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> To start, it violates the first amendment. I would argue that corporations do not have rights, except inasmuch as the people within the corporation have righ

> To start, it violates the first amendment. I would argue that corporations do not have rights, except inasmuch as the people within the corporation have rights. Rights are for people, and corporations are not people. So, there's no conflict with the first amendment here. Yes, I'm aware of corporate personhood in the U.S.--I'm saying that the Supreme Court was wrong when they interpreted the constitution that way. To flesh this idea out a bit: if a person decides to say of their own accord "people who eat Cheetos are cool", that's protected speech. However, if you're acting on behalf of the Cheetos corporation to say "people who eat Cheetos are cool", i.e. you are paid by the Cheetos corporation to say it, that's you acting on behalf of that corporation and the corporation can be punished. Note what I said here: the corporation can be punished, not the person: this sidesteps a lot of ambiguous situations where a person's right to free speech might be violated. > Then, after you decide that somehow commerce overrules the first amendment in this situation, you are stuck with the job of setting up a government process that will judge, with legal force, whether an advertisement is sufficiently related to the surrounding content. This institution will have to grapple with, among many questions, "Is an ad for replacing your gutters ever related to its surrounding content?" or "What does it mean for an advertisement to be related to a work of fiction?" This sort of handwringing amounts to a complaint that a Hacker News poster didn't post a fully-detailed piece of legislation. Okay, some details haven't been explained, but it isn't reasonable to expect that a user on an internet forum would draft a complete piece of legislation. These details aren't insurmountable or even difficult to iron out through normal legislative processes, and even when (not if) this is done imperfectly, it would likely be a massive improvement over the current free-for-all.

krapp 3y ago
One assumes you also don't believe in rights for religious groups, political parties, unions or the press? The reason rights apply to corporations is that rights apply to people in aggregate, as well as individually and there is no way to deny rights to the group without denying rights to the individuals within that group (also because treating corporations as legal entities makes things like suing them as entities possible. Otherwise one would have to file individual lawsuits with individual people for any claim.) If rights only applied to individuals, then it would be trivial to suppress any political or cultural expression by making any collective gathering or expression illegal. There is no reason to consider corporations a special case in this regard.
- kerkeslager 3y ago
  > One assumes you also don't believe in rights for religious groups, political parties, unions or the press? In that statement, yes, but there's a ton of nuance to how that's applied. > The reason rights apply to corporations is that rights apply to people in aggregate, True, but corporate personhood captures the aggregate rights of people in a corporation only slightly more effectively than the 3/8 compromise captured the rights of slaves. If you're going to claim that the rights of a corporation are based in the rights of the people in that corporation, then you'd expect that the people in the corporation get to wield those aggregate rights equally, because they all have equal rights. But the reality is that a handful of people within a corporation get to wield those aggregated rights: executives and board members are literally taking the rights of their workers and wielding them in ways that often don't benefit the workers. That's not aggregated rights, that's an injustice. > there is no way to deny rights to the group without denying rights to the individuals within that group This is a pretty blanket statement. There are certainly some cases where a right cannot be denied to a group without denying rights to the individuals within a group. But it is abundantly clear that making it illegal for a corporation to pay for advertising, while allowing individuals to pay for speech or say things, is a restriction of the corporation's rights and not the individual's. Again, you're free to say anything you like about products, that's your right. But a corporation has no right to pay people to say anything about their product. > If rights only applied to individuals, then it would be trivial to suppress any political or cultural expression by making any collective gathering or expression illegal. We've got a separate right to assemble which I believe in, so no, you're making a straw man argument on my behalf here. And "collective expression" needs more explanation. Certainly, advertising does not represent the views of every individual in the corporation that advertises, so the idea that this is a "collective expression" is absurd. If anything, it's forcing speech on peons who had very little choice in what was said--if we're claiming their aggregate rights are being represented here, then the decision makers in what is said are violating their rights by not giving them input on what is said. Put another way: it is well-established that forcing someone to say something is a clear violation of their right to free speech. So if the free speech rights of a corporation are the aggregate of the rights of the individuals, then there has to be unanimity within the corporation on what is said in order to not force that speech on the individuals in the corporation who might object to what is said. > There is no reason to consider corporations a special case in this regard. The central case is perfectly fine for my point: there is no group in existence which is capable of exercising my right to free speech. Even groups where I get to vote, so they theoretically represent me, do an extremely poor job of saying what I want said.

krapp 3y ago

One assumes you also don't believe in rights for religious groups, political parties, unions or the press? The reason rights apply to corporations is that rights apply to people in aggregate, as well as individually and there is no way to deny rights to the group without denying rights to the individuals within that group (also because treating corporations as legal entities makes things like suing them as entities possible. Otherwise one would have to file individual lawsuits with individual people for any claim.) If rights only applied to individuals, then it would be trivial to suppress any political or cultural expression by making any collective gathering or expression illegal. There is no reason to consider corporations a special case in this regard.

kerkeslager 3y ago
> One assumes you also don't believe in rights for religious groups, political parties, unions or the press? In that statement, yes, but there's a ton of nuance to how that's applied. > The reason rights apply to corporations is that rights apply to people in aggregate, True, but corporate personhood captures the aggregate rights of people in a corporation only slightly more effectively than the 3/8 compromise captured the rights of slaves. If you're going to claim that the rights of a corporation are based in the rights of the people in that corporation, then you'd expect that the people in the corporation get to wield those aggregate rights equally, because they all have equal rights. But the reality is that a handful of people within a corporation get to wield those aggregated rights: executives and board members are literally taking the rights of their workers and wielding them in ways that often don't benefit the workers. That's not aggregated rights, that's an injustice. > there is no way to deny rights to the group without denying rights to the individuals within that group This is a pretty blanket statement. There are certainly some cases where a right cannot be denied to a group without denying rights to the individuals within a group. But it is abundantly clear that making it illegal for a corporation to pay for advertising, while allowing individuals to pay for speech or say things, is a restriction of the corporation's rights and not the individual's. Again, you're free to say anything you like about products, that's your right. But a corporation has no right to pay people to say anything about their product. > If rights only applied to individuals, then it would be trivial to suppress any political or cultural expression by making any collective gathering or expression illegal. We've got a separate right to assemble which I believe in, so no, you're making a straw man argument on my behalf here. And "collective expression" needs more explanation. Certainly, advertising does not represent the views of every individual in the corporation that advertises, so the idea that this is a "collective expression" is absurd. If anything, it's forcing speech on peons who had very little choice in what was said--if we're claiming their aggregate rights are being represented here, then the decision makers in what is said are violating their rights by not giving them input on what is said. Put another way: it is well-established that forcing someone to say something is a clear violation of their right to free speech. So if the free speech rights of a corporation are the aggregate of the rights of the individuals, then there has to be unanimity within the corporation on what is said in order to not force that speech on the individuals in the corporation who might object to what is said. > There is no reason to consider corporations a special case in this regard. The central case is perfectly fine for my point: there is no group in existence which is capable of exercising my right to free speech. Even groups where I get to vote, so they theoretically represent me, do an extremely poor job of saying what I want said.