4 ms·

watering down freedom of speech because why not

• takk309 7y ago
  As soon as companies and businesses were considered "people" and got the same rights, it all became a farce.
  • strictnein 7y ago
    Corporate personhood is a centuries old idea. It is what enables you to sign a contract with a company, for example. As a counter example that shows they are still not fully "people": a corporation cannot adopt a child or get married.
    • jessaustin 7y ago
      It is what enables you to sign a contract with a company, for example. We'd be better off if we couldn't do this. Predatory credit would disappear.
      • strictnein 7y ago
        The entire financial system would disappear.
        • jessaustin 7y ago
          Wouldn't most of that be handled by corporations making agreements among themselves? I don't think "the entire financial system" is really based on hooking individual people on unsustainable credit.
          • Ajedi32 7y ago
            So if I want to buy a house, but don't have enough to cover 100% of the cost in a single down payment I'm just SOL? I guess I could rent instead, except that would require a contract as well. I get the impression you haven't really thought this through.
          • kube-system 7y ago
            No, the entire financial system is based on companies being able to enter into contracts directly, rather than requiring each of their owners to be individually involved in every transaction.
      • kube-system 7y ago
        Well yeah, an absolute ton of things would disappear if we essentially made every company a sole proprietorship.
        • jessaustin 7y ago
          That's another option, but it's not what I was talking about. If corporations exist, then sure we can let them create contracts among themselves.
          • kube-system 7y ago
            Most corporations would have a very difficult (i.e. impossible) time tracking down all of their owners for a signature on those contracts. That's why we allow them to be a legal person. So Comcast can sign a contract to purchase a new toner cartridge, rather than requiring a signature from each owner of each of their 4.5 billion shares outstanding.
      • stordoff 7y ago
        How do I order something if I can't make a contract with a company? It's a contract of sale.
        • jessaustin 7y ago
          It doesn't have to be. Fraud is still a crime. If I send the firm a BTC and they don't send me back a BTC worth of goods, how long will they remain in business?
      • Ajedi32 7y ago
        As would employment. (I can't be employed by a company if I can't sign a contract with it.)
        • jessaustin 7y ago
          This isn't so. Most employment is at-will. This works fine, because lots of laws govern what employers may do to employees, and anyway slavery is illegal so any employee may leave at any time. 95% of any employment contract is various attempts to get around those legal protections for the employee. This is an especially pernicious case of the normal Stockholm Syndrome we see whenever the special status of corporations is challenged. No firm is 100% robots yet. If we withdraw our consent, they have to raise wages and improve working conditions until we relent.
          • Ajedi32 7y ago
            The law only protects you from actual crimes. There are hundreds of other small provisions which have to be negotiated as part of a contract to be enforceable from a legal perspective. This is especially true for freelancers, who don't have a single employer and are instead usually paid for deliverables as specified in a contract. Being able to quit anytime doesn't help if you've already spent weeks or months working on a project and never get paid because the company decides on a whim that they don't need your deliverable anymore.
  • briandear 7y ago
    The U.S. Supreme Court has accepted the notion of corporate personhood in constitutional cases dating back more than a century. In its 1897 decision in Gulf, Colorado and Santa Fe Railroad Company v. Ellis, for example, the Court said that it was “well-settled that corporations are persons within the provisions of the Fourteenth Amendment. Corporate “personhood” goes back even further, to at least 1819 with the Dartmouth v Woodward decision. Citizens United has been surrounded by ignorance, promoted by newspapers who, incidentally, had their effectiveness and power reduced since they were no longer the only “protected” gatekeepers for picking political candidates. Why should the New York Times editorial board get to express their opinions through millions of printed papers distributed through an expensive and vast logistics network, or via a website maintained by hired employees with a budget of millions per year? Why shouldn’t Bob’s Hardware Inc., be able to also spend money, in exactly the same way as the New York Times to spread the message of their preferred political candidates that would be helpful for their business? How is Bob’s Hardware any less entitled to being able to express their opinions or present their facts than the N.Y. Times? Should the EFF be able to spend money at the same levels as what the New York Times spends to cut down trees and print some words on it and then send those words to readers all over the world? Media organizations can spend limitless amounts on getting their message out — Bob’s Hardware ought to have the same rights. The First Amendment doesn’t protect newspapers as a special class — it protects everyone. The “press” is referring to the actual machine used to print things, not specifically to a news gathering organization. https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2011/02/dont-believe-all-you-read-in-the-papers-about-campaign-finance/70948/ https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2011/02/dont-be...