@securescientist Not 'owner'.
-
@securescientist Not 'owner'. 'Concern'. A business concern is a system of a bunch of cross-linked companies, each usually specialised on something, but all working towards a common venture. It's a well-established concept in both tax, accounting, and corporate law ... for the most part.
Because of the obvious business benefits of limited liability corporations, virtually all large-scale business has been done through these, and often, publicly traded corporations, for centuries. There's a few exceptions, but they're rare, typically have historic reasons, and none of the present-day large tech companies fall into the exceptions.
Or rather, none used to fall into the exceptions, until Melon bought Twitter and made it Xitter; a network of corporations that he personally owns and personally controls.
This is an anomalous situation, and arguably, the established laws allow, although there hasn't been a reason to do so for a long while, to consider Melon himself, as a physical person, as a part of the business concern that operates Xitter. If that were the case, then all other companies that Melon owns privately and operates directly or under his close control — there's some arguments to be made how the criteria should be precisely applied, because it's an anomalous situation —, which notably include SpaceX and exclude the publicly traded Tesla, woud be parts of the concern being fined in order to compel Xitter to fall into compliance with the law. And if they're all parts of the concern being fined, then the limit of the fine would be 6% of the total annual revenue of these companies. Not Melon's wealth. The revenue of the business concern that stems from Melon.
Going up in a hierarchy of corporations owning each other is a routine step. Going up from X Corp to X Holdings Corp, and including all the regional subsidiaries of that, qould be an entirely non-controversial move. The question is, whether one further step should be taken, going up from X Holdings Corp to Melon as a natural person, and include his other subsidiaries.
-
@riley @girlintech @passwordsarehard4 @GossiTheDog that’s all well put and clear. The fact that this is an entirely technical perspective makes it however sound more like a pretext to bash on the Musk, than a serious legal allegation — to me. For me, one of many non-technicians, law is about proportionality and fairness. That SpaceX money should count for X’s mishaps only works if the whole objective is to punish Musk for being Musk.
-
@securescientist Well, there does happen to be quite some evidence to the root cause of Xitter's non-compliance being that Melon doesn't want to. And if this is the case, then punishing Melon until he complies is exactly the intended course of the law, just under weird circumstances.
