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> Corporations are ultimately meant to be agents that further the public good. Corporations have rarely (if ever) been meant to further public good. They have

• Lionsion 8y ago
  > Corporations have rarely (if ever) been meant to further public good. They have almost always been for "unrestrained pursuit of profit to the exclusion of all other concerns". That's wrong. Corporations don't have an independent existence; they're legal entities created by law. The laws that allow for corporations were not written to better allow for the "unrestrained pursuit of profit to the exclusion of all other concerns," they were written because corporate legal entities were judged to be beneficial to the common good of the home country. What they're meant to do is distinct from what will naturally do when their behavior is unchecked. I think it's somewhat analogous to patents, which are rights created by law for the express purpose of incentivizing invention and encourage eventual public domain use.
  • twoodfin 8y ago
    What you seem to be suggesting is that everything a corporation may or may not do is a political question to be decided by lawmakers nominally guarding the “common good”. Where does that leave a corporation like the New York Times, which may wish to publish articles in contravention of lawmakers’ ideas of the common good?
    • empath75 8y ago
      Yes of course they do. Corporations are defined as persons by law, not by the constitution. The congress can easily revoke corporate personhood and the 14th amendment and all of the rest would no longer apply.
      • comex 8y ago
        If you’re referring to Citizens United, the idea that the decision was based on some technical concept of corporate personhood is basically a myth. Rather, it was based on combining the right of (individual) freedom of speech with another Constitutional right, freedom of association. To quote Wikipedia: > The majority ruled that the Freedom of the Press clause of the First Amendment protects associations of individuals in addition to individual speakers, and further that the First Amendment does not allow prohibitions of speech based on the identity of the speaker. Corporations, as associations of individuals, therefore have free speech rights under the First Amendment. If you’re not referring to Citizens United, well, it’s still a relevant precedent that would prevent your plan from working :)
        • rectang 8y ago
          Citizens United can certainly be argued as intellectually consistent. But ugh, it is simultaneously so effective at disempowering citizens who don't control major corporate entities. Thousands and thousands of us can so easily be shouted down by massive corporations showering money on our representatives.
• beefield 8y ago
  > Corporations have rarely (if ever) been meant to further public good. Sorry, no time for sources, but you might want to research history of limited liability. The whole raison d'etre of corporations is to finance projects that are too risky for unlimited liability but still big enough good for public that public is willing to give limited liability protection to owners. Same applies to IP. The purpose of copyright is not to give/guarantee income to creators, but to facilitate generation of works of art to the benefit of public. For some reason lot of people are confused about these.
  • TeMPOraL 8y ago
    > For some reason lot of people are confused about these. The reason being, their paycheck literally depends on being confused about this :). LLCs and copyrights may be intended for furthering public good, but people starting LLC or exploiting copyright protection are there for their personal profits. The public is, unfortunately, very bad at ensuring the tools created for public good are actually used for public good.