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Cake day: June 10th, 2023

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  • The main reason why corporate personhood exists is to limit the liability of owners. If I run a company and a customer slips and falls, they can sue the company, but they can’t sue me or my shareholders. Without any form of personhood there could be no limited liability. The customer would be suing me and the shareholders directly.

    I don’t think it would change much for giant corporations but that would be terrible for small businesses. I have a friend who makes his own stuff and sells it to people. He doesn’t make much, a few thousand a year. He incorporated to prevent losing his house from a customer suing him.

    I once worked for an Unlimited Liability Corporation (ULC). It’s a corporation where the owners and shareholders can be sued directly for company actions. They took on that higher risk because the tax breaks that come with a ULC were worth it I guess. So it’s not like giant corporations wouldn’t exist if they weren’t considered people, but it probably would hurt entrepreneurship.

    The main issue Americans have with corporate personhood is the “freedom of speech” thing the US Supreme Court ruled on in Citizens United v. FCC. The ruling basically said corporations can’t be prevented from giving their money to political causes because its a violation of the corporation’s freedom of speech. That’s specifically a US ruling. Other countries don’t grant rights and freedoms to corporations.





  • Thank you. It makes me lose hope for the future of humanity everytime I read comments saying we should remake the mistakes of our past. If we had nukes in 1914, the world would have ended because the Archduke of Austria was shot.

    The Archduke of Austria, a title that doesn’t exist anymore, was the heir to rule Austria-Hungary, a country that doesn’t exist anymore. He was killed by a Bosnian because he didn’t like being a part of Austria-Hungary. Bosnia would later become a part of Yugoslavia, a country that doesn’t exist anymore. How many nukes would have been launched to save these meaningless titles and borders?





  • It’s the same outcome either way. You don’t have nukes and another country decides to nuke you? Your country doesn’t exist anymore! You do have nukes and another country decides to nukes you? Your country doesn’t exist anymore! What changes?

    People say deterrence, but what is the deterrence? You built something that you’ll never use? What’s the point?? Oh you will use it? Great! You’ve decided there’s some event that is so bad you’d end the world if it happened. I’m not sure what event that is. Maybe you have one in mind? China attacks India? The world should surely be destroyed then! No? Too bad! You don’t get a say! China and India decide if humanity gets to continue! They definitely wouldn’t do that though.

    They built their nukes to never use them. Which is the same as not having nukes, but having nukes is required so that nobody uses them, which is the same as never building them, but they need to be built so they won’t be used!


  • No. Nuclear weapons should not exist.

    Kurzgesagt recently made a video on the nuclear arms race. The end of the race was when the guy who invented the hydrogen bomb invented a bomb that could destroy the entire planet. The bomb wouldn’t even need to be dropped onto your enemy. It could be built inside your own country and detonated any time at all to end humanity. He thought of it as the biggest deterrent to war. Nobody else did. Politicians and military leaders threw out the idea entirely. Why would anyone detonate a nuclear bomb inside their own country??

    The size of that bomb pales in comparison to the size of all nuclear weapons in existence today. We built that bomb. It’s just not one giant bomb, but split into 12,000 parts and spread over the world. Is it any different? If you cannot justify building a nuclear weapon that would destroy your own country to destroy another, how can you justify building any nuclear weapons at all?


  • I tried to keep the example simple since this is ELI5. If you take the number of electors a state has a divide it by the states population, you’ll get its electors per capita.

    28 electors for 19 million people equals 1.47 electors per million people for New York.

    30 electors for 22 million people equals 1.36 electors per million people for Florida

    Idaho gets 4 electors for 2 million people equals 2 electors per million.

    Since it’s the number of electors sent to Washington that decide who gets to be president, sending more electors per capita means a state has more influence on the outcome.

    50% of Americans live in just 9 states. The other 50% live in the remaining 41 states. If the 9 states all voted one way, and the 41 other states voted the other, the popular vote would be 50/50, but the electoral college results would be a landslide victory for whoever won in 41 states.

    The main reason someone becomes president while losing the popular vote is because they won the electors from a bunch of the smaller states. Smaller states are less populated and more rural. Rural people tend to vote conservative since they benefit less from progressive policies and prefer tradition. Conservatives therefore have an edge due to the electoral college. There were 4 presidents that won without the popular vote. All of them were Republican. Given there have only been 59 elections in American history, that’s a 6.8% chance the loser of the popular vote wins.


  • In America, the people don’t elect the president. The states send electors to Washington and all the electors form the “electoral college”. It is this electoral college that elects the president. To make it a bit democratic, each state holds a vote to see who the residents of the state want as president. The electors that state sends to Washington will be told who they should elect based on who the residents of the state voted for.

    A simple example. Imagine the US only has two states: New York and Florida.

    New York has 19 million residents and gets to send 28 electors to the electoral college. Florida has 22 million residents gets to send 30 electors to the electoral college.

    All 19 million residents of New York vote for Kang. New York sends 28 electors and tell them they should elect Kang. In Florida, the vote is split. 12 million vote for Kodos and 10 million vote for Kang. Since more people voted for Kodos, Florida sends 30 electors and tells them to elect Kodos.

    The popular vote is 29 million votes for Kang and 12 million votes for Kodos. The electoral college votes are 30 votes for Kodos and 28 votes for Kang. Kodos wins even though 70% of Americans voted for Kang.




  • The action would have been done as vice-president, not president. Vice-presidents are held accountable. This is why Trump got in trouble for defamation of E. Jean Carroll.

    He defamed her as president and called it an official act. The case was put on indefinite hold. Then he said the same things while he wasn’t president. A new case was brought against him and he was found liable. Then, Carroll’s lawyer asked the original case to be resumed arguing that Trump’s statements couldn’t be an official act of the president since he performed the same action while he wasn’t president. The courts agreed and resumed the case and he was found liable again.