This avatar-like use of Legal persons is undesirable, fully agree. A major component in international money laundering and criminal enterprises is discovering whose avatar $some_co or $my_foundation belong to. Small jurisdictions, mine included unfortunately, are easy targets for friends-of-friends-of-friends to allow such hidden ownership, and the international community should forbid it both at home and abroad.
Unfortunately, anything short of a constitutional amendment explicitly stating that corporations and other collective entities do not have $list_of_rights that one may possess as an individual would be very difficult to keep in practice. Of course, this also would have to be limited to collective representation, not a group of people in person (such as at a physical protest). It could be very messy at this point.
And it all sucks. I think tethering legislation to making corporations exempt from income taxes, and refactoring taxation on profits and loans secured against corporate ownership might be the only way to get it through.
Corporations were made without a constitutional amendment, they can be regulated without one. Don't like it? Lots of ways to run a company without using the government vehicle/definition.
That concept was created by the US supreme court judges interpretation of laws made by Congress. At any point since then, we (Congress) could have passed a late to clarify language or simply say "corporations are not people".
It wasn't. The misconception that SCOTUS declared "corporations are people" is a meme launched by those who think people lose their rights when they decide to act together. SCOTUS just confirmed they do not. Corporations are not people, never been, never will be, and you don't need an act of Congress to know that - you just need to be a bit better informed.
There is a legal concept of "corporate personhood", but it has nothing to do with "being people", it's a legal term of art. For example, it makes it possible to sue a corporation instead of trying to sue each of its shareholders and executives individually. And it wasn't used in Citizens United v. FEC at all.
The trouble is actually breaking that premise. The SC has ruled, effectively that money is analogous to speech. Undoing that would pretty much need an amendment to overcome. They could also find that trying to limit corporations at this point could be a violation of the 14th amendment.
I don't like it, I really don't agree with it, but the reality is that's what it would likely take to overcome counter arguments in favor of continuing corporate personhood. As I mentioned, it might be tolerated if it came with tax exemption, in leiu of new taxes against corporate/stock loans and more taxation on profit distribution.
CU vs FEC did not rely on the concept of corporate personhood. If anything, if this concept didn't exist it would be even stronger, because then there would be absolutely no legal reason to treat a group of people differently just because they're acting together. What would be the argument - you can do it individually, but once you gather in one building and have a banner at the entrance and a receptionist, you all suddenly lose your free speech rights?
No, you (the individual) do not lose any of your rights. However, the manifestation of a corporate entity should not generate a new right-bearing entity.
I get only one vote - making Me, Inc. should not provide me a path to be represented twice - as though to cast a second vote.
Money is not speech. This is tge court's error. Treating a thing as though it's a different thing or concept than what it is breaks everything and is quite literally insane. Else, with my free speech, I ought to just act as a mint. Either my self-generated fiat is now legal tender or actual, government-minted legal tender is already spoken for and means something precise, distinct from the transaction where it purportedly speaks.
A group of people can speak and transact - the solution to this dilemma is recognizing that a corporation is still full of individuals with unhindered rights, but no trickery allows those individual rights to be replicated - only represented.
> However, the manifestation of a corporate entity should not generate a new right-bearing entity.
Of course it should, that's the whole purpose of the corporation. That's the premise whole western financial system is built on - that the corporations are right-bearing entities. That doesn't mean they are people - it means that in the western legal system, certain rights can attach to entities other than people. That's no surprise to anybody who would look into how corporations work and why they were invented in the first place.
> as though to cast a second vote
Voting rights have never been part of corporate personhood, what are you talking about?
> Money is not speech
Money by itself is a resource. This resource can be spent on speech - I can pay money to facilitate my speech. If you prevent me from doing that, you essentially shutting down my speech - what is the use of it if nobody can hear or read it, because publishing costs money, and I am prohibited from that? In a separation of labor society - which by now is every society - money is a necessary prerequisite to use the services of society. And no (significant) societal activity can be performed without involving money, one way or another. Thus, money are not speech, literally, but money are a necessary gateway to speech.
> This is tge court's error.
No, that's your error by trying to misrepresent the court's decision in a way that is convenient to you for criticizing it. The court did not say "corporations are people" or "money is speech" - they said something that the opposing side activists turned into such slogans, but if you want to understand and not just scream out your rage, then you need to go to the actual meaning, beyond the slogans.
More accurately, corporations are a special class of people that can never be jailed or executed (at least in all but the rarest cases) for their misdeeds, merely fined. That's the real problem, they want the rights of people without the punishments of people.
It's not a problem because corporations never had "the rights of people" - people still do. People have free speech rights, and people can go to jail for crimes.
I'm not sure what you mean, people working for companies can and have been jailed. Or did you mean the legal entitiy of a corporation can't be 'jailed'?
Would unions be more like protests or like corporations? I'm trying to figure out the underlying principle used to determine whether a group of people has rights or not.
Stripping unions of their rights might be a bit controversial. On the other hand, "collective representation" is essentially the definition of a union.
We've been running that "public accountability" experiment with twitter mobs (and sometimes actual arsonist mobs) running around "holding people accountable" for whatever they don't like... And I'm not sure we actually want more of this. It doesn't seem somehow to improve anything.
That’s not public accountability. That’s vigilantism. Vigilantism occurs when the judicial branch fails to do the barest minimum of their fucking job. In case you’ve forgotten, the rules in society are written in blood. Whenever the government neglects their responsibility society at large will refresh the ink on the contract. As regrettable as this may be, the people to blame are not the ones in the mobs, but the ones who neglected to exercise their authority to enforce the social contract and hold criminals to account. Want it to stop? Stop acting shitty, take responsibility, learn and adapt. or retire to make room for those understand contemporary society if becoming a better person is so distasteful.
Enduring the consequences of one’s actions with complaint is not accountability, it’s a temper tantrum. Whether the consequences are administered by vigilantes or courts is immaterial to the earnestness of anyone’s accountability. The vast majority of people being publicly shamed have an elementary understanding of accountability and their hollow efforts are an insult to the time of everyone subjected to their rambling excuses, projections, victim blaming, lies, and other erroneous thought patterns.
I don’t want more bystanders getting caught up in the courts because they took action when our leaders sat on their hands. That said, I have no sympathy for the public figures having their legacies dragged through the mud after careers of horrendous behaviors get brought to light.
> Want it to stop? Stop acting shitty, take responsibility, learn and adapt. or retire to make room for those understand contemporary society if becoming a better person is so distasteful.
Nice round of victim-blaming. Don't like the random mob vigilantism? Well, it's probably your fault and that's the modern society for you, and again your fault for not embracing it enthusiastically. In fact, you are a bad person for it! Nice.
That’s projection buddy. Do you have a playbook? Because this comment is straight of the Republican one. project, lie, misconstrue in bad faith. Are you familiar with the site guidelines? Uncharitable bad faith responses are a no-no here.
I’m talking about sexual predators, people who wore black face in the past two decades, domestic abusers, and other unacceptable behaviors. If you think any of this is okay, bugger off.
What are you talking about? Indian mob Justice? Tripathi? Gamergate? Spacey? Weinstein? Trump? R Kelly? Travis Scott? Bill Clinton? Assange?
You’re doubling down on uncharitable bad faith interpretations.
I’m not suggesting you love or support these things, but I am concerned that you’ve taken a sarcastic defensive position instead of naming specific people to rebut my points. An omission of defeat perchance?
My point is that mob justice will continue until the government deigns the problem bad enough to enshrine these behaviors into law as crimes. Why are you having such a hard time understanding that this is a fixable problem directly resulting from negligent government?
If you should get anything out of this otherwise useless conversation, it's the difference between "omission" and "admission". Look it up, no need to thank me.
> My point is that mob justice will continue until the government deigns the problem bad enough to enshrine these behaviors into law as crimes
You mean the solution for mobs hounding people for wrongthink it for the government to make wrongthink a crime? Brilliant.
I don't think you're using the same definition of public accountability as the parent comment. I think parent comment just means that they are able to be identified and held accountable by law enforcement.
Law enforcement can request the documents, subpoena the contractors and see the chain of ownership - just like the judge did. Not sure what this has to do with the "public".
