Comment by maerF0x0 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by maerF0x0 | Hacker News Reader

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> Do you think corporations like the New York Times should not have freedom of speech?

I will admit i have not thought long and hard on this. But on the surface it seems like the answer is "Yes".

But the individuals working in those corporations do. So when a journalist submits an article their free speech is protected as an individual rights extended through the corporation. Similarly for property rights...

I think the idea i'm trying to get at is that these corporations shouldnt have influence beyond the voting power they represent, ie the people.

Speaking of ideals, for example a hypothetical single employee business w/ billions in wealth should have 1 unit of political power, whereas a public interest group with a few thousand of dollars but 100 people should have 100 units of political power.

Edit: Corrected my "No" --> "Yes" because the question sentence was confusing

Regardless of the reasoning behind Citizen's United, one outcome has been an extraordinary increase in corruption.

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/06/opinion/citizens-united-c...

It is immaterial whether the increased corruption was an incidental side effect, or the whole point. From the perspective of the individual citizens being exploited, it doesn't matter whether it was the government exploiting them or a corporation exploiting them after having bought the franchise from the government.

But the NYT itself still makes legal decisions, like which articles to run. Lets say they decide to run a particular article which is later claimed by the government to be libelous. Since the NYT has no rights under your ideal the government could simply find them guilty of a felony without giving them due process of law and end their corporate existence.

I would argue that so long as corporations continue to exist they require a minimum amount of rights, such as a right to due process, or else they just become tools for the state to act without any of the restraints our current system has developed.

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