<story><title>TechShop shuts down all U.S. locations, declares bankruptcy</title><url>https://techcrunch.com/2017/11/15/techshop-shuts-down-all-u-s-locations-declares-bankruptcy/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>chimeracoder</author><text>&amp;gt; As an American this is what I truly hate about corporations. They are afforded person-hood and &amp;quot;citizenship&amp;quot; where it benefits them but are treated as a company &amp;#x2F; corporation &amp;#x2F; non-living entity when that benefits them most.&lt;p&gt;As an American, I detest this meme, because it perpetuates major misconceptions about corporate law in the US.&lt;p&gt;Corporations are not granted &amp;quot;personhood and citizenship&amp;quot;. People are citizens. People can exercise their rights. Both of those statements are true whether they do so as individuals or whether they do so as a group. In other words, a group of people has the same legal rights collectively that they do as individuals.&lt;p&gt;This concept is often abbreviated as &amp;quot;corporate personhood&amp;quot;, which is unfortunate because it&amp;#x27;s a seriously misleading term. It&amp;#x27;s not that corporations become people - it&amp;#x27;s a way of referring to way individuals can exercise their rights through a group. Corporate personhood isn&amp;#x27;t even a single provision; it&amp;#x27;s a way of summarizing a collection of unrelated case law in a short phrase.</text></item><item><author>scoggs</author><text>&amp;gt; This is what makes a European a European, and an American, American. We have different standards and expectations about the social contract between enterprises and society.&lt;p&gt;As an American this is what I truly hate about corporations. They are afforded person-hood and &amp;quot;citizenship&amp;quot; where it benefits them but are treated as a company &amp;#x2F; corporation &amp;#x2F; non-living entity when that benefits them most.&lt;p&gt;I&amp;#x27;ve been tired of telling international friends that I don&amp;#x27;t set nor agree with the vast majority of American policies. I, sadly, have no faith that the day will ever come where I won&amp;#x27;t feel so defensive when the topic of my country and it&amp;#x27;s influence on the globe becomes the topic for discussion.</text></item><item><author>iagooar</author><text>This is what makes a European a European, and an American, American. We have different standards and expectations about the social contract between enterprises and society.&lt;p&gt;Also, no wonder American companies tend to grow a lot faster without many impediments. The whole American system is built to support and protect the enterprise, not the people. In Europe, as an enterprise, you have a lot more requirements and obligations to fulfill.&lt;p&gt;And even though I have a disadvantage running a company in Europe as compared to the US, as a European I believe it&amp;#x27;s the right thing to do.</text></item><item><author>doikor</author><text>&amp;gt; Those same employees were also told that they&amp;#x27;re unlikely to get their final paycheck.&lt;p&gt;This as a Finn sounds crazy. Here the employees are protected to a degree if the company goes bankrupt then the government will pay the final paycheck and the government will be the first one to get their money back from the bankruptcy (before any banks&amp;#x2F;other creditors when any existing assets are sold)</text></item><item><author>uncletammy</author><text>They informed employees of the shutdown as they were firing them.  This was a few days AFTER they revoked the employees insurance benefits without notice or explanation.  Those same employees were also told that they&amp;#x27;re unlikely to get their final paycheck.&lt;p&gt;As for me, I was suckered into pre-paying for $500 worth of classes that I&amp;#x27;ll never be reimbursed for.  So many people who&amp;#x27;s livelihoods depended on their facilities were completely blindsided.  Members who had been there for years were told they had hours to remove their belongings or they would be confiscated. The whole thing is a complete mess.&lt;p&gt;All of this just a few weeks after opening a brand new location in Brooklyn.  I simply can&amp;#x27;t comprehend the level of negligence and mismanagement here.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>sooheon</author><text>&amp;gt;People are citizens. People can exercise their rights. Both of those statements are true whether they do so as individuals or whether they do so as a group. In other words, a group of people has the same legal rights collectively that they do as individuals.&lt;p&gt;I in turn detest &lt;i&gt;this&lt;/i&gt; meme. It is symptomatic of everything I think is wrong with corporatism.&lt;p&gt;Size and power distort incentives and moral accountability. Each individual in a group should continue to have the rights they have as individuals, but these rights should not aggregate with a &amp;quot;simple sum&amp;quot;, so to speak. There must be some cost to aggregating your &amp;quot;rights&amp;quot; in this way, because there is a clear dampening factor for aggregate blame and accountability, which counterbalance &amp;quot;rights&amp;quot;. People behave differently in groups (worse), and with more power (worse), and it is impossible to pin moral blame on a corporation.&lt;p&gt;People perpetrate violence on other people. People can perpetrate said violence as a group. People and groups with more means (money, power, influence) can perpetrate and get away with more violence, as the scale and degrees of removal from the effects of the violence become incomprehensible. Hence I can&amp;#x27;t blow smoke in the face of my neighbor because I will feel bad, and I will have to deal with the repercussions. But BP can spill 4.9 million gallons of oil in the gulf because not a single person will go to jail, the fees are a negligible cost of doing business, and nobody feels bad because everyone was &amp;quot;just doing their job&amp;quot;. No, I don&amp;#x27;t believe corporations deserve any rights whatsoever.</text></comment>
<story><title>TechShop shuts down all U.S. locations, declares bankruptcy</title><url>https://techcrunch.com/2017/11/15/techshop-shuts-down-all-u-s-locations-declares-bankruptcy/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>chimeracoder</author><text>&amp;gt; As an American this is what I truly hate about corporations. They are afforded person-hood and &amp;quot;citizenship&amp;quot; where it benefits them but are treated as a company &amp;#x2F; corporation &amp;#x2F; non-living entity when that benefits them most.&lt;p&gt;As an American, I detest this meme, because it perpetuates major misconceptions about corporate law in the US.&lt;p&gt;Corporations are not granted &amp;quot;personhood and citizenship&amp;quot;. People are citizens. People can exercise their rights. Both of those statements are true whether they do so as individuals or whether they do so as a group. In other words, a group of people has the same legal rights collectively that they do as individuals.&lt;p&gt;This concept is often abbreviated as &amp;quot;corporate personhood&amp;quot;, which is unfortunate because it&amp;#x27;s a seriously misleading term. It&amp;#x27;s not that corporations become people - it&amp;#x27;s a way of referring to way individuals can exercise their rights through a group. Corporate personhood isn&amp;#x27;t even a single provision; it&amp;#x27;s a way of summarizing a collection of unrelated case law in a short phrase.</text></item><item><author>scoggs</author><text>&amp;gt; This is what makes a European a European, and an American, American. We have different standards and expectations about the social contract between enterprises and society.&lt;p&gt;As an American this is what I truly hate about corporations. They are afforded person-hood and &amp;quot;citizenship&amp;quot; where it benefits them but are treated as a company &amp;#x2F; corporation &amp;#x2F; non-living entity when that benefits them most.&lt;p&gt;I&amp;#x27;ve been tired of telling international friends that I don&amp;#x27;t set nor agree with the vast majority of American policies. I, sadly, have no faith that the day will ever come where I won&amp;#x27;t feel so defensive when the topic of my country and it&amp;#x27;s influence on the globe becomes the topic for discussion.</text></item><item><author>iagooar</author><text>This is what makes a European a European, and an American, American. We have different standards and expectations about the social contract between enterprises and society.&lt;p&gt;Also, no wonder American companies tend to grow a lot faster without many impediments. The whole American system is built to support and protect the enterprise, not the people. In Europe, as an enterprise, you have a lot more requirements and obligations to fulfill.&lt;p&gt;And even though I have a disadvantage running a company in Europe as compared to the US, as a European I believe it&amp;#x27;s the right thing to do.</text></item><item><author>doikor</author><text>&amp;gt; Those same employees were also told that they&amp;#x27;re unlikely to get their final paycheck.&lt;p&gt;This as a Finn sounds crazy. Here the employees are protected to a degree if the company goes bankrupt then the government will pay the final paycheck and the government will be the first one to get their money back from the bankruptcy (before any banks&amp;#x2F;other creditors when any existing assets are sold)</text></item><item><author>uncletammy</author><text>They informed employees of the shutdown as they were firing them.  This was a few days AFTER they revoked the employees insurance benefits without notice or explanation.  Those same employees were also told that they&amp;#x27;re unlikely to get their final paycheck.&lt;p&gt;As for me, I was suckered into pre-paying for $500 worth of classes that I&amp;#x27;ll never be reimbursed for.  So many people who&amp;#x27;s livelihoods depended on their facilities were completely blindsided.  Members who had been there for years were told they had hours to remove their belongings or they would be confiscated. The whole thing is a complete mess.&lt;p&gt;All of this just a few weeks after opening a brand new location in Brooklyn.  I simply can&amp;#x27;t comprehend the level of negligence and mismanagement here.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>ejstronge</author><text>I&amp;#x27;m not very knowledgeable in this area, but have a question, as you seem to have thought about this.&lt;p&gt;I feel the GP&amp;#x27;s point relates to things like corporations receiving favorable tax treatment when individuals would not; corporations receiving very lenient punishments for crimes when individuals would not; corporations, as above, being able to avoid payments when an individual&amp;#x27;s property might otherwise be at risk, and so on. Perhaps I&amp;#x27;m just not aware that these possibilities are available to me. Am I mistaken here?&lt;p&gt;Overall, I feel your response deals with the legal framework around what GP said as opposed to the ideas that inspired GP&amp;#x27;s comment.</text></comment>