4 ms·

It is very simple to regulate without getting into freedom of speech issues. Just declare (yes, I'm aware it's a constitutional/SCOTUS issue, not a legislative

It is very simple to regulate without getting into freedom of speech issues. Just declare (yes, I'm aware it's a constitutional/SCOTUS issue, not a legislative one) that corporations are not people and do not deserve freedom of speech. If individuals want to write checks for advertising that abuses psychology, that's a more troublesome issue, but getting rid of just the corporate funded advertising would be a huge step forward.

yummyfajitas 11y ago
You are conflating disparate issues. Corporations are people - this means that a corporation (rather than some of it's individual members) can own property and owe you money. If you want to sue or enforce obligations, you do it against the corporation itself rather than tracking down specific members and enforcing against them. That's all it means. If you eliminate this and then Comcast injures you, who do you sue? Freedom of speech is held by the owners of a corporation and it's employees; the corporation is property used by the owners to engage in speech. Saying corporations don't have freedom of speech is like saying inanimate objects such as printing presses don't have freedom of the press. Note that printing presses do NOT have personhood, yet they still have freedom of the press.
- yequalsx 11y ago
  Well, Comcast has hundreds of thousands of owners and they don't all get an equal or even proportional (in reality not in theory) say in how the corporation spends the money of the corporation to get its message across. Corporations have 'free speech' in the sense that a corporation can spend its money without legal limit on political campaigns. The number of people who have effective control over that money is quite small in relation to the number of owners. Saying a corporation has free speech is not all like saying a printing press has free speech. Corporations have their own bank accounts, their own money, are subject to laws and have legal privileges that printing presses do not.
  - yummyfajitas 11y ago
    I agree that there are issues with shareholder governance; mostly a bunch of well meaning laws from the corporate raider era that prevent shareholder activism. This is a rather separate issue. Suppose we eliminated corporate personhood. Now a collective of people are bound together in a web of contracts and call themselves "citizens united". They agree to act and use a subset of their property in accordance with a specific governance structure determined by a mutually agreed upon charter. How do you hinder this non-corporate group's rights to free speech?
    - jmilloy 11y ago
      Now you are saying that we can't regulate corporate spending because can't regulate a non-corporate groups spending. It's like saying we can't stop kids from buying alcohol because we can't stop adults from buying alcohol. It makes no sense. I think you have a reasonable point to make, but you are not being clear enough.
      - yummyfajitas 11y ago
        Let me be very clear. The First Amendment to the US Constitution says: Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances. The court has ruled that this also means that humans can use their property in the furtherance of speech. Such property can be a printing press, a computer connected to the internet, a corporation, a ship, a billboard or other such things. Some of those pieces of property are legal persons (corporations, ships), others are not. The personhood of the piece of property is irrelevant.
        jmilloy 11y ago
        There we go!
        GFK_of_xmaspast 11y ago
- jmilloy 11y ago
  > who do you sue? This is very strange to me. You sue Comcast, the corporation, of course. There's nothing inherent to the label "people" that allows people to own property or have accounts, nor anything inherent to the label "corporations" the prevents corporations from owning property and having accounts. We could call them "non-person property-holders" or "obbgobblegooks" for all I care, and decide on whatever rules we want. Isn't it generally quite clear when an owner is purchasing something personal with their own money as opposed to when an owner is authorizing a purchase of something for their corporation with the corporation's money? In theory, what's to prevent us from declaring that corporations are not people, are allowed to have money, property, goods, and debt and are not allowed to spend their money on, among other things, advertising? This isn't to say that doing so prevents any sort of non-individual spending on advertising. But saying that "corporations have to be people" and "we can't impose any additional control over corporation spending because actually the owners do the spending" seems irrelevant and incorrect.
  - yummyfajitas 11y ago
    There's nothing inherent to the label "people" that allows people to own property or have accounts, nor anything inherent to the label "corporations" the prevents corporations from owning property and having accounts. We could call them "non-person property-holders" or "obbgobblegooks" for all I care, and decide on whatever rules we want. Yes, we could redefine the term "personhood" to (in the legal context) refer to something else, and then use the word "obbgobblegooks" to refer to the concept that personhood currently refers to. In theory, what's to prevent us from declaring that corporations are not people, are allowed to have money, property, goods, and debt and are not allowed to spend their money on, among other things, advertising? The same thing that prevents us from declaring that the constitution doesn't apply to printing presses; the free speech rights of their owners. If you want to argue against Citizens United, and say that the government should be allowed to apply prior restraints to free speech that uses property, go ahead and do that. But none of this has anything to do with corporate personhood. Similarly, your right to name your ship "SS Ilovebush" has nothing to do with ship personhood - that's just your free speech right as a guy with a ship and a paintbrush.
  - baddox 11y ago
comex 11y ago
So you are okay with, say, the EFF and ACLU not having any freedom of speech? (Not that these organizations engage in much advertising, but they do some, and stripping freedom of speech would apply to content posted on their own websites etc. as well as to advertising.) Or, for that matter, newspapers. Sure, you could make exceptions for the press, but then you have to define it; in general this is very dangerous stuff.
- Adlai 11y ago
  Wouldn't the individuals behind organizations such as the EFF and ACLU gladly stand behind their message?
  - sirsar 11y ago
    Many would, but I bet fewer would pay the advertising costs out of their own pockets. And any loophole you provide civil liberties organizations (pay them a salary to buy ads) will just as soon be taken advantage of by the corporations we all despise.
- harshreality 11y ago
  Neither of them are really advertising products or services, so any regulation (under a "commercial speech needs regulation" paradigm) that would apply to them (or other NGOs we might hold near and dear) would be light or non-existent. There's a separate argument to be made about whether political speech should be free (mostly unregulated) for corporations... Japan as I understand it is a fairly good example of heavily regulated political speech. As far as I can tell, politics in the modern world is dysfunctional regardless of how light the restrictions on political speech and political organizations' funding and activities. Political speech has many of the same problematic aspects of commercial advertisements, so I think there's room for argument that Citizens United and other precedent on the issue are a disaster, regardless of how much it might help political organizations we like.
noelsusman 11y ago
Corporations are not people. They are granted a subset of the rights and responsibilities that people have. This includes obvious things like the ability to enter into a contract, the ability to be sued in court, the right to own property, etc. They don't have all of the same rights that people do (e.g. they can't vote). But that's just pedantry. The real issue is that your solution is far too broad and is likely to have unintended side effects. We already have laws curtailing speech of both people and corporations. Free speech is not absolute in the US. We already have "misleading advertising" laws that have been used successfully against corporations. You can solve this problem if you want by just expanding the scope of existing laws. You don't need to abolish corporate personhood to achieve it.
wdr1 11y ago
> It is very simple to regulate without getting into freedom of speech issues. Just declare (yes, I'm aware it's a constitutional/SCOTUS issue, not a legislative one) that corporations are not people and do not deserve freedom of speech. That would be one of the country's easiest laws to work around. It wouldn't be effective.

yummyfajitas 11y ago

You are conflating disparate issues. Corporations are people - this means that a corporation (rather than some of it's individual members) can own property and owe you money. If you want to sue or enforce obligations, you do it against the corporation itself rather than tracking down specific members and enforcing against them. That's all it means. If you eliminate this and then Comcast injures you, who do you sue? Freedom of speech is held by the owners of a corporation and it's employees; the corporation is property used by the owners to engage in speech. Saying corporations don't have freedom of speech is like saying inanimate objects such as printing presses don't have freedom of the press. Note that printing presses do NOT have personhood, yet they still have freedom of the press.

yequalsx 11y ago
Well, Comcast has hundreds of thousands of owners and they don't all get an equal or even proportional (in reality not in theory) say in how the corporation spends the money of the corporation to get its message across. Corporations have 'free speech' in the sense that a corporation can spend its money without legal limit on political campaigns. The number of people who have effective control over that money is quite small in relation to the number of owners. Saying a corporation has free speech is not all like saying a printing press has free speech. Corporations have their own bank accounts, their own money, are subject to laws and have legal privileges that printing presses do not.
- yummyfajitas 11y ago
  I agree that there are issues with shareholder governance; mostly a bunch of well meaning laws from the corporate raider era that prevent shareholder activism. This is a rather separate issue. Suppose we eliminated corporate personhood. Now a collective of people are bound together in a web of contracts and call themselves "citizens united". They agree to act and use a subset of their property in accordance with a specific governance structure determined by a mutually agreed upon charter. How do you hinder this non-corporate group's rights to free speech?
  - jmilloy 11y ago
    Now you are saying that we can't regulate corporate spending because can't regulate a non-corporate groups spending. It's like saying we can't stop kids from buying alcohol because we can't stop adults from buying alcohol. It makes no sense. I think you have a reasonable point to make, but you are not being clear enough.
    - yummyfajitas 11y ago
      Let me be very clear. The First Amendment to the US Constitution says: Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances. The court has ruled that this also means that humans can use their property in the furtherance of speech. Such property can be a printing press, a computer connected to the internet, a corporation, a ship, a billboard or other such things. Some of those pieces of property are legal persons (corporations, ships), others are not. The personhood of the piece of property is irrelevant.
      - jmilloy 11y ago
        There we go!
      - GFK_of_xmaspast 11y ago
jmilloy 11y ago
> who do you sue? This is very strange to me. You sue Comcast, the corporation, of course. There's nothing inherent to the label "people" that allows people to own property or have accounts, nor anything inherent to the label "corporations" the prevents corporations from owning property and having accounts. We could call them "non-person property-holders" or "obbgobblegooks" for all I care, and decide on whatever rules we want. Isn't it generally quite clear when an owner is purchasing something personal with their own money as opposed to when an owner is authorizing a purchase of something for their corporation with the corporation's money? In theory, what's to prevent us from declaring that corporations are not people, are allowed to have money, property, goods, and debt and are not allowed to spend their money on, among other things, advertising? This isn't to say that doing so prevents any sort of non-individual spending on advertising. But saying that "corporations have to be people" and "we can't impose any additional control over corporation spending because actually the owners do the spending" seems irrelevant and incorrect.
- yummyfajitas 11y ago
  There's nothing inherent to the label "people" that allows people to own property or have accounts, nor anything inherent to the label "corporations" the prevents corporations from owning property and having accounts. We could call them "non-person property-holders" or "obbgobblegooks" for all I care, and decide on whatever rules we want. Yes, we could redefine the term "personhood" to (in the legal context) refer to something else, and then use the word "obbgobblegooks" to refer to the concept that personhood currently refers to. In theory, what's to prevent us from declaring that corporations are not people, are allowed to have money, property, goods, and debt and are not allowed to spend their money on, among other things, advertising? The same thing that prevents us from declaring that the constitution doesn't apply to printing presses; the free speech rights of their owners. If you want to argue against Citizens United, and say that the government should be allowed to apply prior restraints to free speech that uses property, go ahead and do that. But none of this has anything to do with corporate personhood. Similarly, your right to name your ship "SS Ilovebush" has nothing to do with ship personhood - that's just your free speech right as a guy with a ship and a paintbrush.
- baddox 11y ago

comex 11y ago

So you are okay with, say, the EFF and ACLU not having any freedom of speech? (Not that these organizations engage in much advertising, but they do some, and stripping freedom of speech would apply to content posted on their own websites etc. as well as to advertising.) Or, for that matter, newspapers. Sure, you could make exceptions for the press, but then you have to define it; in general this is very dangerous stuff.

Adlai 11y ago
Wouldn't the individuals behind organizations such as the EFF and ACLU gladly stand behind their message?
- sirsar 11y ago
  Many would, but I bet fewer would pay the advertising costs out of their own pockets. And any loophole you provide civil liberties organizations (pay them a salary to buy ads) will just as soon be taken advantage of by the corporations we all despise.
harshreality 11y ago
Neither of them are really advertising products or services, so any regulation (under a "commercial speech needs regulation" paradigm) that would apply to them (or other NGOs we might hold near and dear) would be light or non-existent. There's a separate argument to be made about whether political speech should be free (mostly unregulated) for corporations... Japan as I understand it is a fairly good example of heavily regulated political speech. As far as I can tell, politics in the modern world is dysfunctional regardless of how light the restrictions on political speech and political organizations' funding and activities. Political speech has many of the same problematic aspects of commercial advertisements, so I think there's room for argument that Citizens United and other precedent on the issue are a disaster, regardless of how much it might help political organizations we like.

noelsusman 11y ago

Corporations are not people. They are granted a subset of the rights and responsibilities that people have. This includes obvious things like the ability to enter into a contract, the ability to be sued in court, the right to own property, etc. They don't have all of the same rights that people do (e.g. they can't vote). But that's just pedantry. The real issue is that your solution is far too broad and is likely to have unintended side effects. We already have laws curtailing speech of both people and corporations. Free speech is not absolute in the US. We already have "misleading advertising" laws that have been used successfully against corporations. You can solve this problem if you want by just expanding the scope of existing laws. You don't need to abolish corporate personhood to achieve it.

wdr1 11y ago

> It is very simple to regulate without getting into freedom of speech issues. Just declare (yes, I'm aware it's a constitutional/SCOTUS issue, not a legislative one) that corporations are not people and do not deserve freedom of speech. That would be one of the country's easiest laws to work around. It wouldn't be effective.