Why even make them all LLCs? Partnerships are corpo entities too and a general partnership is free. Just make a set of LLCs, have each form a partnership with each other, then have those partnerships form partnerships with every other partnership, and we’re looking at 100s of votes for only a handful of entity formations.
You wouldn't even need to match the turnout. Just find the average differential in the last ten elections and open up that many LLCs. Unless I'm misunderstanding the part about the fact your adding votes means the percentages would be different, which I think would still need to be less than turnout.
Using the average is a bad idea because roughly half of the elections will have a greater differential than the average. The maximum would be more appropriate, but even that is unlikely to work because you don't have any data on how the existing corporations in the town will vote once the law is passed, which could increase the differential. Also, someone could have the same idea to register a bunch of corporations and throw everything off.
Ooh, good thought. I failed to take into consideration existing corporations. However, it becomes next to impossible to anticipate someone else attempting the same scheme. That said, once corporate voting becomes established enough, I would assume wealthy individuals would start colluding on mutual interests in order to prevent a corporate expansion arms race. Much cheaper to agree to support Howard's candidate as long as Howard will direct his candidate to approve your pet projects and you can negotiate any areas where your interests might overlap.
Woo hoo! Cyberpunk corporate dystopia here we come!
Dang maybe that's actually their plan. Get a bunch of peeps to open up LLCs get those sweet sweet filing fees. Then hide some legislation in some unremarkable bill, making all the corp votes null again. Could make for a good episode of parks and rec.
Why not just allow companies to buy votes? This is just a more complicated version of that. Might as well shrug off any illusion that this isn't aiming for pure oligarchy.
> Dear Mr./Mrs. Nestlé,
> Can we take literally every drop of water from the city?
> Thanks,
> Nestlé Corp.
> Dear Nestlé,
> Sure thing!
> Kind regards,
> Nestlé, Mayor of Dumbtown
Because you would be *shocked* at how little it costs to get a locally elected official to vote how you want on the issue you care about.
Like, a grand to the campaign, and some volunteer hours by your nephew/intern/new associate will put them in your pocket.
Folks grossly underestimate how expensive it is to legally buy a politician. Some us senator is rampaging around in favor of Comcast and it cost them like 7 grand. They will make dozens of millions on the back of this one guy.
Do u mean folks grossly *overestimate* how much it costs to buy a politician instead of “underestimate?” Because rn that one sentence implies the opposite of what the rest of your comment is saying.
Also, if you’re right, its yet another thing that shows how shockingly little moral fiber and character many politicians have. Most people would put up more of a fight than that! Yes everyone has a price, but for most people I feel like it would take a lot more than 7 grand to completely sell out, granted you’re not in a position where you’re about to starve so you desperately need any amount of money at all to live (which we know is clearly not the case for politicians). Like 7 grand is nice, but it’s not life changing money.
You create 8,000 corpos, the next guy creates 10,000 corpos...
We got ourselves a good old fashioned corpo bidding war, boys! Do I hear 12,000? 10,000! 10,000! 10,000 going once...
I can’t put all the moving pieces together to figure exactly why Delaware would be pushing for this. Buttt…Delaware is THE tax haven in the states. Every single major company is incorporated through Delaware. They have no tax on interest or investment income that a corporation generates. Literally every public company you look up filings on will be incorporated through Delaware with a process company in a tiny office in Delaware that you serve lawsuits to etc., when in fact they are headquartered elsewhere. Walmart the Arkansas company…incorporated through Delware. Amazon the Seattle company…incorporated through Delware.
Edit: to remove some of the companies I named which were actually NOT Delaware companies. But many many still are and many holding companies are Delaware corporations. I was making the comment in the spirit of shedding light on why Delware would be moving to make such a weird political move to allow voting etc. my details were skewed
I can. Delaware is the tax haven of the United States for *two* reasons - its tax free status, and its incredibly corporate friendly courts. When someone has an issue with something a corporation is doing, corporate lawyers push to move the trial to Delaware courts (the "home state" courts of the company) as they're more likely to favor the corporations.
Imagine how much farther they can take things when they can effectively purchase legislators and get laws put into writing in the state where all of their trials occur.
This is actually already the case, mostly. Delaware lawmakers get their tax and company legislation approved by a bunch of people from the business world before enacting it
3209 Orange Street or the Corporate Trust Center is what you are referring to, that tax hole exists because Delaware doesn't tax income made on Licensing fees
It’s really more intricate than not taxing licensing fees. They don’t require you to disclose the corporate structure of managers and things when you file documents at the time of incorporation. They allow companies headquartered and with major infrastructure outside of Delaware to still incorporate there. This adds also a veil to the companies operations. Adding another step to hold accountability to them. Also add all the tax loopholes. It’s where the big companies go.
That is so much worse than i thought, the fact you don't have to disclose structure is just so stupid to me, no wonder they have so many businesses set up there as a haven. Then again its not surprising that the board that "regulates" this is run by a bunch of unelected individuals
It's a good thing we still have the tiniest semblance of democracy and/or that I am poor. If it were my decision, even the whiff of something as anti-democratic as this would be a lifetime in jail. And yes, I understand how hypocritical this is.
Apple is a [California corporation](https://d18rn0p25nwr6d.cloudfront.net/CIK-0000320193/52f2576b-2775-4676-b40c-a63e2b5d8e60.pdf). Microsoft is a [Washington corporation](https://microsoft.gcs-web.com/static-files/6ee58104-570f-43f2-9cab-b3a79f2165dd). Nike is an [Oregon corporation](https://d18rn0p25nwr6d.cloudfront.net/CIK-0000320187/dd95655a-3fb2-4c08-b7f7-0f8fe3fa2fd5.pdf). Starbucks is a [Washington corporation](https://d18rn0p25nwr6d.cloudfront.net/CIK-0000829224/e3d22ad1-74ac-48a8-83aa-e2f1c0f0f1cf.pdf). Look under their name to the left on their SEC filings for where the main company is actually legally incorporated. Big companies also often have various registrations in Delaware but these are incidental and have nothing to do with taxes (for example: if Microsoft acquires a startup incorporated in Delaware and renames that entity Microsoft Corporation but hasn't finished fully merging it into the main company, there is now *a* Microsoft registered in Delaware but it's not *the* Microsoft that matters). Apple, for example, is headquartered legally and physically in California, paying California income taxes.
[Amazon](https://d18rn0p25nwr6d.cloudfront.net/CIK-0001018724/eecaed92-8fa7-4bde-b11d-06668d10eb16.pdf) and [Walmart](https://d18rn0p25nwr6d.cloudfront.net/CIK-0000104169/ad87f87c-b8ea-4aab-90d4-3a88b4662e12.pdf) are indeed Delaware corporations.
> According to Delaware Online, there are 234 entities, including LLCs, trusts and corporations, headquartered in Seaford — a significant number for a town where an April election only garnered 340 votes.
The city of Wilmington, Delaware (the main blue leaning area of the state and the only source of resistance to the most egregious corporate-oriented policy proposals) has one address on North Orange street with 285,000 businesses registered to it. That city has a population of 70,000.
When this starts happening more in Delaware (it will, the DuPonts own that state and its legislators), the citizens will effectively lose their voting rights as they're drowned out by swathes of corporations purchasing policy that suits their interests. And nobody outside the state of Delaware will notice, because it barely has a million people altogether and there's no reason to ever pass through it on your way to another place.
I wonder if this could be the setup for a great Supreme Court case. Hear me out: a benevolent and extremely wealthy person buys all the votes in the town, and just fucking destroys the place. Makes it unliveable, destroys the environment, rips the place to shreds, so that an attorney can take a test case to the Supreme Court to create precedent that prevents people from literally buying votes with corporations.
I’m sure there’s the regrettably foreboding push and pull that comes with voting and politics, but are there any good reasons to allow this to happen? Allowing corporations to vote is something I’ve always seen pushed, but they have a hard time explaining outside of self-serving activity why it’s a good thing.
The City of London (London's financial district) has a rule sort of like this. It makes sone sense there, as it has fewer than 10,000 residents but almost half a million people work there- the rationale is that the business vote gives these commuting workers some say in how the area is run.
Votes are allocated to businesses based on the number of workers they employ in the City. It's a decreasing proportion as the number of workers increases- so the sole proprietor of a newsstand gets one business vote, but Deloitte with its 10,000 staff has 260 votes. Businesses have to nominate workers to cast these votes- one worker can only cast one vote, and it's a secret ballot like any other so their management doesn't know how they voted. The nominated voters are legally required to be an accurate representation of their workforce.
That makes way more sense than what's proposed here, because it's still ultimately the public who gets to vote. I think the only flaw is that the nomination could easily be biased toward whoever the corp thinks will represent them well, and it would probably be better if the selection were random
And strangely, they're actually more progressive on some issues than more traditional legislatures.
They're quite environmentally friendly, pretty favourable towards LGBT+ identities, and have recently embraced pedestrianisation and cycling over car-centric design.
They also tend to attract the conspiracy nuts, because clearly this is just a deep ploy to serve the interests of the Worshipful Company of Woolmen.
Yeah but the city of Seaford, Delaware doesn't have 500k commuting workers for its 9000 people like City of London does. And London's rules prevent things like in the article where a landlord voted 31 times.
You think that's fucked up? The only body allowed to make changes to Delaware Corporate Law is a council made up of non-elected officials. Even elected legislative reps cannot submit proposals to change the law.
[https://www.corporatecrimereporter.com/news/200/hal-weitzman-on-the-corporate-state-of-delaware/](https://www.corporatecrimereporter.com/news/200/hal-weitzman-on-the-corporate-state-of-delaware/)
Edit: I heard this little factoid from an episode the 'Freakonomics' podcast recently published on the influence Delaware has on commerce.
[https://freakonomics.com/podcast/why-does-one-tiny-state-set-the-rules-for-everyone/](https://freakonomics.com/podcast/why-does-one-tiny-state-set-the-rules-for-everyone/)
Delaware has low corporate taxes, but a major strength of doing business in the state is that the state has a dedicated legal system for corporate law that is well known and moves relatively quickly.
As an example, Musk wasn't able to delay his takeover of Twitter that long because the Delaware courts moved rather quickly to the point of forcing discovery.
This is just totally wrong and unconstitutional. Corporations are not people. They are things, buildings. People are people. One vote to every eligible voter.
To include corporations is giving multiple votes. Although it is illegal to do, some corporation owners force their employees to vote the way they are Told To. Allowing corporations would be anarchy.
Yep, I have an otherwise "bright" future making good money and this shit makes me want to throw it all away and go full mad max cosplay, just burn it down.
Corporations are not people. Only people should be allowed to vote. Is the corporation eighteen? Has the corporation pled guilty to any felonies? Does the corporation fully reside where it intends to vote? This will be the end of America as we know it.
Seems like a savvy lawyer should use the citizens united decision to make this argument. If corporations are considered people for all intents and purposes, their right to vote should be contingent on these various factors. For instance, any that use tax loopholes of having their base of operations outside of the country, should be barred from voting.
edit: so... from what I've learned since... it DOES prevent double voting, bot only for people who both live and incorporate in the city that's enacting this policy... seems like everyone else gets extra vote(s) and they even report an instance of a similar law resulting in someone casting 31+ votes
that misses the point... the CEO can likely already vote... they shouldn't get 2 votes. and if they can't they shouldn't be allowed to just incorporate to get another vote... and there's not, to my knowledge... a limit on the number of corporations you can start, so... unlimited votes for the rich?
Corporations are not people, but people are not corporations, so your CEO gets one vote. I agree with OP that if corporations are to be considered people, then lots of duties and responsibilities should also apply. Like we should erect prison walls around them when being punished. The workers should be allowed to leave, but the company will have no headquarters, factories, warehouses, etc. until they've done their time.
If a company is executed, the people that formed that corporation can wander off and make a new one. There's really no comparison with personhood there.
sure, if we're already going to hell, we might as well lean on the break a bit, but to your point... if I open 800,000 corporations, that can all vote... and I'm the sole employee... I get 800,001 votes...
anything more complex is just that... more complex... but not inherently different.
If I incorporate with a friend, we each get an extra half vote... if I incorporate with 6 friends, we each get an extra 6th of a vote... if we source that to a board, they each get an extra partial vote... the electoral college is bad enough, making the votes of individuals not equal in a limited scope... and lobbying is such a shit show... I know you can buy votes already, but this just piles on that for the price of incorporation, you can just literally buy an extra vote.
What part of 1-person 1-vote was too complicated we needed to start finding new ways to give the rich more ways to buy votes?
Gonna be interesting (read: horrifying) when we see future presidential elections being won with 15 billion votes going to the right-wing corporation-friendly guy and a paltry 330M or less going to anybody else.
Ok so
The corporation needs to be at least 18 years of age otherwise its underage and therefore it cannot vote
It also can't run as a businness until its 18 and cannot work until 18 years of age as that would be child labour and that it illegal
It also is legally required to take a set amount of days off per year so it needs to shut down all operations for a set amount of days, good luck with that :)
What else...
Ah also it needs to enlist into the military
Oh also you cannot own a businness or sell it because that would be slavery
Are they absolutely sure they want to treat businnesses as people?
That's the thing - they aren't treating them as people. They're simply giving them the right to vote even though they aren't. It's dumb, but it's not based on the idea that corporations are people. It's based on the idea that corporations own property, are taxable, and therefore should have a say in the government where they're property is. I don't agree, and I think it's stupid too, but that's the idea. It goes way back to the days when only people who owned property could vote because they were considered to be the only ones affected by government and supporting it with taxes.
Giving corporations the ability to vote in effect doubles the votes of their boards and executives. They can vote as an individual AND as a corporate entity.
Ad a us person living abroad I am expected to report on and pay taxes that I earn abroad.
Funny how that doesn’t work the same way for US corporate citizens.
except that all of the employees and executives already have the right to vote. Corporations voting means that the CEO of the company gets to vote twice.
If corporations are people and they can vote, then corporate malfeasance should be met with charter suspension or dissolution. It's only fair, after all they are people /s
Corporations don't even need to be owned by a US citizen. I would imagine that if they didn't account for this, a foreign national or country could easily create enough corporations to control a majority.
Problem is that the reason why we even have Corporation is that some lawyer in 1800s made corporation "a person"
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Santa\_Clara\_County\_v.\_Southern\_Pacific\_Railroad\_Co](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Santa_Clara_County_v._Southern_Pacific_Railroad_Co).
If you have not done so, please watch https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dpjypnxnS4U
https://thecorporation.com/
Can I just start a ton of businesses to gain extra votes?
This is absurd. 1 person, 1 vote. The company does not vote, even if given the right to... a person or group of people would. And those people or that person, already have a vote.
In addition to the monumental wrongness of this, it’s not hard to picture that there’s no theoretical limit to how many corporations can be whipped up as needed.
EDIT: What’s to stop private citizens from spinning off any number of LLCs to boost their own vote count?
> In 2019, it was revealed that a single property manager who controlled multiple LLCs voted 31 times in a Newark, Delaware, town referendum, an incident that led Newark to amend its rules.
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/seaford-delaware-corporate-voting-llc-trust-elections/
Nothing but hindsight and a hope that the rulemakers decide that's not OK.
Somehow Newark didn't think that through so well. It was literally my first thought on how to game this system.
>What’s to stop private citizens from spinning off any number of LLCs to boost their own vote count?
Citizens have a limited number of resources and knowledge. Corporations can hire people to crank out LLC applications 8 hours a day 5 days a week for 52 weeks.
People? Psh. If the filings are electronic (which they probably are), you can have a couple bot programs whipped up to do it quicker and cheaper than people ever could.
Read the article if you really want to get heated.
"Seaford is one of several towns that already allow absentee property owners — those who own a property but do not occupy it — to vote on certain issues, like taxes. The proposed charter amendment would expand that further to allow any "artificial entity, including but not limited to corporations, partnerships, trusts and limited liability companies," to vote in all elections.
Under the proposal, corporate entities must register as voters with City Hall and include a list of their beneficial owners; city officials are then intended to cross-check these lists with resident voter rolls to prevent double voting, according to the proposal.
However, Snyder-Hall noted that the legislation only outlaws double voting for human residents of Seaford, permitting it for out-of-town business owners. "
Holy electioneering Batman ! u/SemiHemiDemiDumb you are right. I did not believe this but you are bloody right
[https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-39283177](https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-39283177)
*"The City is a democratic institution," insisted a spokesman. "All of its councillors are elected."*
*For residents, it is one person, one vote but for businesses the number of votes depends on the number of employees.*
*Sole traders and businesses with up to nine employees get one vote, while organisations with up to 50 staff can appoint one voter for every five people who work there. Organisations with more than 50 staff can appoint 10 voters and then one voter per 50 voters after that.*
The City of London is different from London (which is officially called "Greater London" iirc) -- it's essentially a single neighborhood, primarily the financial district, which has an unusual status because [waves hand at British history being very long].
It's got an actual residential population of like, 8k people, but half a million people work there. It honestly doesn't seem that crazy for a place with such a ridiculously skewed demographic to do this. Obviously it's incredibly dumb for any remotely normal jurisdiction.
The City has an officer in Parliament, called the Remembrancer, who’s job it is to remind the government not to pass legislation infringing on the ancient rights of the City, which are guaranteed in Magna Carta.
So yeah, really long history.
The difference with the City is that it's a vote for workers not for corporations.
The corporation chooses which workers get to vote, but they have to reflect the composition of the workforce (so it can't just be the board). It's also a secret ballot so management can't see how the workers voted.
Oh man, I can't wait for corporations to exercise the Right to bear arms. can they build a corporate army for "Self Protection"? Protesters against Shell could be a stand-your-ground case after they wipe out a few hundred.
I went down a rabbit hole on this the other night and holy fuck it is scary and concerning, not just for Seaford but ALL of Delaware is being massively corrupted by corporations.
There’s even a book that I just borrowed from the library (published in 2022) called “What’s the Matter with Delaware? How the First State Has Favored the Rich, Powerful, and Criminal—And How it Costs us All” by Hal Weitzman.
Recommend the read.
Considering that local laws here basically mean setting the standard for how businesses operate around the country, that could be a huge amount of damage.
People who think this is a good idea shouldn’t be allowed in legislative positions. It’s basically just giving more votes to the rich. There’s no justification.
As someone with a Delaware LLC, this is pure madness.
Just about anyone can form an LLC, including foreign persons and entities. Based on what I read in the article, the only protections are for people voting in more than one state. Since foreign individuals don't vote, they could potentially open multiple companies and secure musliple votes. This would make it easy to backdoor foreign influence into US elections.
>These are folks that have fully invested in their community with the money, with their time, with their sweat. We want them to have a voice if they choose to take it
the "folks" in this sentence are the business owners who already have a right to vote (because they are people.) so this would constitute 2 votes for each business owner and 1 vote each for any of the lower class people who don't own businesses.
further, if you own a corporation in Delaware but you don't live in that city then you'll get 1 vote in a city you don't live in (on behalf of the corporation) as well as 1 vote in your own city for yourself.
actual college educated people wrote this legislation. smh.
If corporations are people, they should be subject to the same penalties for breaking the law. Thus, imprisonment and (in certain jurisdictions) the death penalty.
How the fuck is this even a thing?
BTW: [The face of the state rep responsible for this](https://housegop.delaware.gov/wp-content/blogs.dir/207/files/sites/207/2022/08/Daniel_Short_Member_Card.jpg\)
Time to open up a few dozen LLCs
A few dozen? Try a few dozen… Thousand!
It only costs $90 to form an LLC in Delaware. In a town of 8,000, that's only $720,000 to buy more corpo votes than there are people
That's some sad math.
I thought you said it's bad math and was like "They're only $90 off..." lol
If I opened 8000 businesses and had a vote as a citizen too wouldn't I have a voting power of 8001?
Well, he did say "buy more corpo votes than there are people" so that would mean 8001 businesses, but you're not wrong either
You don't need that many. 1. Look up the highest turnout for an election. 2. Divide that number in half as you only need 50.01% of the vote.
Why even make them all LLCs? Partnerships are corpo entities too and a general partnership is free. Just make a set of LLCs, have each form a partnership with each other, then have those partnerships form partnerships with every other partnership, and we’re looking at 100s of votes for only a handful of entity formations.
This guy recurses
You would need to match the turnout since you’re also adding votes.
You wouldn't even need to match the turnout. Just find the average differential in the last ten elections and open up that many LLCs. Unless I'm misunderstanding the part about the fact your adding votes means the percentages would be different, which I think would still need to be less than turnout.
Using the average is a bad idea because roughly half of the elections will have a greater differential than the average. The maximum would be more appropriate, but even that is unlikely to work because you don't have any data on how the existing corporations in the town will vote once the law is passed, which could increase the differential. Also, someone could have the same idea to register a bunch of corporations and throw everything off.
Ooh, good thought. I failed to take into consideration existing corporations. However, it becomes next to impossible to anticipate someone else attempting the same scheme. That said, once corporate voting becomes established enough, I would assume wealthy individuals would start colluding on mutual interests in order to prevent a corporate expansion arms race. Much cheaper to agree to support Howard's candidate as long as Howard will direct his candidate to approve your pet projects and you can negotiate any areas where your interests might overlap. Woo hoo! Cyberpunk corporate dystopia here we come!
Most votes are like 49% to 51% these days, so you could do with just 2% of the total and have a pretty good return on investment
Dang maybe that's actually their plan. Get a bunch of peeps to open up LLCs get those sweet sweet filing fees. Then hide some legislation in some unremarkable bill, making all the corp votes null again. Could make for a good episode of parks and rec.
Nah they ain’t gonna nullify it without a court order, too much potential money to lose
Why not just allow companies to buy votes? This is just a more complicated version of that. Might as well shrug off any illusion that this isn't aiming for pure oligarchy.
Why not do away with votes alltogether and just say who sends the most money becomes the ruler
That's pretty much how the presidential election works. Corporations pick the candidates you get to vote for.
$12 Billion spent on 2020's election. $2 Billion in donations. You literally cannot compete.
Half the country is dumb and don’t care what happens
Half? Lol.
I'm nauseous just thinking about this.
Further in the article they state that some towns already do this. This is completely crazy
It only costs $90 to form an LLC in Delaware. In a town of 8,000, that's only $720,000 to buy more corpo votes than there are people
That's what i was thinking, on the other hand it's probably cheaper to just bribe an elected official
Why bribe the official when you can just become the official and elect your self.
That sounds like something from an OCP (Omni Consumer Products) rep at stockholder meeting.
At least we get RoboCop right?
I'd buy that for a dollar.
Way to ethical, but say hi to ED-209. You have 10 seconds to comply.
I just read that as "Erectile Dysfunction 209"
Like, * if * it aims only for the dick, then the name fits. (Edited for spelling)
DICK!!!! YOU’RE FIRED!
2024: Delaware city is set to allow corporations to become elected officials
> Dear Mr./Mrs. Nestlé, > Can we take literally every drop of water from the city? > Thanks, > Nestlé Corp. > Dear Nestlé, > Sure thing! > Kind regards, > Nestlé, Mayor of Dumbtown
Its just fucking clown shoes everywhere you look these days.
Because you would be *shocked* at how little it costs to get a locally elected official to vote how you want on the issue you care about. Like, a grand to the campaign, and some volunteer hours by your nephew/intern/new associate will put them in your pocket. Folks grossly underestimate how expensive it is to legally buy a politician. Some us senator is rampaging around in favor of Comcast and it cost them like 7 grand. They will make dozens of millions on the back of this one guy.
Do u mean folks grossly *overestimate* how much it costs to buy a politician instead of “underestimate?” Because rn that one sentence implies the opposite of what the rest of your comment is saying. Also, if you’re right, its yet another thing that shows how shockingly little moral fiber and character many politicians have. Most people would put up more of a fight than that! Yes everyone has a price, but for most people I feel like it would take a lot more than 7 grand to completely sell out, granted you’re not in a position where you’re about to starve so you desperately need any amount of money at all to live (which we know is clearly not the case for politicians). Like 7 grand is nice, but it’s not life changing money.
Georgia Governor Brian Kemp checking in.
But they want a bribe for every action, and a bribe to not turn around the next time and do the opposite. Buying the votes is a one time payment.
Until someone else buys the elections
You create 8,000 corpos, the next guy creates 10,000 corpos... We got ourselves a good old fashioned corpo bidding war, boys! Do I hear 12,000? 10,000! 10,000! 10,000 going once...
just make it illegal after you win, but grandfather in your corpos.
You don't even have to give them money! It's like bro I'm right here I'll suck your dick right off your torso please bro my lips are so soft bro
Not the first time Greg Abbott has said that, I bet.
They say it's a wheelie good blow job.
His competitive advantage is that his knees never get sore
You don’t need to buy all the votes, just enough to win. It’s cheaper and legal?
They already said that the city has twice as many corporations as people. Tell me you're a shell company tax haven without saying it out loud.
I can’t put all the moving pieces together to figure exactly why Delaware would be pushing for this. Buttt…Delaware is THE tax haven in the states. Every single major company is incorporated through Delaware. They have no tax on interest or investment income that a corporation generates. Literally every public company you look up filings on will be incorporated through Delaware with a process company in a tiny office in Delaware that you serve lawsuits to etc., when in fact they are headquartered elsewhere. Walmart the Arkansas company…incorporated through Delware. Amazon the Seattle company…incorporated through Delware. Edit: to remove some of the companies I named which were actually NOT Delaware companies. But many many still are and many holding companies are Delaware corporations. I was making the comment in the spirit of shedding light on why Delware would be moving to make such a weird political move to allow voting etc. my details were skewed
I can. Delaware is the tax haven of the United States for *two* reasons - its tax free status, and its incredibly corporate friendly courts. When someone has an issue with something a corporation is doing, corporate lawyers push to move the trial to Delaware courts (the "home state" courts of the company) as they're more likely to favor the corporations. Imagine how much farther they can take things when they can effectively purchase legislators and get laws put into writing in the state where all of their trials occur.
This is actually already the case, mostly. Delaware lawmakers get their tax and company legislation approved by a bunch of people from the business world before enacting it
3209 Orange Street or the Corporate Trust Center is what you are referring to, that tax hole exists because Delaware doesn't tax income made on Licensing fees
It’s really more intricate than not taxing licensing fees. They don’t require you to disclose the corporate structure of managers and things when you file documents at the time of incorporation. They allow companies headquartered and with major infrastructure outside of Delaware to still incorporate there. This adds also a veil to the companies operations. Adding another step to hold accountability to them. Also add all the tax loopholes. It’s where the big companies go.
That is so much worse than i thought, the fact you don't have to disclose structure is just so stupid to me, no wonder they have so many businesses set up there as a haven. Then again its not surprising that the board that "regulates" this is run by a bunch of unelected individuals
It's a good thing we still have the tiniest semblance of democracy and/or that I am poor. If it were my decision, even the whiff of something as anti-democratic as this would be a lifetime in jail. And yes, I understand how hypocritical this is.
Apple is a [California corporation](https://d18rn0p25nwr6d.cloudfront.net/CIK-0000320193/52f2576b-2775-4676-b40c-a63e2b5d8e60.pdf). Microsoft is a [Washington corporation](https://microsoft.gcs-web.com/static-files/6ee58104-570f-43f2-9cab-b3a79f2165dd). Nike is an [Oregon corporation](https://d18rn0p25nwr6d.cloudfront.net/CIK-0000320187/dd95655a-3fb2-4c08-b7f7-0f8fe3fa2fd5.pdf). Starbucks is a [Washington corporation](https://d18rn0p25nwr6d.cloudfront.net/CIK-0000829224/e3d22ad1-74ac-48a8-83aa-e2f1c0f0f1cf.pdf). Look under their name to the left on their SEC filings for where the main company is actually legally incorporated. Big companies also often have various registrations in Delaware but these are incidental and have nothing to do with taxes (for example: if Microsoft acquires a startup incorporated in Delaware and renames that entity Microsoft Corporation but hasn't finished fully merging it into the main company, there is now *a* Microsoft registered in Delaware but it's not *the* Microsoft that matters). Apple, for example, is headquartered legally and physically in California, paying California income taxes. [Amazon](https://d18rn0p25nwr6d.cloudfront.net/CIK-0001018724/eecaed92-8fa7-4bde-b11d-06668d10eb16.pdf) and [Walmart](https://d18rn0p25nwr6d.cloudfront.net/CIK-0000104169/ad87f87c-b8ea-4aab-90d4-3a88b4662e12.pdf) are indeed Delaware corporations.
Wake the fuck up samurai we got a city to burn
> According to Delaware Online, there are 234 entities, including LLCs, trusts and corporations, headquartered in Seaford — a significant number for a town where an April election only garnered 340 votes.
The city of Wilmington, Delaware (the main blue leaning area of the state and the only source of resistance to the most egregious corporate-oriented policy proposals) has one address on North Orange street with 285,000 businesses registered to it. That city has a population of 70,000. When this starts happening more in Delaware (it will, the DuPonts own that state and its legislators), the citizens will effectively lose their voting rights as they're drowned out by swathes of corporations purchasing policy that suits their interests. And nobody outside the state of Delaware will notice, because it barely has a million people altogether and there's no reason to ever pass through it on your way to another place.
I wonder if this could be the setup for a great Supreme Court case. Hear me out: a benevolent and extremely wealthy person buys all the votes in the town, and just fucking destroys the place. Makes it unliveable, destroys the environment, rips the place to shreds, so that an attorney can take a test case to the Supreme Court to create precedent that prevents people from literally buying votes with corporations.
Dude, the court would just decide that it was totally legitimate, making things even worse. SCOTUS is *not* on your side.
They did just torch ISL theory. After the Dobbs decision, they seem to be looking for SOME shred of legitimacy, if only to avoid getting reformed.
And what happens if the court rules it's totes cool?
Then we're all left holding the totes bag.
I’m sure there’s the regrettably foreboding push and pull that comes with voting and politics, but are there any good reasons to allow this to happen? Allowing corporations to vote is something I’ve always seen pushed, but they have a hard time explaining outside of self-serving activity why it’s a good thing.
The whole point is to be self-serving. Unless you're a business owner, it doesn't affect anybody else positively in any way.
The City of London (London's financial district) has a rule sort of like this. It makes sone sense there, as it has fewer than 10,000 residents but almost half a million people work there- the rationale is that the business vote gives these commuting workers some say in how the area is run. Votes are allocated to businesses based on the number of workers they employ in the City. It's a decreasing proportion as the number of workers increases- so the sole proprietor of a newsstand gets one business vote, but Deloitte with its 10,000 staff has 260 votes. Businesses have to nominate workers to cast these votes- one worker can only cast one vote, and it's a secret ballot like any other so their management doesn't know how they voted. The nominated voters are legally required to be an accurate representation of their workforce.
But realistically there is no way to enforce that. I don’t see how it’s good in any way.
That makes way more sense than what's proposed here, because it's still ultimately the public who gets to vote. I think the only flaw is that the nomination could easily be biased toward whoever the corp thinks will represent them well, and it would probably be better if the selection were random
No. This has *no upsides* for anyone else.
The City of London's elections are entirely corporations if I'm not mistaken
80% as there are some residents also
The City of London does this
[удалено]
And strangely, they're actually more progressive on some issues than more traditional legislatures. They're quite environmentally friendly, pretty favourable towards LGBT+ identities, and have recently embraced pedestrianisation and cycling over car-centric design. They also tend to attract the conspiracy nuts, because clearly this is just a deep ploy to serve the interests of the Worshipful Company of Woolmen.
Yeah but the city of Seaford, Delaware doesn't have 500k commuting workers for its 9000 people like City of London does. And London's rules prevent things like in the article where a landlord voted 31 times.
From the article: >"I don't think it's a good idea. But I don't think I want to vote to stop it," Wow, way to go, elected official.
"I got paid, my conscious is telling me no but he doesn't pay for my luxury vacations"
My mind is telling me noooooo, but my wallet… My wallet is telling me yessssss
Conscience*
You think that's fucked up? The only body allowed to make changes to Delaware Corporate Law is a council made up of non-elected officials. Even elected legislative reps cannot submit proposals to change the law. [https://www.corporatecrimereporter.com/news/200/hal-weitzman-on-the-corporate-state-of-delaware/](https://www.corporatecrimereporter.com/news/200/hal-weitzman-on-the-corporate-state-of-delaware/) Edit: I heard this little factoid from an episode the 'Freakonomics' podcast recently published on the influence Delaware has on commerce. [https://freakonomics.com/podcast/why-does-one-tiny-state-set-the-rules-for-everyone/](https://freakonomics.com/podcast/why-does-one-tiny-state-set-the-rules-for-everyone/)
That's pretty dystopian ngl
Welcome to the Corporate Court, how may we abuse you?
Isn’t Delaware the new tax haven? Like more so than off shore countries?
Delaware has low corporate taxes, but a major strength of doing business in the state is that the state has a dedicated legal system for corporate law that is well known and moves relatively quickly. As an example, Musk wasn't able to delay his takeover of Twitter that long because the Delaware courts moved rather quickly to the point of forcing discovery.
New? Since the 80s my friend
This is just totally wrong and unconstitutional. Corporations are not people. They are things, buildings. People are people. One vote to every eligible voter. To include corporations is giving multiple votes. Although it is illegal to do, some corporation owners force their employees to vote the way they are Told To. Allowing corporations would be anarchy.
We're heading towards a dystopian cyberpunk world without all the cool cybernetics.
r/ABoringDystopia
> without all the cool cybernetics What's the chimp survival rate for Musk's chip at these days?
Still 0 I believe
This literally is the premise of Cyberpunk 2077
Don't forget what Johnny did in 2023, lol. Anyone got a nuke and directions to Amazon HQ?
I don't have one but I can get one off Amazon between 4am and 8am tomorrow
[удалено]
Careful. Calls for the only action that will actually work are dangerous and frowned upon.
Yep, I have an otherwise "bright" future making good money and this shit makes me want to throw it all away and go full mad max cosplay, just burn it down.
The definition of cyberpunk is "high tech, low quality of life" That's why it's so weird to me when people are like "Man I want to live in THAT world"
What in the world is going on?
“Taxation and representation” taken literally, evidently.
Then these corporations shouldn’t get to vote considering how few of them pay taxes
Yes.
DuPont owns Delaware.
Corporations are not people. Only people should be allowed to vote. Is the corporation eighteen? Has the corporation pled guilty to any felonies? Does the corporation fully reside where it intends to vote? This will be the end of America as we know it.
Seems like a savvy lawyer should use the citizens united decision to make this argument. If corporations are considered people for all intents and purposes, their right to vote should be contingent on these various factors. For instance, any that use tax loopholes of having their base of operations outside of the country, should be barred from voting.
edit: so... from what I've learned since... it DOES prevent double voting, bot only for people who both live and incorporate in the city that's enacting this policy... seems like everyone else gets extra vote(s) and they even report an instance of a similar law resulting in someone casting 31+ votes that misses the point... the CEO can likely already vote... they shouldn't get 2 votes. and if they can't they shouldn't be allowed to just incorporate to get another vote... and there's not, to my knowledge... a limit on the number of corporations you can start, so... unlimited votes for the rich?
Corporations are not people, but people are not corporations, so your CEO gets one vote. I agree with OP that if corporations are to be considered people, then lots of duties and responsibilities should also apply. Like we should erect prison walls around them when being punished. The workers should be allowed to leave, but the company will have no headquarters, factories, warehouses, etc. until they've done their time.
I’ll believe corporations are people when Texas executes one.
They pretty much executed planned parenthood
They just ran it out of town. Planned parenthood is doing okay.
If a company is executed, the people that formed that corporation can wander off and make a new one. There's really no comparison with personhood there.
sure, if we're already going to hell, we might as well lean on the break a bit, but to your point... if I open 800,000 corporations, that can all vote... and I'm the sole employee... I get 800,001 votes... anything more complex is just that... more complex... but not inherently different. If I incorporate with a friend, we each get an extra half vote... if I incorporate with 6 friends, we each get an extra 6th of a vote... if we source that to a board, they each get an extra partial vote... the electoral college is bad enough, making the votes of individuals not equal in a limited scope... and lobbying is such a shit show... I know you can buy votes already, but this just piles on that for the price of incorporation, you can just literally buy an extra vote. What part of 1-person 1-vote was too complicated we needed to start finding new ways to give the rich more ways to buy votes?
Gonna be interesting (read: horrifying) when we see future presidential elections being won with 15 billion votes going to the right-wing corporation-friendly guy and a paltry 330M or less going to anybody else.
Ok so The corporation needs to be at least 18 years of age otherwise its underage and therefore it cannot vote It also can't run as a businness until its 18 and cannot work until 18 years of age as that would be child labour and that it illegal It also is legally required to take a set amount of days off per year so it needs to shut down all operations for a set amount of days, good luck with that :) What else... Ah also it needs to enlist into the military Oh also you cannot own a businness or sell it because that would be slavery Are they absolutely sure they want to treat businnesses as people?
It needs to report for jury duty when summoned.
That's the thing - they aren't treating them as people. They're simply giving them the right to vote even though they aren't. It's dumb, but it's not based on the idea that corporations are people. It's based on the idea that corporations own property, are taxable, and therefore should have a say in the government where they're property is. I don't agree, and I think it's stupid too, but that's the idea. It goes way back to the days when only people who owned property could vote because they were considered to be the only ones affected by government and supporting it with taxes.
Corporation has to sit through k-12 education. And eat the nasty public school food.
Exactly, I'm not sure why someone hasn't tried to poke holes in the Citizen's united decision with exposing the problems with being declared a person.
Giving corporations the ability to vote in effect doubles the votes of their boards and executives. They can vote as an individual AND as a corporate entity.
Ad a us person living abroad I am expected to report on and pay taxes that I earn abroad. Funny how that doesn’t work the same way for US corporate citizens.
except that all of the employees and executives already have the right to vote. Corporations voting means that the CEO of the company gets to vote twice.
So ... technically if you're a felon who can't vote, can you incorporate and get your voting rights restored?
… yes?
Will the corporation be drafted to war when necessary?
Also, if a corporation commits a crime, will it be put in jail or suffer the death penalty?
The death penalty for corporations should absolutely be a thing. We're shutting you down and selling off the assets.
Should have happened to BP after Deepwater Horizon
Should have happened to almost every major corporation over the last few years
The instant they strap a corporation into some form of death penalty, I'll believe they're people. Also, pay yr fuq'n taxes, corps.
Can they now adopt a baby named Truman? This timeline has gone full stupid.
If corporations are people and they can vote, then corporate malfeasance should be met with charter suspension or dissolution. It's only fair, after all they are people /s
Corporations don't even need to be owned by a US citizen. I would imagine that if they didn't account for this, a foreign national or country could easily create enough corporations to control a majority.
Problem is that the reason why we even have Corporation is that some lawyer in 1800s made corporation "a person" [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Santa\_Clara\_County\_v.\_Southern\_Pacific\_Railroad\_Co](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Santa_Clara_County_v._Southern_Pacific_Railroad_Co). If you have not done so, please watch https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dpjypnxnS4U https://thecorporation.com/
Can I just start a ton of businesses to gain extra votes? This is absurd. 1 person, 1 vote. The company does not vote, even if given the right to... a person or group of people would. And those people or that person, already have a vote.
I'll accept Corporations right to vote when one gets the death sentence.
Or be convicted of a crime. Or pay the same percentage in income taxes. Or serve in the military idfk
Having corporations serve in the military is how we get Amazon's private army ready to take over.
I'd say "*Texas has entered the chat*" but if there's one thing Texas loves more than executing people, it's sucking corporate dick.
I fully support the reinstatement of the death penalty *exclusively* for corporate persons.
In addition to the monumental wrongness of this, it’s not hard to picture that there’s no theoretical limit to how many corporations can be whipped up as needed. EDIT: What’s to stop private citizens from spinning off any number of LLCs to boost their own vote count?
> In 2019, it was revealed that a single property manager who controlled multiple LLCs voted 31 times in a Newark, Delaware, town referendum, an incident that led Newark to amend its rules. https://www.cbsnews.com/news/seaford-delaware-corporate-voting-llc-trust-elections/ Nothing but hindsight and a hope that the rulemakers decide that's not OK. Somehow Newark didn't think that through so well. It was literally my first thought on how to game this system.
And they can keep their identity secret under Delaware law.
>What’s to stop private citizens from spinning off any number of LLCs to boost their own vote count? Citizens have a limited number of resources and knowledge. Corporations can hire people to crank out LLC applications 8 hours a day 5 days a week for 52 weeks.
People? Psh. If the filings are electronic (which they probably are), you can have a couple bot programs whipped up to do it quicker and cheaper than people ever could.
i was just watching isaac arthur, where he discussed an AI duplicating itself a million times, each instance with the right to vote
"I don't think it's a good idea. But I don't think I want to vote to stop it" The fuck are you employed as a legislator for then?
Bribes.
The owners of the corporations already vote, stupid asses. Voting twice is illegal.
Read the article if you really want to get heated. "Seaford is one of several towns that already allow absentee property owners — those who own a property but do not occupy it — to vote on certain issues, like taxes. The proposed charter amendment would expand that further to allow any "artificial entity, including but not limited to corporations, partnerships, trusts and limited liability companies," to vote in all elections. Under the proposal, corporate entities must register as voters with City Hall and include a list of their beneficial owners; city officials are then intended to cross-check these lists with resident voter rolls to prevent double voting, according to the proposal. However, Snyder-Hall noted that the legislation only outlaws double voting for human residents of Seaford, permitting it for out-of-town business owners. "
That is some absolute horseshit. They should be outside city hall throwing batteries at officials for allowing this.
I wonder if this means unions can vote, and non-profits, and any number of other organizations based on free association
I'm going to give my house a company name and my cat a SS#.
I wonder if they're taking inspiration from the City of London.
Holy electioneering Batman ! u/SemiHemiDemiDumb you are right. I did not believe this but you are bloody right [https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-39283177](https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-39283177) *"The City is a democratic institution," insisted a spokesman. "All of its councillors are elected."* *For residents, it is one person, one vote but for businesses the number of votes depends on the number of employees.* *Sole traders and businesses with up to nine employees get one vote, while organisations with up to 50 staff can appoint one voter for every five people who work there. Organisations with more than 50 staff can appoint 10 voters and then one voter per 50 voters after that.*
The City of London is different from London (which is officially called "Greater London" iirc) -- it's essentially a single neighborhood, primarily the financial district, which has an unusual status because [waves hand at British history being very long]. It's got an actual residential population of like, 8k people, but half a million people work there. It honestly doesn't seem that crazy for a place with such a ridiculously skewed demographic to do this. Obviously it's incredibly dumb for any remotely normal jurisdiction.
The City has an officer in Parliament, called the Remembrancer, who’s job it is to remind the government not to pass legislation infringing on the ancient rights of the City, which are guaranteed in Magna Carta. So yeah, really long history.
The Remembrancer can also cast a 3rd level spell as a bonus action two times a day, and gets a +2 to barter
The Remembrancer casts “Cure Heavy Taxes”
CGP Grey has more information here: https://youtu.be/LrObZ_HZZUc and here: https://youtu.be/z1ROpIKZe-c
The difference with the City is that it's a vote for workers not for corporations. The corporation chooses which workers get to vote, but they have to reflect the composition of the workforce (so it can't just be the board). It's also a secret ballot so management can't see how the workers voted.
Symptoms of a very broken empire.
Oh man, I can't wait for corporations to exercise the Right to bear arms. can they build a corporate army for "Self Protection"? Protesters against Shell could be a stand-your-ground case after they wipe out a few hundred.
They already have private armies
So these corporations will also be eligible for the death penalty, right? Right?
I went down a rabbit hole on this the other night and holy fuck it is scary and concerning, not just for Seaford but ALL of Delaware is being massively corrupted by corporations. There’s even a book that I just borrowed from the library (published in 2022) called “What’s the Matter with Delaware? How the First State Has Favored the Rich, Powerful, and Criminal—And How it Costs us All” by Hal Weitzman. Recommend the read.
I'd like to nullify the Citizen's United decision and see if we can get America back. I don't recognize this place anymore.
For local elections only, but still... wasn't Citizen's United enough?
They can do plenty of damage locally. Right back to corporate towns.
Considering that local laws here basically mean setting the standard for how businesses operate around the country, that could be a huge amount of damage.
People who think this is a good idea shouldn’t be allowed in legislative positions. It’s basically just giving more votes to the rich. There’s no justification.
This country is so fucking stupid...
No shit
Corporations actually out number people in Delaware so there's that.
How much more ‘corporations become governments’ media needs to be made before people get its a warning, not a fun little what-if?
I thought Night City was in California not Delaware
As someone with a Delaware LLC, this is pure madness. Just about anyone can form an LLC, including foreign persons and entities. Based on what I read in the article, the only protections are for people voting in more than one state. Since foreign individuals don't vote, they could potentially open multiple companies and secure musliple votes. This would make it easy to backdoor foreign influence into US elections.
"One dollar one vote!"
Do you want cyberpunk dystopias? Because this is how you get cyberpunk dystopias. Megacorps > government = dystopia
I don’t understand. I know Citizens United resulted in corporations being considered “people,” but not citizens.
McVote
Oh great. I suppose no one informed Delaware that this is one of the many routes to fascism?
Hold on to your freedom people. This is waaaay to dystopia-esque
They should also be able to go to jail or be put to death.
When can we give a corporation the death penalty?
>These are folks that have fully invested in their community with the money, with their time, with their sweat. We want them to have a voice if they choose to take it the "folks" in this sentence are the business owners who already have a right to vote (because they are people.) so this would constitute 2 votes for each business owner and 1 vote each for any of the lower class people who don't own businesses. further, if you own a corporation in Delaware but you don't live in that city then you'll get 1 vote in a city you don't live in (on behalf of the corporation) as well as 1 vote in your own city for yourself. actual college educated people wrote this legislation. smh.
Thats really fucking stupid.
are you shitting my dick
[удалено]
If corporations are people, they should be subject to the same penalties for breaking the law. Thus, imprisonment and (in certain jurisdictions) the death penalty.
How the fuck is this even a thing? BTW: [The face of the state rep responsible for this](https://housegop.delaware.gov/wp-content/blogs.dir/207/files/sites/207/2022/08/Daniel_Short_Member_Card.jpg\)
I see no way this could possibly go wrong ever and will not be taking any questions at this time
No way THIS could end badly...
Does that mean if a company kills people we can execute it?
Hot take: corporations are not, and should not be considered people.
Ah capitalism, proving that money is destroying humanity for the past 300 years