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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

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
        Didn't we fight a war about people being property one upon a time.
        qu4z-2 11y ago
        I... don't believe you did, but I may be wrong.
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

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
      Didn't we fight a war about people being property one upon a time.
      - qu4z-2 11y ago
        I... don't believe you did, but I may be wrong.

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