watering down freedom of speech because why not
As a counter example that shows they are still not fully "people": a corporation cannot adopt a child or get married.
We'd be better off if we couldn't do this. Predatory credit would disappear.
I guess I could rent instead, except that would require a contract as well. I get the impression you haven't really thought this through.
That's why we allow them to be a legal person. So Comcast can sign a contract to purchase a new toner cartridge, rather than requiring a signature from each owner of each of their 4.5 billion shares outstanding.
This is an especially pernicious case of the normal Stockholm Syndrome we see whenever the special status of corporations is challenged. No firm is 100% robots yet. If we withdraw our consent, they have to raise wages and improve working conditions until we relent.
This is especially true for freelancers, who don't have a single employer and are instead usually paid for deliverables as specified in a contract. Being able to quit anytime doesn't help if you've already spent weeks or months working on a project and never get paid because the company decides on a whim that they don't need your deliverable anymore.
Corporate “personhood” goes back even further, to at least 1819 with the Dartmouth v Woodward decision.
Citizens United has been surrounded by ignorance, promoted by newspapers who, incidentally, had their effectiveness and power reduced since they were no longer the only “protected” gatekeepers for picking political candidates.
Why should the New York Times editorial board get to express their opinions through millions of printed papers distributed through an expensive and vast logistics network, or via a website maintained by hired employees with a budget of millions per year?
Why shouldn’t Bob’s Hardware Inc., be able to also spend money, in exactly the same way as the New York Times to spread the message of their preferred political candidates that would be helpful for their business? How is Bob’s Hardware any less entitled to being able to express their opinions or present their facts than the N.Y. Times? Should the EFF be able to spend money at the same levels as what the New York Times spends to cut down trees and print some words on it and then send those words to readers all over the world? Media organizations can spend limitless amounts on getting their message out — Bob’s Hardware ought to have the same rights.
The First Amendment doesn’t protect newspapers as a special class — it protects everyone. The “press” is referring to the actual machine used to print things, not specifically to a news gathering organization. https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2011/02/dont-be...