“Corporations are people, my friend,” Mitt Romney famously said in 2011 while running for president. The Supreme Court decided the previous year that corporations could give money to political campaigns, just like people, and in 2014, the high court gave corporations religious freedom to deny contraceptives to employees, thereby letting them behave just as badly as people. If you prick corporations, do they not bleed?
Actually no, they don’t. But as of now, they can get presidential pardons.
The notion that corporations are people did not originate with the Supreme Court’s notorious Citizens United decision in 2010. Way back in 1886, the high court ruled in Santa Clara County v. Union Pacific Railroad that corporations were covered by the Fourteenth Amendment’s guarantee of equal protection under the law. To be more precise, this question was addressed not in the decision (which resolved a local taxation dispute) but rather in a headnote that said the court “does not wish to hear argument on the question” of whether the Fourteenth Amendment applies to corporations because “we are all of the opinion that it does.“ Somehow this non sequitur became legal precedent. “Later cases,” wrote Stetson University law professor Clara Torres-Spelliscy in a 2014 analysis for the nonprofit Brennan Center for Justice, “uncritically cited the headnote as if it had been part of the case.”
You know what isn’t declining? Pardons for corporations. Trump has granted nine. These were never a thing before Trump—not in the modern era, and possibly never. According to Bloomberg’s Ava Benny-Morrison, the nine pardons wiped out $200 million in financial penalties, “some of which were destined for victims of wrongdoing.” Frank Bowman, a law professor at the University of Missouri, told Bloomberg: “In any previous era no president would touch this with a barge pole. Maybe individual cases with some compelling reason, but the systemic elimination of criminal liability of major financial crime would never have happened before, and it didn’t.”
Half of the $200 million in wiped-out fines can be attributed to a single crypto company, BitMEX. The three co-founders of the company, a pioneer in crypto derivatives, all pleaded guilty in 2022 to violating the Bank Secrecy Act, which requires maintaining certain safeguards against money laundering. Each paid $10 million in fines. Then, in July 2024, BitMEX itself pleaded guilty to the same crime, and this past January the company was fined $100 million.
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I want CEOs to face all the punishment for a corporation. I’ve heard they get paid so Mich cause they assume the risk. They get all the credit when the company does food but it breaks the law and how could I know everything going on. Well they get the juice so let’s blame them personally for every time they break the law.
It may be unpopular around here, but the pardon power of the presidency needs to go.
Especially the power that pardons people for all crimes
It undermines the rule of law and sets a precedent that the president is above the law
It isn’t a check on the judiciary, it’s a way to negate the idea that nobody is above the law.
Case in point: Ford pardoning Nixon Case in point: Biden pardoning his family for any crimes in a time period
I would only allow presidential pardons in case of laws changing. The broken clock moments of said pardons are due to bad laws.
the pardon power of the presidency needs to go
Just need to pass a constitutional amendment. Those are so easy to get. Just look to the ERA’s deadline chicinery.
if corporations are people why can’t we give them the death penalty when they commit mass murder?
Yes Nestlé, we are looking at you, you piece of shit.
If we’re giving out the death penalty for corporate wrongs, Meta facilitated an ethnic cleansing in Myanmar that resulted in the mass rape and separately, death, of an estimated tens of thousands of peoplem. As seperate statistics. Both are in the tens of thousands. The number displaced is in the hundreds of thousands and the conflict is still ongoing today.
Experts pleaded with them to enact guard rails, and warned them of exactly this kind of outcome.
But think about all the innocent shareholders! Is it reasonable to punish them simply because something they directly funded and personally benefit from is doing heinously evil things? They laundered their responsibility fair and square through a board of directors.
Real people have unlimited liability. Corporations have limited liability.
So which are they? They shouldn’t have the rights of real people but not face the same legal risks.
If you want a way to legislate it, or amend the constitution, that should be the criterion.
And as for precedent: Dred Scott was precedent too. The Supreme Court has a shameful history of reactionary legislating from the bench.
Also, Congress has the power, spelled out in the Constitution, to regulate the operations of the Supreme Court, which it can reasonably be assumed, means they can also regulate what is subject to judicial review and what is not. Congress has never exercised that power.
Note to self: Get investors to fund my gun collection so when I commit mass murder I can’t be convicted because “think of the shareholders”!
You’re a genius!
inb4 someone takes this seriously because reality has gone full retard and you didn’t type /s at the end.
I kept second-guessing myself, “is this comment stupid enough yet that nobody will take it seriously? No? Better add some more stupid.” I was pretty sure I’d get at least a few downvotes regardless, but for today at least my faith in humanity has been slightly boosted.
Always nice when the gauge ticks up a bit, that’s so rare lately. Really worried what happens when it bottoms out completely. Is that when you need to move to a cabin in the woods and start researching fertilizer boom booms?
And now for my not-silly response. :)
The “corporate death penalty” is called “judicial dissolution” and (in the US at least) proceeds similar to chapter 7 bankruptcy. In the 18th and 19th centuries, state legislatures issued corporate charters with specific public mandates. If a corporation abused its power, the state revoked its charter. This is pretty rare these days, both because corporate charters are handled differently (they usually don’t have specific mandates) and because of the awareness of collateral damage to actual innocents. Not shareholders, but employees getting laid off, pensions being destroyed, and so forth. So nowadays the preferred approach is to focus on punishments aimed at making the corporation change its future behaviour. Forced firing of executives responsible, massive fines to make illegal activities unprofitable, and so forth.
There are still judicial dissolutions but they’re usually targeted fraudulent non-profits, shell corporations, and organized crime fronts. No “innocents” get hurt in those cases since they don’t have many actual employees.
A few prominent cases where real corporations were judicially destroyed are Arthur Andersen, BCCI, and Purdue Pharma. Those ones weren’t directly ordered dissolved, though, the court just revoked licenses or placed restrictions on them that made it impossible for them to continue operating and so they immediately went bankrupt.
So nowadays the preferred approach is to focus on punishments aimed at making the corporation change its future behaviour.
If only they would apply this logic to individual criminals! But that would disrupt their slave trade.
When injustice becomes law, resistance becomes duty.
Or, as Jefferson proclaimed: “When tyranny becomes law, rebellion becomes duty,”
The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants.
-Thomas Jefferson November 13, 1787, in letter to William Stephens Smith, the son-in-law of John Adams.
“Patriotism is the virtue of the vicious,” according to Oscar Wilde.
(I can only ever associate that quote with that scene from The Rock.)
Weak minded people who use violence to supposedly solve their problems.
I grew up in a violent place, and I have been assaulted on a small number of occasions, always unprovoked. The reason I’m still alive today is because I responded quickly and unhesitatingly with violence. I didn’t kill anyone, but on two occasions, I’m fairly sure that I caused life-changing injuries.
I’m very nearly a pacifist. Whenever possible, I choose the non-violent path. But anyone who believes that it’s always possible is not confronting the reality of life in this world. And it may be a coincidence, but almost all the absolutist pacifists I have met have come from sheltered backgrounds and have never had their lofty principles challenged by events.
Sure buddy, I have disarmed countless fights in my life. As a bartender dealing with adults acting like kindergarteners is rather common.
We are not talking about things on a personal level. We are talking about crusty old hypocrites justifying the nationwide murder they participated in.
Weak minded people who use violence to supposedly solve their problems.
Right, because Thomas Jefferson (the guy who literally wrote the Declaration of Independence (the the document that reads “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness”) was weak minded. Hell, by that logic, the weak minded would include all the founders and the entire Continental Army.
Tell me, are you a loyalist?
I don’t have a dog in the argument you’re in but Jefferson probably didn’t have too good of a grasp on those “self-evident truths” himself when he raped his slave(s? He had more than one slave but I’m only aware of him raping one of them, but probably not just the one though)
You should be careful who you put up on pedestals. All is not what is appears to be and my point stands.
I am a humanitarian who recoils at the fact that wealthy people seized control of the colonies with violence and propaganda.
They are not going to let go of that control voluntarily though.
Who and what are you talking about. There has only been one truly revolutionary revolution and that was Haiti. The rest were just wealthy people trying to wrestle control from other wealthy people.
The evidence of violence producing good results when it comes to forming governments is non existent. Haiti now has one of the highest income gaps in the world. You could argue that this is due to being shunned on the world stage which further highlights that even if you “win” you can still lose.
You must be fun at parties.
Yeah, I have had some great conversations around this topic. How our founding fathers were wealthy slavers who said one thing and did something completely different. How they enriched themselves with our first President on his way to be the first billionaire adjusted for inflation.
I would highly recommend studying the American Revolution with a critical eye. It was only after I took a high level history class in college and read a lot of primary sources that all the pieces of the puzzle finally fit.
I realized that the US was never corrupted at some point and that it was always corrupt from the very start. Propaganda was used to incite and violence was doled out to anyone who disagreed. That loyalist crap that the bootlicker was bringing up earlier is an example of this garbage still existing to this day. The people lost and the wealthy won.
A nation formed by the wealthy for the wealthy based on death and destruction that has continued to this day. Genocided the Native Americans for fun even though there was and is to this day plenty of land. Racist and sexist to the core falling far behind the rest of the world. Being at war nearly our entire existence.
Basically everything we are taught is a lie and once you realize this, it all makes sense.
The United States has expanded right throughout its history. Yes, its been a constant struggle. Yes the South has been forced to be dragged kicking and screaming at every point, and sometimes there are setbacks. But, the course of its history has an overall bend towards liberty.
A pity Sally Hemmings didn’t slit his throat.
The concept of a corporation was they would be granted special rights not usually not afforded to companies under the agreement that they would act for the public good. They had to indicate in their charter what public good they were providing and this was subject to approval by governing bodies.
Then it was a race to the bottom for the various governing bodies to grant charters for less and less public good. Now they can just say “maximize dividends and/or share value” and pay a small fee and are granted a corporations.
But despite not doing anything for the public good they still have those special rights as if they are.
Now we’re at a point where people actually believe maximizing profits actually is the public good.
This notion of corporate personhood is purely for our own convenience, so corporations can enter into contracts, have bank accounts, and so on. In no universe did the folks who wrote that “all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights” mean to include corporations on that. After all, corporations were not created by the same Creator as people, were they*?
I would be 100% in favor of an amendment that clearly spells out that the rights enumerated in the Constitution are limited to actual humans, and any corporation or other group of people are not entitled to any more inherent rights than the humans who make up the corporation are entitled to collectively. You don’t get more rights simply by paying a filing fee to Delaware!
This does not remove all of the privileges that we have granted corporations to make it easier to organize, but does mean that corporations have no inherent “right” to anything. Humans have those!
Edited to add: someone has proposed it already! https://www.movetoamend.org/amendment
* = Yes, this is Lemmy, so some snarky person will come along and say “of course they are! We made up both corporations and God!”. But, the founders were deists and believed in a Creator, so let’s try to look at it from their point of view, because that’s what our backwards Supreme Court does…
let’s try to look at it from their point of view, because that’s what our backwards Supreme Court does…
That’s what our reactionary Supreme Court says it does, based on a selective, distorted and malicious reading of history that excludes the views of the most important Founders. The whole originalist approach is a con, where they puport to channel the opinions of a disparate and contentious group of 18th-century politicians into a single, homogenized position, and somehow always arrive at conclusions that are convenient to 21st-century racists and fascists. What a fucking coincidence.
The founders were oligarch and chattel slavers.
But, the founders were deists and believed in a Creator, so let’s try to look at it from their point of view, because that’s what our backwards Supreme Court does…
Perhaps not in the ways people wildly imagine, and perhaps that’s the intent.
After all, corporations were not created by the same Creator as people, were they*?
No but by the same sorts of people who had the Tower of Babel built, intending to lord it over the common people.
I would be 100% in favor of an amendment that clearly spells out that the rights enumerated in the Constitution are limited to actual humans, and any corporation or other group of people are not entitled to any more inherent rights than the humans who make up the corporation are entitled to collectively. You don’t get more rights simply by paying a filing fee to Delaware!
We need to stop worshipping a piece of paper that’s become so bulky and cumbersome, and which was disingenuous, from the beginning. Portugal did that, and so can any other state.
After all, corporations were not created by the same Creator as people, were they*?
No but by the same sorts of people who had the Tower of Babel built, intending to lord it over the common people.
My brother in Baphomet. That don’t make no sense. “People” (in general, excluding their direct descendents)… were not created by “same sorts” that created ziggurats… I get what you’re trying to do there, I really do, but that particular aside doesn’t make sense there semantically.
We need to stop worshipping a piece of paper that’s become so bulky and cumbersome, and which was disingenuous, from the beginning. Portugal did that, and so can any other state.
Yes, but also:
- If you open a constitutional convention right now, there is a solid chance you will get the opposite of what you’re suggesting due to who is currently in charge of most states.
- There is a non-zero chance they agree to all just dissolve the union altogether at this point condemning the real but disenfranchised minorities of Red states to a fate I don’t want to be responsible for.
My brother in Baphomet. That don’t make no sense. “People” (in general, excluding their direct descendents)… were not created by “same sorts” that created ziggurats… I get what you’re trying to do there, I really do, but that particular aside doesn’t make sense there semantically.
After all, corporations were not created by the same Creator as people, were they*?
The subject was corporations.
If you open a constitutional convention right now, there is a solid chance you will get the opposite of what you’re suggesting due to who is currently in charge of most states.
We need to stop worshipping a piece of paper that’s become so bulky and cumbersome, and which was disingenuous, from the beginning. Portugal did that, and so can any other state.
The verb was worshipping. Portugal didn’t rewrite their Constitution in a vacuum. We’re nowhere near ready for that.
There is a non-zero chance they agree to all just dissolve the union altogether at this point condemning the real but disenfranchised minorities of Red states to a fate I don’t want to be responsible for.
I live in one of those states. So I’m feeling that, 💯. At the same time, nothing is gained without sacrifice. So I advocate education, preparation. And we’re already in the hypercapitalism stage of collapse, and it’s coming at us like an ICBM with a nuclear warhead. I’d just started making enough to tread water and suffered a work injury which significantly reduced my income. And we’ve still got more “
FU, I got MINE” dubiously “well-meaning” liberals slapping the hands that would offer a long-term course of medicine that would cure this syphilitic paper-worship, both profit that casts our own, alive, onto the altar of Molech, as a burnt offering as we live-stream genocide and DARVO victims to maintain dollar hegemony for the priests of a Caanite storm and war G-d, bombing schools of little girls, who incidentally, were blessed by this same G-d, according to their own scripture, as well as a bald-faced lie of a Constitution.And yet, to save the many and hopefully manifest a destiny that doesn’t genocide and colonize and enslave and traffic non-whites, women, children, disabled and differently-abled as a sacrifice on the altars of Mammon and Molech, for the lust of money, sacrifices will be made. Should they not be made by those who know the risks and are willing, that the generations behind us may have a chance? And if not human chances, than whatever life may survive, because when these servants of greed, slavery, rape, and pedophilia will sacrifice the flora and fauna, they’re already sacrificing the air, water, soil, so all that remains are the battles of
wandswillsfire (and possibly brimstone). To put it as someone far wiser than I:Kill off mankind and give the Earth a chance. Nature may find, in her inheritance, some seedlings of a race less infinitely base.
Not that this is my preferred sentiment. I’m just saying the battles are coming, and people refuse to do the minimum to prepare. It would behoove all of us to face* our demons, that they become our holy guardian angels, before then.
Do what you will shall be the whole of the law. The Magnum Opus is not for the faint-hearted. Destiny looms.
Deus miserere nobis. In nomine patris et filii, et si spiritus sanctus.
I have to post this to proof it. I hope it’s legible and makes sense to you, since it turned into a stream of consciousness.
I mean, I’m not entirely on a different page from you, but we have a lot of work to do to prepare and we have precious little time to do so. Investing too much energy in a constitution that is going to prove itself insufficient soon enough anyway seems like wasting time. Right now we should be prioritizing building resilient face-to-face networks to mobilize resources and people. I’m less worried about mankind being eliminated, and more concerned about who is going to be left, and the prepared shall inherit the earth. Lessons from the past, union movements, the underground railroad, the logistic and institutional frameworks show us the way. An army fights on its stomach and wars are won by supply lines, not just spears or bullets.
They want you to believe it’s hopeless. That we need them, that we can’t survive without them, that they are “inevitable” and that’s just not true. Theirs is the path to ruin but we need not follow. Same as it ever was, community is the path to tomorrow, and we need to remember that. The hands of the kings are the hands of the healers. Those who work to make themselves worthy to serve their communities when they are needed, by the sword in defence when necessary, but more importantly by the hand of care. They build tools to break the ties that held us together. They feed us lies to make us hate. We can do better. We can weave a web of humanity through the fetid corpse of a nation and build something better, something wiser (always foolish, but ever wiser), but first that starts by putting a welcoming hand out to try again, not cursing the hand that was burned before. We will have time to mourn past failures some day, and the host of whatever lies beyond will weep with us. Pray we do not forget to do so when we get there, for it has been our curse since time immemorial to forget.
The wise man sometimes plants trees, whose fruit he will not live to see. It’s a big task, and I am weary already, but I will rise for we are called; by 4 billion years of ancestors, if not something more. I hear your plea, and I’m sorry I cannot bring rest, but if I can perhaps offer some hope, that will carry you for now. We are alive, and where there is life, there is hope, however faint it may seem.
I mean, that was kind of the original point of my comment to which you replied, and my first reply to you.
We need to stop worshipping a piece of paper
You might imagine a streamlined better outcome.
Practically speaking, almost certainly that path gets worse
I most certainly do not, but unless people stop with the Gell-Mann amnesia 🐂 💩 and start educating themselves on something besides liberal slop, it’s definitely getting worse, regardless.
We need to stop worshipping a piece of paper that’s become so bulky and cumbersome, and which was disingenuous, from the beginning. Portugal did that, and so can any other state.
I agree with you in principle, but I will note that in the US it is hard to agree on anything new, and at least the Constitution has stood for 200+ years as something we all agree on, even as we disagree on how to interpret it.
And please expand on what you mean about Portugal. I am ignorant on their history, but according to Wikipedia they got their current constitution 50+ years ago, after a military coup. I would like to avoid a coup here, because I can’t really guarantee which side the military would pick…
Sigh.
Can’t you at least try to imagine improvements, from execution to safeguards? You know the United States exists because of violent revolution and no one could guarantee the outcome, right?
As it is now, if we don’t start taking steps to educate ourselves, the outcome is most assuredly guaranteed.
No, you dont get it. My objection isn’t that the outcome is uncertain, it’s that if the US military stages a coup in the US, it’s not clear to me which side it would be fighting for.
You don’t get it. There are other implications.
Can’t you at least try to imagine improvements
Did you mean amendments?
You know the United States exists because of violent revolution
One of a great many reasons.
I said what I said.
We need to stop worshipping a piece of paper that’s become so bulky and cumbersome, and which was disingenuous, from the beginning.
No.
First of all, we’re not there yet, but to maybe avoid any future conflicts depicted in scifi, we should narrow the rights protected to persons, and then define what a person is that doesn’t constrict it to human. Or at least leave it open enough to allow different concepts of self aware beings while cutting off the very broad definition that allows a company to qualify.
I would be 100% in favor of an amendment that clearly spells out that the rights enumerated in the Constitution are limited to actual humans, and any corporation or other group of people are not entitled to any more inherent rights than the humans who make up the corporation are entitled to collectively.
How does that change the current law, though?
I’d be in favor of a rule that explains that organizing into associations doesn’t change the rights of the individuals who form the association, but also that the association would only have rights that relate to the actual purpose of forming the association in the first place (whether it’s a corporation, LLC, partnership, joint venture, other unincorporated associations).
So a church gets religious freedom. But a sandwich shop does not. A newspaper gets freedom of speech and may exercise editorial discretion on what goes on its pages. A telephone company does not, and cannot discriminate against the viewpoints expressed over its phone lines.
There are trickier issues: can a government ban halal slaughter, and would a Muslim-owned butcher shop be entitled to a religious exemption (if, assuming, individuals were granted that exemption)? I’d argue you have to look to the nature of the business or organization to determine whether that particular right applies to that organization, so the butcher shop can invoke the religion of the human butcher, and possibly even the human customers who want to buy halal meat.
But the framework makes sense to me, and is closely related to the principle of organizational standing, where something like a nonprofit association of apple growers can sue on behalf of apple grower rights, despite not being an organization that actually directly grows apples. That’s how corporate rights should work: look to the reason for incorporating and the nature of the organization, and how it relates to the nature of the right at issue.
There are trickier issues: can a government ban halal slaughter, and would a Muslim-owned butcher shop be entitled to a religious exemption (if, assuming, individuals were granted that exemption)? I’d argue you have to look to the nature of the business or organization to determine whether that particular right applies to that organization, so the butcher shop can invoke the religion of the human butcher, and possibly even the human customers who want to buy halal meat.
How does that work with indie pharmacies and birth control, or bakeries asked to decorate pro/antitrans cakes?
For a simple single donation of? 1 million per 100 employees?
Corporations are people like girl scouts or unions or counter strike clans are people. If we’re going to restrict their speech we need a constitutional amendment clarifying which groups of people are excluded from 1A. Nobody has the stones to propose one.
100 mil. A pittance.
