Looking for positives, but especially negatives. What are the pitfalls of not granting corporations the same rights as people/citizens?
Corporations are not granted the same rights as natural persons - they’re granted some of the rights of natural persons (and some of those make sense while other are dumb).
Preventing corporations from operating as persons when contributing to political campaigns would be an absolute win for representation… Citizens United was a trash ruling by trash people.
Preventing corporations from operating as persons when interacting with the legal system would massively complicate our legal code and probably lead to a lot of awful edge cases where they could dodge liability for their actions. They are generally immune to manslaughter and some industries have dumb political carve outs (like firearms manufacturers having immunity to most product liability) but people’s ability to sue, i.e. a paper mill after getting luekimeia relies on corporate personhood in our current system.
When we talk about “corporations shouldn’t be people” we (I think it’s fair to be generally inclusive here) are talking about their ability to donate to politicians and political causes.
They are generally immune to manslaughter and some industries have dumb political carve outs (like firearms manufacturers having immunity to most product liability) but people’s ability to sue, i.e. a paper mill after getting luekimeia relies on corporate personhood in our current system.
Starting over means we could actually define how companues are different in a way that does make them liable for the bad stuff instead of doing the lazy ‘treat them like a person with limited accountability’ again.
We won’t, but it would be the best opportunity.
Other than our deeply ingrained political dysfunction there isn’t anything stopping us from redefining the edge cases we care about without tearing it all down. Laws and legal systems are insanely complex and while there is a lot of injustice in the world the source of that isn’t how laws work but small carve out and how those laws are being applied unjustly. As a software engineer that delights in recklessly refactoring entire systems at once I think this is an instance where making small targeted changes would be better for everyone. We know Citizens United is dumb, for example, so congress or the FEC could just pass a law or make a rule to fix that - it’s only our political dysfunction that stops us.
As a software engineer that delights in recklessly refactoring entire systems at once I think this is an instance where making small targeted changes would be better for everyone.
As a functional programmer that delights in recklessly refactoring entire systems at once, I think this is an instance where our entire government needs to be rewritten with a proper “types” system in place so the compiler will warn us when there are inconsistencies in our laws and we can keep refactoring until we reach totality or soundness. We can isolate the side effects of laws and make sure they only do one thing. Laws can be free monads! 🤪
The complexity makes it impossible to not constantly violate laws that the average person doesn’t even know exist.
Calling a constitutional convention right now would be insane. Republicans would take that process and fuck is up forever while pulling up the ladder behind them
Yeah…
Because right now republicans are showing restraint and not doing everything they can think of…
Surely the only reason they don’t do is because their sense of fair play…
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Many different kinds of organizations are organized as corporations. Charities, newspapers, churches, etc. If the amendment was not carefully written, it could be construed to deny important rights, such as press freedom or religious freedom, to organizations that really ought to be protected. Similarly, the protections against unwarranted search and seizure or taking of property for pubic use without compensation should probably continue to cover corporations.
Really, the only problem I see WRT corporations having constitutional rights is the decision that political spending is protected speech. The other constitutional rights are generally not problematic.
So maybe something like this:
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No person, whether natural born human or legal fiction, shall spend, donate, or otherwise make valuable contributions to any candidate or campaign, if said person is not entitled to vote in the election for such candidate or campaign.
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Only natural born human beings shall be entitled to vote in any election.
seems good, but what about c sections?
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The main reason why corporate personhood exists is to limit the liability of owners. If I run a company and a customer slips and falls, they can sue the company, but they can’t sue me or my shareholders. Without any form of personhood there could be no limited liability. The customer would be suing me and the shareholders directly.
I don’t think it would change much for giant corporations but that would be terrible for small businesses. I have a friend who makes his own stuff and sells it to people. He doesn’t make much, a few thousand a year. He incorporated to prevent losing his house from a customer suing him.
I once worked for an Unlimited Liability Corporation (ULC). It’s a corporation where the owners and shareholders can be sued directly for company actions. They took on that higher risk because the tax breaks that come with a ULC were worth it I guess. So it’s not like giant corporations wouldn’t exist if they weren’t considered people, but it probably would hurt entrepreneurship.
The main issue Americans have with corporate personhood is the “freedom of speech” thing the US Supreme Court ruled on in Citizens United v. FCC. The ruling basically said corporations can’t be prevented from giving their money to political causes because its a violation of the corporation’s freedom of speech. That’s specifically a US ruling. Other countries don’t grant rights and freedoms to corporations.
He incorporated to prevent losing his house from a customer suing him.
Why should he be immune just because he wrote something on a piece of paper? Why shouldn’t that limited liability just be a thing to start with?
Because if we didn’t have such protections, the ONLY people who could ever afford to go into business are the already-super-wealthy.
Nobody would ever open a small business if it meant risking the roof over their childrens’ head.
I’m asking why the paper is necessary, as in why shouldn’t the limited liability just be a thing that exists in the first place.
Because the line does need to be drawn somewhere. You can’t just go out, cause harm to someone, and then claim “Oh, that harm was done by my company, not me personally. Incidentally, my company only has like $20 in assets for you to recover.”
The paperwork also doesn’t entirely grant you the limited liability. You need to actually operate the company as a separate entity from yourself. If you “piece the veil” between individual and company, you may not be able to claim limited liability in court.
Why though? Why does ‘operating as a company’ have less liability than an individual?
See 2 comments ago. Nobody except the ultra rich could afford to go into business if it meant risking all of their personal assets.
And like already mentioned: it’s not less liability, it’s separate liability. Misconduct as a business (which may not even be the owner’s fault, it could be an employee’s) can risk all of the business assets, but not personal assets owned outside the business.
The company doesn’t have ‘less’ liability, it has separate liability.
You wouldn’t expect that you would be responsible for the actions of a roommate in most cases. Creating a business entity separates the business from the person running it. The taxes are separate, the owned properties are separate, the liabilities are separate.
Say you own a small restaurant, The building it resides in (if you owned it) is owned wholely by the company. You also own a personal residence. Now a customer comes in and suffers some injury and they sue. They would sue the business and if it all went badly for you they might take ownership of the business assets including the building it’s in. They could NOT however come take your personal residence that’s not property of the business.
If you tried to do some shady biz and change ownership of the assets away from the company before a judgement was made then the customer could feasibly ‘pierce the veil’ as they say and include you into the suit personally.
You are explaining how, not why.
It could exist as an automatic thing, but you need to carefully define in what situations it exists. If anything goes someone will do something absurd - my company is a hitman for so you can’t try me for murder only my company which only has the pistol for assets. Now take the above but for something that is borderline - where are the borders. Should my car automatically be owned by a LLC (this is how most small airplanes are - you often don’t sell the airplane you sell the company that has that airplane as an asset). There are many many situations in life where a LLC might be useful, most of us don’t bother most of the time and are just fine, but maybe we should anyway?
However there is a different consideration: in pretty much all cases where someone wants a LLC the will need some paper anyway because they want different taxes and so you may as well require paperwork for all cases even those few where taxes won’t be a factor.
I get the paperwork for taxes, just not why an individual should be held as more responsible for the same actions as a company if they didn’t fill out paperwork to be a company. Why are companies special?
The idea behind it is that everyone engages with the company, not an individual. You visit Sam’s widgets, and buy a widget from Sam. A week later, Sam sells the business to Joe and disappears. It’s now Joe’s widgets, with all the same stuff and people (aside from Sam). Your widget breaks under warranty. Is Joe obligated to fix it?
You can see the obvious problems if you say no. Coincidentally, this is the case with all the AliExpress crap on Amazon.
But if Sam isn’t required for business continuity, it can build consumer trust. Even if Sam leaves, customers know they will be taken care of. They can buy with confidence that someone at Sam’s Widgets will keep supplying their widget needs.
Yes, it’s possible for a corporation to escape liabilities. But it’s the case for real people, too. People declare bankruptcy all the time, although there are certain debts that cannot be erased. These often don’t apply to corporations.
Have you ever worked at a place and disagreed with a decision made by the higher ups? Imagine if you were on the hook for every single widget you produced, or claim you processed, or whatever else
I can’t even imagine the clusterfuck. This is baked into the very first words of our law.
1 U.S. Code § 1 - Words denoting number, gender, and so forth
the words “person” and “whoever” include corporations, companies, associations, firms, partnerships, societies, and joint stock companies, as well as individuals;
The Citizens United ruling needs pulled, that’s all.
You guys are so screwed, I am sorry for you, sincerely
the radically different society that would be in place already for such an amendment to be ratified
