3 ms·

"The Supreme Court has just predicted the winners of the next November election"

4 points by stakent 17y ago

joezydeco 17y ago
"In other words, as Stephen Colbert put it last year, 'Corporations are people too.'" That's true. So let's take this to it's logical conclusion as expressed here: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/rob-warmowski/corporate-murder-charges_b_432633.html http://www.huffingtonpost.com/rob-warmowski/corporate-murder... "Shouldn't it follow that when a corporation is bankrupted -- killed -- that its management could be found guilty of the capital crime of murder?"
- bhousel 17y ago
  bankrupted != killed You can always get some more money and start a bankrupted corporation up again.
  - joezydeco 17y ago
    Your shareholders might disagree.
pasbesoin 17y ago
It's another form of privatizing privilege and socializing cost. A corporation is granted privileges of personhood, but spared the liabilities. A corporation can't be imprisoned, and it's very difficult and expensive to criminally prosecute its executives (its brain?) and impossible to do the same to its shareholders (its body). (It's also difficult to seek civil remedies; if you are not of comparable size, they can often effectively spend you into the ground or, financially, keep you from even starting.) There's a reason we lock people away, other than to prevent them repeating a crime: It's a form of punishment and control that -- for most -- exceeds financial penalties. Corporations are, as an entity, immune from this. And the bulk of the people who enable their activities are, as well. In light of this, I see no problem with a reasoned limitation of their privileges. They do not exist as living beings (I initially used the word "corporeal", but I imagine that would confuse some or my intended meaning be deliberately mis-interpreted in counter-argument); they are not granted the same privileges. (For those who don't make the connection: The "socialization" of cost means the costs incurred when corporations engage in criminal behavior. This might be be seen to include the prevalence of such behavior, as a result of a lack of effective controls against it.)

4 points by stakent 17y ago

"In other words, as Stephen Colbert put it last year, 'Corporations are people too.'" That's true. So let's take this to it's logical conclusion as expressed here: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/rob-warmowski/corporate-murder-charges_b_432633.html http://www.huffingtonpost.com/rob-warmowski/corporate-murder... "Shouldn't it follow that when a corporation is bankrupted -- killed -- that its management could be found guilty of the capital crime of murder?"

bhousel 17y ago
bankrupted != killed You can always get some more money and start a bankrupted corporation up again.
- joezydeco 17y ago
  Your shareholders might disagree.

pasbesoin 17y ago

It's another form of privatizing privilege and socializing cost. A corporation is granted privileges of personhood, but spared the liabilities. A corporation can't be imprisoned, and it's very difficult and expensive to criminally prosecute its executives (its brain?) and impossible to do the same to its shareholders (its body). (It's also difficult to seek civil remedies; if you are not of comparable size, they can often effectively spend you into the ground or, financially, keep you from even starting.) There's a reason we lock people away, other than to prevent them repeating a crime: It's a form of punishment and control that -- for most -- exceeds financial penalties. Corporations are, as an entity, immune from this. And the bulk of the people who enable their activities are, as well. In light of this, I see no problem with a reasoned limitation of their privileges. They do not exist as living beings (I initially used the word "corporeal", but I imagine that would confuse some or my intended meaning be deliberately mis-interpreted in counter-argument); they are not granted the same privileges. (For those who don't make the connection: The "socialization" of cost means the costs incurred when corporations engage in criminal behavior. This might be be seen to include the prevalence of such behavior, as a result of a lack of effective controls against it.)