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Half-Century Man

(5,279 posts)
Fri Jul 26, 2013, 06:57 PM Jul 2013

How can there be a question of "personhood"?

I have trouble accepting the SCOTUS ruling that a corporation has rights similar to those of a person. It makes little logical sense to me. Granted, I have less education than a lawyer does. On the other have I also have less education in twisting facts to fit a previously determined outcome. I believe that having the ability to warp reality so it can fit where you need is the only way to think an organization can have rights. The people who comprise an organization have rights and can express them collectively, but the artificial construct of the organization has no actual rights.

I see a business or corporation as a diverse collection of people who collectively work to generate capital. Their focus is on harvesting the most capital from society in general as quickly as possible using the least resources. No one is born into one of these groups. Membership is voluntary and based on performance for pay. Position within this cooperative is based on several factors, such as education, desire, luck, etc. Every position is held by a temporary worker. One who will hold their job for an undetermined period, even though it might be forty years. So, the argument that a large group of people with different educations, status, motivations, dreams, working within the rigidly structured narrow framework of a corporation; share the same political ideals is laughable. In fact, the long bloody history of union conflicts in America buries that argument.

The position that the corporate officers, by virtue of their leadership can assign a political opinion to the charter of a company is ludicrous. The temporary holder of any given office, each have a personal political opinion and all the officers could agree on a political stance. But no human is the personification of a charter of incorporation. The legal paperwork that establishes a company has no intelligence, no life, or morals. It is a thing, completely inanimate. Furthermore it is a thing established for commerce, not activism. The fact this organization exists for commerce precludes it from being a committee as defined by Federal Election Commission. The only way it should be able to donate to a political cause is by combining the uncoerced individual contributions. “X” employees listed by name and amount of contribution (within legal limits) added together and submitted at the same time. Nothing else should be legally possible.

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