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Pass a Constitutional amendment that states that corporations are not people. Then start passing laws that restrict the free speech of corporations and then pas

by mullen 9y ago

Pass a Constitutional amendment that states that corporations are not people. Then start passing laws that restrict the free speech of corporations and then pass more laws stating that money is speech. Then there can be fine tuned laws stating the max that a person can give to a candidate and start forcing all organizations that have anything to do with politics to register and state who is giving them money. Eliminate all anonymous donations. It is highly unlikely this is going to happen.

adamnemecek 9y ago
Right but there's a bigger problem and that is that law making is detached from law making.
eru 9y ago
Unlikely to work, if it were to happen. Addings more laws tends to help the people who can afford lawyers. You could look at simplifications instead, eg change the voting system from first-past-the-post to something like range voting, and candidate behaviour (and thus reacting to incentives) would completely change.
BearGoesChirp 9y ago
I'm a billionaire. I buy a couple local news companies and tell them to run what ever content I want. How do you stop this without limiting free speech of the individual as well?
bjt 9y ago
> Pass a Constitutional amendment that states that corporations are not people. No one claims they're people. The law lets them stand in as people so society can function. The whole "corporations aren't people" meme is myopically fixated on campaign finance, ignoring the much larger issues around this legal doctrine. Can a corporation own property? Can it own patents? Copyrights? Trademarks? Can it be sued in court? Can it file lawsuits itself? Can it make contracts? I don't think any of us would like the result of answering "no" to all those questions, yet those are the questions that the legal fiction of corporate personhood was invented to answer. Should corporations have the same free speech rights as people? I can see an argument for answering that "no", as rich corporations may speak disproportionately powerfully. I can also see an argument for answering it "yes", in the sense that corporations are just people acting together, and collective speech should be just as protected as individual speech. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corporate_personhood https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corporate_personhood Remember that whatever constraints you put on EvilCorp's speech are going to apply just as well to the Sierra Club, a labor union, or the NAACP. I honestly don't know if that's a tradeoff work making. Maybe it is. I agree with your point about transparency.

by mullen 9y ago

adamnemecek 9y ago

Right but there's a bigger problem and that is that law making is detached from law making.

eru 9y ago

Unlikely to work, if it were to happen. Addings more laws tends to help the people who can afford lawyers. You could look at simplifications instead, eg change the voting system from first-past-the-post to something like range voting, and candidate behaviour (and thus reacting to incentives) would completely change.

BearGoesChirp 9y ago

I'm a billionaire. I buy a couple local news companies and tell them to run what ever content I want. How do you stop this without limiting free speech of the individual as well?

bjt 9y ago

> Pass a Constitutional amendment that states that corporations are not people. No one claims they're people. The law lets them stand in as people so society can function. The whole "corporations aren't people" meme is myopically fixated on campaign finance, ignoring the much larger issues around this legal doctrine. Can a corporation own property? Can it own patents? Copyrights? Trademarks? Can it be sued in court? Can it file lawsuits itself? Can it make contracts? I don't think any of us would like the result of answering "no" to all those questions, yet those are the questions that the legal fiction of corporate personhood was invented to answer. Should corporations have the same free speech rights as people? I can see an argument for answering that "no", as rich corporations may speak disproportionately powerfully. I can also see an argument for answering it "yes", in the sense that corporations are just people acting together, and collective speech should be just as protected as individual speech. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corporate_personhood https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corporate_personhood Remember that whatever constraints you put on EvilCorp's speech are going to apply just as well to the Sierra Club, a labor union, or the NAACP. I honestly don't know if that's a tradeoff work making. Maybe it is. I agree with your point about transparency.