Corporate Personhood

I was going to think up some wacky absurd title about corporations being people, but decided to play it straight this time.    Although my favorite snarky comment about all this is "I'll believe corporations are people when Texas executes one."

For those just joining this more-or-less-weekly journey through my version of  politics, I'm in the midst of devoting a post apiece to each of the five main topics I'd listed in my keynote post, and I've been doing them in reverse order (for no particular reason, except it seems to make sense to do it this way.   So corporate personhood is up this week.

The "Citizens United" Supreme Court decision a while back has increased my and many others' concern about the legal status of corporations.    The "Citizens United" decision concluded that corporations, having the legal status of persons, cannot be constrained regarding the amount they can contribute to political campaigns, since this would amount to an infringement on a "person's" freedom of speech.

The problem has been portrayed as simply being one of fairness, since corporations have so much more money they can throw into a campaign than a normal person could.

I think the real problem is this, and it is at the heart of why a corporation should not have the status of personhood (except for technical convenience in making contracts, for which a corporation is considered a "fictitious individual"):   A corporation should not be considered a person, because a corporation does not have the interests, and therefore should not the unalienable rights, that a person has.   Going back to the Declaration of Independence, does a corporation have "life," let alone an unalienable right to it?   Of course not.   That's why the "Texas" joke is funny.    Does a corporation have or need "liberty?"   Maybe in a certain sense, but a corporation can't be sent to jail or sold into slavery or pressed into the navy, so no, it doesn't.   Does a corporation pursue happiness?   No, it pursues profit.   In fact, that's what a corporation is, a profit-pursuing machine.

The bill of rights guarantees specific rights of persons, by way of assuming and assuring the "big three" unalienable rights posited in the Declaration.    Assigning those rights to a profit-making machine is wrong and dangerous.   It skews democracy and endangers the life, liberty and happiness of all the actual persons in our republic.

That's all for now.   Thanks for reading.