this post was submitted on 17 Oct 2024
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I’m not a lawmaker so I don’t know. And it hasn’t been dealt with by those who are because it’s not an easy decision. But the solution can’t possibly be allowing governments to damage the owner’s personal finances for choices at the company level. Truth is you can’t open this road for Elon Musk and never use it again, because that’s never how it goes down. If this is allowed to happen, more people will be unwilling to open businesses because the only protection that they’re supposed to have can be completely ignored by the government. Governments are as predatory as mega corporations, and neither can be given too much power. This takes away power from the companies and gives it to the government, not the average citizen.
I don’t know, and nobody else knows.
To clarify the cost of creating an LLC is a hundred bucks more or less depending on the jurisdiction. So Elon should be allowed to create "Musk Corp Oct2024 LLC" and then say or do anything under the guise of Musk Corp Oct2024 LLC, then if he's sued or fined just declare bankruptcy and create "Musk Corp Nov2024 LLC" and do whatever he wants?
At some point you have to recognize the individual is at fault. You can't just hide behind "Oh that wasn't me, that was the company" or " That was Musk of SpaceX having an opinion of Musk of Tesla, they are different entities."
If someone is attempting to be genuine and truthful when it comes to personal statements, fine, we can consider the protections. But if someone is flagrant and malicious then those protections no longer apply.
Sure, and you catch them on something else, like fraud. But if it's purely a financial failure, you bankrupt the corp and move on, because that's how the law is structured.
If we want different results, we need different legal structures. In this case, we shouldn't be granting liability protections in the first place if the person opening it has a history of bankruptcies or whatever. But once the liability protections are granted, they must be upheld or revoked, and if revoked, all prior actions should still be covered.
That's how the law should work, and we can't just waive away legal contracts because they're inconvenient, because that violates the rule of law.
Assuming I accept your premise, the premise of the article is that the actions are not being done by the company.
The key point is that Musk is at fault, not his company.
You can't just hide behind "the company" and do whatever you want.
At some point, as the EU is discussing, the individual is at fault.
It really depends on if Musk is acting as an officer of the company or on his own. If it's on his own, he's liable in the same way that any individual is liable, and only personal assets would be considered. If he's acting as an officer, then the company he's representing is liable.
At no point would other companies he runs be liable, unless he's also acting as an officer of those other orgs at the time. So they should never consider revenue from other firms, but merely revenue from his personal holdings.
That said, this is coming from a US perspective, I'm not familiar with EU law.