5 ms·

Yes. While I understand the point of view of the article, I can also see a corporation just as a group of persons acting in concert. Each one of these persons h

Yes. While I understand the point of view of the article, I can also see a corporation just as a group of persons acting in concert. Each one of these persons has natural rights, so why can't they exercise these rights in concert?

Dryw 17y ago
Employees of the corporation may have different political views. When a corporation donates money to a political cause, it is not expressing the views of all of its employees.
jackowayed 17y ago
Because corporations aren't people. You can't arrest a corporation and send it to jail. You can't draft a corporation into the military (though drafting some of those defense contractors and paying their workers military salaries would sure help with the deficit). Corporations have separate rights and responsibilities from the people that own them.
- bokonist 17y ago
  But corporations do not speak, people do. The management are all people, and the owners are all people. These people can and have been drafted into the military or arrested for illegal conduct. Congress can make no law abridging any person's freedom of speech, period.
  - jackowayed 17y ago
    There's no law keeping them from speaking just like any other person. There's (well, there was) a law keeping them from using millions of corporate dollars to broadcast that speech.
- protomyth 17y ago
  given that, why would unions have more rights than corporations?
- mseebach 17y ago
  > You can't arrest a corporation and send it to jail No, but you can sue it and rule against it. Ever seen a ruling with a name like "Smith vs. Acme Inc."? > Because corporations aren't people. No, and corporations also can't speak. So free speech for corporations is an oxymoron if you don't mean free speech by the people that make up a corporation.
  - tsuraan 17y ago
    The ruling isn't really about speech, though, it's about money. The ruling doesn't affect any person's ability to speak, it affects a company's ability to spend its money on political candidates, with a clear expectation of a positive ROI. How can that possible be legal? If money really is speech, why isn't it legal to talk my way out of a speeding ticket with a wallet full of bills?
    - mseebach 17y ago
      > The ruling isn't really about speech, though, it's about money. Its about money spent on speech. Free speech that you can't spend money on, isn't free speech. If a news paper was told that it was welcome to print a specific story, except you can't spend money on ink for it, it'd still be censorship. > spend its money on political candidates, with a clear expectation of a positive ROI. How can that possible be legal It's not, that's corruption. What you're referring to is rent-seeking, and it's been around as long as politics itself. The best solution is to give politicians less power, simply because there's less rent to seek.
    - yummyfajitas 17y ago
      It is legal to use money/speech to talk yourself out of future speeding tickets. You can spend money on posters entitled, "Vote Smith, No More Speeding Tickets!" in the hopes that it will persuade people to vote for Smith (who presumably promised to end laws against speeding).
  - DannoHung 17y ago
    > No, but you can sue it and rule against it. Ever seen a ruling with a name like "Smith vs. Acme Inc."? Not in a criminal court. > No, and corporations also can't speak. So free speech for corporations is an oxymoron if you don't mean free speech by the people that make up a corporation. The board of directors, actually, or, even more accurately, whoever holds a controlling share of the corporation.
- hga 17y ago
  You're essentially wrong: while arrest and jail are obviously not in the cards for corporations, they are subject to criminal charges (RICO was in fact established to do this with a lower threshold for making the charge). Arthur Andersen was convicted of obstruction of justice WRT to Enron, and while that conviction was reversed, it was too late since it had lost its CPA license as a result. You're also wrong about the draft bit: while the mechanism is different, private companies have found themselves taken over by the Federal government during e.g. WWII ... or at least the credible threat was made (most recently I read such a case WRT to the Manhattan Project, that threat was required to light a fire under one company that supplied them).

Dryw 17y ago

Employees of the corporation may have different political views. When a corporation donates money to a political cause, it is not expressing the views of all of its employees.

jackowayed 17y ago

Because corporations aren't people. You can't arrest a corporation and send it to jail. You can't draft a corporation into the military (though drafting some of those defense contractors and paying their workers military salaries would sure help with the deficit). Corporations have separate rights and responsibilities from the people that own them.

bokonist 17y ago
But corporations do not speak, people do. The management are all people, and the owners are all people. These people can and have been drafted into the military or arrested for illegal conduct. Congress can make no law abridging any person's freedom of speech, period.
- jackowayed 17y ago
  There's no law keeping them from speaking just like any other person. There's (well, there was) a law keeping them from using millions of corporate dollars to broadcast that speech.
protomyth 17y ago
given that, why would unions have more rights than corporations?
mseebach 17y ago
> You can't arrest a corporation and send it to jail No, but you can sue it and rule against it. Ever seen a ruling with a name like "Smith vs. Acme Inc."? > Because corporations aren't people. No, and corporations also can't speak. So free speech for corporations is an oxymoron if you don't mean free speech by the people that make up a corporation.
- tsuraan 17y ago
  The ruling isn't really about speech, though, it's about money. The ruling doesn't affect any person's ability to speak, it affects a company's ability to spend its money on political candidates, with a clear expectation of a positive ROI. How can that possible be legal? If money really is speech, why isn't it legal to talk my way out of a speeding ticket with a wallet full of bills?
  - mseebach 17y ago
    > The ruling isn't really about speech, though, it's about money. Its about money spent on speech. Free speech that you can't spend money on, isn't free speech. If a news paper was told that it was welcome to print a specific story, except you can't spend money on ink for it, it'd still be censorship. > spend its money on political candidates, with a clear expectation of a positive ROI. How can that possible be legal It's not, that's corruption. What you're referring to is rent-seeking, and it's been around as long as politics itself. The best solution is to give politicians less power, simply because there's less rent to seek.
  - yummyfajitas 17y ago
    It is legal to use money/speech to talk yourself out of future speeding tickets. You can spend money on posters entitled, "Vote Smith, No More Speeding Tickets!" in the hopes that it will persuade people to vote for Smith (who presumably promised to end laws against speeding).
- DannoHung 17y ago
  > No, but you can sue it and rule against it. Ever seen a ruling with a name like "Smith vs. Acme Inc."? Not in a criminal court. > No, and corporations also can't speak. So free speech for corporations is an oxymoron if you don't mean free speech by the people that make up a corporation. The board of directors, actually, or, even more accurately, whoever holds a controlling share of the corporation.
hga 17y ago
You're essentially wrong: while arrest and jail are obviously not in the cards for corporations, they are subject to criminal charges (RICO was in fact established to do this with a lower threshold for making the charge). Arthur Andersen was convicted of obstruction of justice WRT to Enron, and while that conviction was reversed, it was too late since it had lost its CPA license as a result. You're also wrong about the draft bit: while the mechanism is different, private companies have found themselves taken over by the Federal government during e.g. WWII ... or at least the credible threat was made (most recently I read such a case WRT to the Manhattan Project, that threat was required to light a fire under one company that supplied them).