believe that the government can regulate the free speech of a corporation, where does the limit end? Can they say that Newspapers that are owned by corporations don't have complete freedom to publish what they want? Let's say they passed a law saying no corporate political speech within 1 month of an election - would that mean no New York Times endorsements?. It is safer to keep free speech as close to absolute as possible.

>Can they say that Newspapers that are owned by corporations don't have complete freedom to publish what they want? Let's say they passed a law saying no corporate political speech within 1 month of an election - would that mean no New York Times endorsements?

Yes, that's exactly what it means! We do the same thing with unions, and with religious organizations that are tax-exempt. What makes corporations so special?

You are, of course, always free to decline the privileges granted to a corporation. Draw up some contracts between you and your partners and write whatever you want, whenever you want. If your newspaper is guilty of libel, you may be liable for that. If your newspaper goes bankrupt and owes money all over town, you might be on the hook for it personally. Accept that in the course of securing privileges natural persons do not enjoy, your corporation may be asked to give up rights that natural persons possess.

Much like patents and copyright, corporations are a legal fiction, invented by society, for the benefit of society. On all three counts, the balance of power has shifted heavily in favor of patent holders, copyright holders, and corporations. This does not indicate some natural law, but rather corruption in our own governments.

I don't really disagree about the shift in power, but it doesn't have anything inherently to do with the structure of corporations (liability shield, "person", tax status). If you want to disallow corporations from political donations, then you are blocking 1000's of small businesses from having a voice while allowing billionaires like David Koch and George Soros have unfettered access to politicians. Whatever your particular concern is rooted in, there is probably a general solution (e.g., public financing of campaigns) other than singling out corporations which are a useful and diverse group of entities.

Again, there would be nothing stopping the owners of those small businesses from donating to political campaigns, and fully exercising all of their other rights.

Then why do you care if they do it through their corporation?

There is a critical difference between most corporations and people, which makes them far more dangerous - for a corporation the "only" goal is profit. In colloquial terms, corporations are "psychopaths".

Corporations being psychopathic can be very useful for a number of applications (such as efficient resource allocation and rapid economic growth), especially given a regulatory system that ensures that the pursuit of profit provides utility to the commons. It's so useful, that we even require corporations by law to single-mindedly pursue profit - if they didn't, and e.g. your social security benefits were invested in those corporations, there would be no recourse if they spent their money negligently.

Unfortunately, when corporations amass enough power to control the regulatory system you have major issues, as there is nothing to control their "psycopathic" tendencies. This is a crucial reason why "corporate personhood" and other forms of corporate power should have limits - in order to keep our checks and balances functioning. If we fail to do this, profit maximizing entities will gain more and more control over the resources available to human beings.

So, while many aspects of corporate personhood are wonderful and convenient, we need to be very careful what powers corporations are granted.

[yes, I gloss over some details to keep this short: fiduciary duty conditions, clinical definition of psychopathy,..; but these don't critically affect the main thesis as far as I am aware]

Unsurprising verdict.

However the judge's reasoning is very weak.

I frequently drive in the carpool with one or more children who cannot drive in the car. By the judge's reasoning, this should not be allowed because our driving together does nothing to relieve congestion. Why not? Because I'm the only person present who is legally allowed to drive, so we'd be in one car regardless of the availability of the carpool lane.

If this was indeed the reasoning, I hope that this argument is made in the appeal.

Actually, insofar as the goal is to reduce cars on the road, it seems entirely sensible to me to exclude children -- or anyone without a drivers license -- from counting towards the passenger threshold.

I'd be all for having to produce N valid licenses in the car to avoid the ticket, rather than N human bodies. (That also neatly sidesteps the issue of corporate personhood.)

I would not disagree, except that there is the small detail that there actually is legal precedent on this one. A pregnant woman counts as one, a mother with a small baby, 2.

So this judge's line of reasoning flies in the face of existing precedent, and I wouldn't be surprised if a clever lawyer could make some hay out of that fact.

What if the passengers decline to produce drivers' licenses?

Should the driver be guilty of violating the carpool lane if it turns out one of the passengers had a suspended license or were uninsured?

What about a passenger who is validly licensed yet legally drunk? They couldn't legally drive a car.

What about passengers with valid licenses who have no car? What if they have a working car but its tank is empty and they have no money to buy gas. They're not reducing congestion either.

I don't really care; if we were writing the law we'd figure out a reasonable but inevitably imperfect policy for each question. The point isn't to get every possible situation right. It's to come up with the best-bang-for-your-social-buck heuristic.

I think whether or not passengers in a car pulled over for "driving in an HOV lane with suspected unlicensed passengers" are required to produce valid drivers licenses on demand is pretty important.

Should Taxi's be allowed to drive in the Carpool lane with a single passenger? Here, we have a situation in which the driver wouldn't normally be on the road.

Relying on a taxi DOES reduce congestion: think about it, I could have chosen to rent a car at the airport and drive for my entire trip, but instead, I took a taxi to my hotel and walked/used transit a lot. Or...I could have bought a car, use that a lot, but instead I decide I only need such a luxury infrequently, and decide to rely on taxis occasionally.

Regardless, I live in a heavy taxi city and there is no such thing as a carpool lane (nor would it be very useful since most cars would have at least 2 passengers).

This also relieves bus congestion which includes people who don't have licenses. Perhaps they should be burdened to show that they are maximizing the general vehicle occupancy, and thus kids count as passengers.

Not entirely. If you're taking two children, then it's better than two adults driving the children individually. But if it's only one child, there's no alternative.

Well in that case it could be argued that roads would be less congested than the corporation hiring a courier, taxicab, lawyer, etc to transport itself.

All unlicensed passengers would create more traffic by taking a taxi alone. I think the only ones not allowed in the carpool lane should be a taxi with one passenger (of course, in addition to the lone drivers).

However, you could extend the logic further by saying that a lone taxi driver looking for a better fare causing a second taxi to pick up the unlicensed driver causes more traffic than a taxi with one passenger. So I've neatly saved the current carpool lane rules.

You want to keep taxi's allowed to use the lanes because then taxis are as fast as renting a car, or owning a car, so you you do not do the above behaviors.

If getting to the airport took 2x as long in a taxi, few would use that.

I'm not from the US but doesn't the "carpool" term imply exactly this definition - people who would otherwise driving in separate cars.

The law has distinguished between Persons (which can include corporations) and Natural Persons (which does not) since corporations were invented. The latter is even a term of art in the law. Though I haven't researched it, it's probably even mentioned specifically in the California Vehicle Code.

The judge was probably just too busy and irritated by this complete waste of his time to even remember.

Wonder where autonomous cars will fit in.

DIVISION 16.6. AUTONOMOUS VEHICLES ...

38750. (a) (4) An “operator” of an autonomous vehicle is the person who is seated in the driver’s seat, or if there is no person in the driver’s seat, causes the autonomous technology to engage.

...

38750 (c) (1) (G) The autonomous vehicle has a separate mechanism, in addition to, and separate from, any other mechanism required by law, to capture and store the autonomous technology sensor data for at least 30 seconds before a collision occurs between the autonomous vehicle and another vehicle, object, or natural person while the vehicle is operating in autonomous mode.

So if I remotely summon an autonomous car to pick up a kid from school, the carpool lane is legal while the car has only the kid?

Note that the above defines an operator, and regardless, in your scenario, you aren't in the vehicle.

Indeed, the California Vehicle Code does mention "Natural Person" as follows:

DIVISION 1. WORDS AND PHRASES DEFINED Application of Definitions 100. Unless the provision or context otherwise requires, these definitions shall govern the construction of this code.

...

Person

470. "Person" includes a natural person, firm, copartnership, association, limited liability company, or corporation.

Amended Ch. 1010, Stats. 1994. Effective January 1, 1995.

[Edit: Full Vehicle Code here: http://www.dmv.ca.gov/pubs/veh_code.pdf ]

A corporation is not a physical thing embodied in a stack of papers. This guy is an uninformed crank.

How does the carpool lane relieve traffic congestion? If people could actually use that lane instead of it being some kind of elitist lane (which is what it feels like, I drive it in all the time (family)), traffic would be better.

The times traffic IS bad the damn carpool lane is just as backed up as the other lanes. And then there's the whole problem of needing to get off the lane, which you can't always do (you can only get off at specific spots), and then you're swerving across 4+ lanes of traffic causing a classic 'shockwave' problem.

It tries to relieve congestion by reducing the number of cars on the road, not by improving road capacity.

This whole case has been ridiculous from the start. It was pretty obvious from the start that this case wasn't going to end in the defendants favour, I honestly don't know why this guy has decided to waste the courts time with this. A stack of papers is not a corporation, the corporation itself might own the papers but paper does not encompass an entity. It's a carpool lane violation, not murder why can't this guy just cop it on the chin and pay the fine? It's going to cost him a lot of money in legal fees if he appeals this.

If this guy wants to waste money so easily, the least he could do is perhaps consider donating some money to a charity. If he wants to throw his money away, at least he'd be helping people.

Huh? He did it intentionally to waste time and apparently has money to spare on the fight. Either way, there is now legal precedent at odds with the concept of corporate personhood. Presumably he wants this concept to go away and is now one step closer.

Such a shame when people don't put their time and effort towards things that matter. Like you know, helping people and making a difference. I am doubtful he'll achieve anything, but I guess that remains to be seen. He's so far failed once, I guess he can keep appealing and hope something happens.

You're misunderstanding both the issue and the motivations of the person.

This person is not trying to avoid a ticket for riding alone in the carpool lane. He does not want to avoid that ticket. If he avoids the ticket because a judge accepts his logic and agrees that corporations are people, he has failed.

This person is trying to demonstrate that corporations are not in fact people by use of an absurdity, and probably intends to take the case as high in the judicial system as he can. He wants to get the judiciary to rule that no, corporations aren't people because he disagrees with the recent Citizens United ruling, which found that corporations were people, and therefore had free speech rights and therefore could make practically unlimited contributions to PACs.

It's not my personal politics, but some people believe trying to reduce the influence of corporate money in politics would help a lot of people and make a huge difference. This guy is not at all the time-wasting weasel you think he is.

What about Nike vs. Kasky? Nike claimed it could lie as its expression of Free Speech (as a person), but Kasky thought otherwise. Supreme Court didn't decide so it's still up in the air. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marc_Kasky)

The issue seems pretty important to me.

What about pregnant moms?

Theres a can of worms...

According to the California Highway Patrol, they cannot use the carpool: http://www.chp.ca.gov/html/answers.html

Arizona precedent follows the exact same lines as that FAQ answer: http://www.loweringthebar.net/2006/01/woman_womans_fe.html

I therefore expected the same reasoning to apply here. But the article doesn't say that the judge followed that line of reasoning. Which surprised me.

From this I learned that a corporation, in US, is "capable of riding in his or her own seat" :)

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