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0 pointserichocean4y ago0 comments

Corporations do not have rights, they are government-defined entities—not people. There's no "Bill of Corporate Rights" or "UN Convention on Corporate Rights."

Corporations have locally-defined privileges and exist by, and at, the will of the people where they reside. Governments can change what those privileges are at any moment, for any reason—or no reason at all.

If we don't like what Google is doing, we can simply write laws regulating it differently.

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In reply:

> "In a U.S. historical context, the phrase "corporate personhood" refers to the ongoing legal debate over the extent to which rights traditionally associated with natural persons should also be afforded to corporations."

Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corporate_personhood

Hint: ongoing legal debate, i.e. it's up to government to decide what "corporate personhood" means—exactly what I am saying. It's up to government, not "inalienable" or "natural" or whatever.

It's a purely legal question whether trillion dollar corporate mega-platforms with billions of users have the same regulations and responsibilities as widows and orphans. We don't have to let the Googles and Facebooks and Amazons and YouTubes of the world trample on basic human rights "because ackshually, corporations are people too." Certainly nothing about the 14th Amendment requires it.

0 comments

krapp4y ago

Corporations do have rights, including the right to free speech and association, because even as entities they are not separable from the people (or the rights of the people) who create and interact with them.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corporate_personhood

>Government can change what those privileges are at any moment, for any reason—or no reason at all.

No, this isn't the way government works anywhere outside of a dictatorship.

webmaven4y ago

> >Government can change what those privileges are at any moment, for any reason—or no reason at all.

> No, this isn't the way government works anywhere outside of a dictatorship.

It really is. The executive branch is the most constrained in practice, but the legislative branch is relatively free to do whatever they want (spend money, create or abolish departments, set the rules, change the rules, allocate money to enforce the rules, etc. Even revise their own deliberative procedures), and the judiciary is even less constrained except that it is the other two branches that control who gets appointed as judges.

There are checks and balances, but those are pretty much always another part of government, so ultimately, anything the three branches agree on gets done. Anything.

There might be consequences including failing to get reelected for the executive and legislature, but that doesn't necessarily undo what's already been done.

jmalicki4y ago

Corporations are people, at least within the United States [1], with all rights available to (groups of) individuals. Just not natural people.

[1] https://www.history.com/news/14th-amendment-corporate-person...

cobbzilla4y ago

“Compared with other entities, the average corporation is considered about as similar to a person as an ant.”

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S00100...

michaelmrose4y ago

The government cannot easily remove the rights of the individuals who make up said corporations without going through the cumbersome and probably impossible process of amending the constitution.

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