Comment by shawndrost
3 months ago
I don't understand this POV, can you explain what I'm missing?
Usually when people say "corporations aren't people" I think they are confused about the need for an abstraction. But you acknowledged the need for an abstraction.
I don't imagine you are confused about the status quo of the legal terminology? AFAIK, the current facts are: the legal term "person" encompasses "natural person" (ie the common meaning of "person") and "legal person" (ie the common usage of "corporation"). In legalese, owning shares of legal persons is not slavery; owning shares of natural persons is; owning shares of "people" is ambiguous.
I don't imagine you are advocating for a change in legal terminology. It seems like it would be an outrageously painful find-and-replace in the largest codebase ever? And for what upside? It's like some non-programmer advocating to abandon the use of the word "master" in git, but literally a billion times worse.
Are you are just gesturing at a broader political agenda about reducing corporate power? Or something else I am not picking up on?
The argument is that the need for abstraction doesn't mean we must reuse an existing concept. We should be able to talk about corporations as entities and talk about what laws or rights should apply, without needing to call them people.
But the existing concept by and large has the properties we want. The ability to form contracts, to be held civilly or criminally liable for misconduct, to own property, etc. That we say something is a juridical person isn't some kind of moral claim that it's equivalent in importance to a human, it's just a legal classification.
Corporations can be held criminally liable, but they can't go to prison. And while lots of countries have gotten rid of the death penalty, a corporation can actually be "executed" by getting dissolved.
I think these are some pretty big deals.
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At least for me, the problem is that making them completely equivalent in a legal sense has undesirable outcomes, like Citizens United. Having distinct terms allows for creating distinct, but potential overlapping sets of laws/privileges/rights. Using the same term makes it much harder to argue for distinctions in key areas
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It also has a lot of properties we don't want, no? Freedom of travel, enlist in the army, drink alcohol after a certain age, get married, etc etc.
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But then why does a corporation need freedom of speech etc?
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> The argument is that the need for abstraction doesn't mean we must reuse an existing concept.
but that's not what is happening, there are two concepts: "natural person" and "legal person". you could call them "foo" and "bar" if you prefer, those are just legal variable names.
Or you could just take the obvious and literally meaning of the phrase "corporations are not people" and not say that everyone who says it is confused. Corporations have different incentives, legal requirements, rights and responsibilities.