In a follow-up to my last blog entry about the “Occupy Wall Street” movement, I would like to address a sign that I saw some of the protestors carrying. It said “Corporations Are Not People”. I’ve seen this sign over and over again.
First off, let me be clear that the term “corporations are people” does not imply in any way shape or form that anyone thinks that corporations are human beings. What this refers to are Supreme Court decisions in 1819 and 1886 stating that corporations possessed SOME of the rights of human beings, including the right to enter into contracts and the right to 14th amendment protections. A few years back, the Supreme Court took this (I think) flawed logic to an extreme by saying that since legally the earlier court had granted corporations personhood that this should be extended to the right of free speech, which, in the case of corporations, meant money.
Personally, I think that rather than granting corporations MORE “human” rights, the 21st century court should have struck down or severely restricted the earlier decisions for the flawed pieces of logic that they are.
Here’s the problem… a corporation cannot and should not be able to enter into a contract. In order to enter into a contract, you must be a legal adult. Corporations are not human, therefore the phrase “adult” can never apply to them. Instead, we should recognize that contracts are entered into by human beings on behalf of corporations. For instance, at my former job with Costco, every time we received a new contract, the signature at the bottom was that of Jim Sinegal, the CEO of the company and not “Mr. Costco”. Our contract was with Jim, who accepted the responsibility of enforcing the contract on our behalf with the company, and not with the company itself.
As far as the personhood that the 21st century court was arguing for that includes the right to free speech, why should that not apply?
Well, to begin with, let’s look at the differences between persons and corporations. What are the inalienable rights of human beings, as enumerated in the Declaration of Independence? Well, to begin with, it recognizes that we were created by a being greater than ourselves, who the document rightly and simply refers to as “our creator”. Corporations were not created by this omnipresent creator, but by flawed human beings. Then it goes on to say that this creator granted us the rights of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Corporations do not live. The liberty that they have is, like the liberty that WE have, curtailed by laws to protect us from society and society from us. That is the one thing that we have in common, for a corporation cannot pursue happiness. Happiness is an emotion and corporations are incapable of feeling emotion.
And what about the motives of human beings? I I think that most of our motives are pretty complex. In addition to the inalienable rights enumerated above and Maslow’s hierarchy of basic needs (food, water, shelter, air and affection) we want so many other things. We want a good life for our kids. We want to know that our spouse is safe, or that our ex-spouse is suffering tremendous pain. What’s the motive of a corporation? To make money. That’s it. That’s the entire reason for a corporation’s existence, is to make money. I think that that, alone, should deny a corporation personhood. Although our tolerance for persons whose sole goal seems to be to make money, we know in our hearts that that person has other goals, they are just not pursuing them as publicly.
And even if we do grant corporations personhood, then we also have to consider the idiotic idea of “deregulation”. Think of the number of laws that you have constraining you every day from laws against killing your ex-spouse and kicking your cat to speed limits and what you can see, read and hear. I’m a cigar smoker who finds myself constantly at odds with all of the insane laws around my hobby. Right now Congress is considering yet ANOTHER law that would prohibit internet or catalog sales of cigars. I guess that the logic is that since they can ban internet sales of cigarettes to keep kids from ordering them, they are within their rights to do the same thing to cigars. I hate to break it to our rather out-of-touch Congress, though… KIDS DON’T SMOKE CIGARS. If they use tobacco, they either smoke cigarettes or chew. So yes, let’s logically deny them access to the things that they abuse, but not pretend that they abuse something that they don’t so that you can get your nose further up our butts.
Anyway.
I digress.
My point is, shouldn’t corporations have at LEAST as many laws constraining them as we do, if we are going to consider them persons like us?
Peace.
Randal
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