How did it come to pass that this simply stated fact became a topic of debate?
54 Replies to “Corporations Are People”
The left demonizes corporations…..probably from reading the blatherings of the mentally crippled Noam Chomsky.
The left also bleats about the “greed” of corporations. But let’s take a look at that.
Unions attempt to extract the highest compensation for the lowest productivity.
Corporations, on the other hand, attempt to produce the most or best in order to compete in the market at the lowest cost.
Now who is greedy?
The same people who are against big corporations are also for big government. They are happy with that unless of course it is the “wrong” government that’s in power.
“Beggers” can’t be choosy.
Of course corporation are not people.
People have legs, brain, feeling.
Corporation might be treated as people for tax purpose (which is wrong, but can be debatable).
But it is a matter of fact corporation are not people.
…and Quebec is a leech, not people.
qndp misses the point. Incroyable!
Of course, corporations are not literal people. The concept is that, under the law, corporations are treated as people, and not just for tax purposes – that is your myopic view of the situation. In fact, corporations can do many things that people do – marry/merge, give birth/spin off, die/dissolve, break the law/break the law, etc., etc.
As a representative of the people who refer to English Canadians as “square heads”, you don’t have very much imagination, do you?
QNDP answers Kate’s question without even trying,good work mon frere.
Corpotations are depersonal;ized to make them easier to attack. Big oil,Big banks,and out west we have Big grain,which I found out yesterday is behind the movement to topple the wheat board. BTW,that was mentioned by one of the guests on CBC’s ‘power and politics’.
One more thing,Rosemary Barton does a better job than Evan Solomon,mainly because I don’t have to adjust the volume every time she speaks. Can’t CBC take a few dollars out of their billion and buy that guy a better microphone?
Quebeckercommie probably doesn’t even know about Soylent Green.
And Quebeckers as a group are not people. How stupid is quebecois NDPiste? I mean really?
Clearly he doesn’t even know what a corporation is. Typical.
The issue I take most with Quebec is that government hasn’t done a good enough job in integrating them into society.
When an economic system that has produced so much wealth for so many people cannot spend the resources to ‘educate’ those that benefit you have to question the smarts involved. Not only does corporate North America do a lousy job but the political party that supposedly understands the philosophy but embraces it cannot do any better! I don’t know about the Republicans but the CPC party in Canada is inept. The majority of elected members would have no idea how to run a small business let alone balance a set of books.
The free market capitlist society is as bankrupt as the left in the intellectual challenge of communicating with the populace.
Until the corporations start communicating with the voting public, and educating them, this will not change. The business community has without comment permitted the left to use public schools for socialist indoctrination.
Well Now, Quebecois NDPist:
I agree with you that corporations are not people in the blood & flesh sense. But corporations are in fact the representations of people, especially small businesses, which, across Canada, employ roughly 50% of the workers in Canada.
I was born and raised in Quebec. I know you, and those like you. Your pseudo-intellectual arrogance dictates that you and your ilk will happily destroy all meaningful commerce, put good people out of work, simply to prove your point that you and yours are intellectually superior and be-damned with the unwashed masses who happen to work for a living.
Oh….and throughout the process, you will bleat about Quebec’s “humiliation” at the hands of the rest of us. All of Quebec’s perceived problems lend truth to the notion that you and your fellow citizens continually are accepting handouts from the rest of Canada, and sneer at us as you do so.
At this point, I sincerely hope you separate…you’ll go bankrupt….but don’t even THINK of crawling back.
But I digress. Being the founder, owner and operator of a corporation,albeit a small company, I find it an essential means of doing business.
Being primarily in the securities business, we went through a coup[le of years of financial challenges.
With our income seriously reduced, my company did not have enough cash flow to pay my employees, a team of smart, dedicated people that I had painstakingly assembled and nurtured as though they were family.
Using my corporate vehicle, I was able to put my own resources into the company to pay their salaries. Because keeping them on staff was incredibly important to me…they were not only my employees, my support, but also my friends.
So Pal…crap on corporations all you wish…the truth is, they are putting food on your plate and money in your pocket.
Hollywood has so trashed Corporations with buisness in general. All people see is what they potray. Greedy people with no scruples out to control the world Populated by one dimendional charchters with no empathy or social concience.
JMO
It is an interesting government decree indeed.
Slavery is treating a person like property.
A corporation is treating property like a person.
NDP does not have a brain or feelings.
Frogs have legs.
Eh?
“The majority of elected members would have no idea how to run a small business let alone balance a set of books.”
ct, are you talking about American elected members? The elected members in Canada certainly do know how to balance books as evidenced by having one of the most stable banking systems in the world.
The left demonizes corporations….
you need wonder why?
get serial
Canada is far from sitting pretty regarding balancing the books. We just are the best looking in an ugly contest.
Responsibility means cutting the meds when you don’t need them.
Quebec can easily prove it is not greedy.
Refuse transfer payments.
SYF – but I thought the discussion was whether corporations (and perhaps provinces) were people, and here you’re going all the way to suggesting that it’s time Quebec get a job, move out of the basement, and start acting mature?
Corporations are complex systems. They have cultures, and can be described in emotional and spiritual terms. In the eyes of the law, they are people.
As corporations are made by and driven by people, they are certainly in some sense alive.
That many corporations, through their bureaucracies and inattendence, deny the inherent driving force of employee emotional investment and therefore refuse a major ingredient of any successful team, does not negate their potential.
That it is popular to view a corporation, not as an invested team but an inherent conflict between employees and their masters, which necessarily lessens their potential, does not mean organizations are meant to be that way.
Any team driving for something has spirit and fight and emotion. They also self-organize. In at least some way, that team is alive. That most organizations do not view themselves that way is a crying shame.
We ask too little of our corporations, maybe because as employees we are asked to give too little.
Ah, the useful idiocy of the small dead, teabaggin’ mind. Dear Leader Steve can sleep soundly in his bed.
Yes, and most universities are corporations, as are most “NGO”s.
Are leftists stupider than they are ignorant, or vice versa?
Corporations are like governments, nobody ultimately responsible.
At least, public corporations.
When you lose a debate, start name-calling.
Right, phil?
Does anyone else share my hunch that the left, as we have come to know them and to love them, are on their way down the tube? Or at least all the old ideas they have clung to so tenaciously for so many decades are setting on the western horizon. I can’t think of a single idea that they have championed that has turned out too well. Well, maybe one or two over the past couple hundred years. Or maybe one.
point of article – 6′
qNDP’s height – 5′ at best
Unfortunately Louise, they’re taking the rest of us with them down the tubes.
Does anyone else share my hunch that the left, as we have come to know them and to love them
~Louise
I know them and hate them, as a corporation knows them and hates them.
Bravo Bruce.
Take a look at EBD’s second Reader’s Tip in tonight’s Tips at 11:12. If you go to his link you will see the mindset of two of the commenters in this thread.
Of course corporations are like people…sociopathic people.
A corporation exists to dissolve the responsibilities of the human beings who run it. For example, Company A decides to pollute a river. If anyone has a problem with that, they’ll have to sue Company A, not the 12 members of the board or the investors. Most individuals would be ashamed to be named in a pollution suit, a fact which might deter them from committing such a crime. Company A has no shame, however.
Bhopal, anyone?
A corporation exists to dissolve the responsibilities of the human beings who run it.
And here I thought they existed to make profits.
I’ll bet you didn’t notice that you could replace the word ‘corporation’ with ‘government’ in your rant and ‘board or investors’ with ‘parliament or voters’.
Anyhow, your logic is smack.
A legend in your own mind.
I can’t argue against the logic of the article but there is one thing that I think is missing.
If I own a business, which may or may not be a legal entity called a corporation, then to a very great extent, I identify with that business. I will operate that business in a matter consistent with my values. I contend that this is true of any privately held company (at least those where the owner also operates the business), though it is certainly more difficult as the business gets larger.
However, a publicly traded corporation is not owned by any one person. Moreover, the majority of owners do not have a direct or day-to-day involvement in the operation of the corporation and as such it is not likely that it will behave in any way consistent with the owner’s values (which will be diverse). In the end, the lowest common denominator, generating value, wins. This leads to a certain level of anonymity which tends to result in these corporations acting in ways wholly different than well adjusted, sane individuals.
Also, before you go linking corporations with small government, lets look at that carefully.
Large corporations are, by and large, great fans of big, intrusive government. GE, Google, Apple, GM all come to mind. Big business benefits from more regulation. Walmart supported Obamacare precisely because they have their own health insurance company and mandating all employers increases their competitor’s costs creating a government mandated advantage (cf. http://pajamasmedia.com/blog/why-wal-mart-embraced-obamacare/). When governments increase minimum wage, they can typically weather the added cost, wait for their smaller competitors to start to fail and then reap the benefits of less competition. On average government regulation benefits big business and harms small business. (One could argue, I guess, whether government or business created this situation but at this point does it matter?)
In this regard, I recommend this article from CATO — http://www.cato.org/research/articles/cpr28n4-1.html although there are other sources for this information (Tim Carney’s book “the Big Ripoff”, for example — http://www.dailymotion.com/video/xggdav_do-government-regulations-actually-help-big-business_news.Or) this article — http://julieborowski.wordpress.com/2011/07/25/big-corporations-and-big-government-go-hand-in-hand/
My logic is smack, eh oz? In fact, it’s profits without responsibilities, ie. sociopathic behaviour.
How about when Ford Motor Company calculated that it was cheaper to pay off the legal costs of the dead and injured when a rear ended Pinto turned into a carbeque than to to fix a defect? Or the Corvair? Or cigarettes? Etc, etc…
Iberia, it is irrelevant to the fact that you are wrong, that some corporations just happen to have done some evil things.
Individual people do wrong evil things too.
Corporations do not exist to dissolve the responsibilities of the people who run them any more than governments exist to dissolve the responsibilities of the people who run them.
You are a psychotic idiot.
Fcuk off oz.
Have a nice day, Iberia. (8^D
Corporations are not people, but they are comprised of people working together for a purpose. As such, many of the rights of individuals apply to the personnel of a corporation — notably freedom of speech and expression, which is what most of the leftist objectors don’t want to admit.
Corporations cannot do some things that individuals can do. Individuals can get married, and corporations can merge; however, one corporation can buy another, but one person cannot buy another. Their respective situations are not fully analogous.
There’s a Soylent Green joke in here somewhere.
Corporations are defined as people in the law in that a corporation has rights and standing. Rights to protect property (IP) etc., Standing, ability to be bound by a contract as well as the rights to be sued (or sue)
The system wouldnt work very well if it wasnt recognized as such. There would be no way to hold them accountable or have a contract (think warrantes, health and safety regulation etc if they didnt have standing)
That being said, the one kernal of truth in OZ’s statement is that corporations do exist to limit liability. Hence the name li,ited liability corporation. Without that all companies are partnerships and all shareholders would be responsible and culpable for the losses.
The LLC was an ingenious invention that enabled fanstastoic growth.
It is false to say there is no responsibility, the directors are responsible, the ausitors are responsible and indivdiuals within the corporation can still be held responsible for criminal neglgence. What you cannot sue is granny down the street just because she owns .001% of a company.
Now the left howled at romney because it is a difficult point to make because corporations are not people, and defintiely do not have all the rights as people but they have standing and are recognized as legal entities for the purposes of the law.
Mitt’s other poitn was, as I pointed out. Corproations are owned by people, including granny down the street. In fact by all of us through Canada Pension Plan investments.
This latter bit is the core of the argument that corporations should pay no tax, since all money is ultimately distributed to individuals, which at the end of the day is where all tax and cost comes from anyway. The question is which people are paying the cost, not whether people pay the cost.
Anyway, 2 minutes to explain, 2 seconds to jeer at. Usually a bad formula, Mitt shouldnt have said it, not because it is wrong but because it gets misinterpreted.
Kelly @ 8:36
I know it isn’t right to generalize and I am sure there are politicans who are capable of understanding business. PMSH is one I believe.
However if you feel that Canada is in the position it is because of its’ banking system then I suggest more reading. I have been involved in conservative politics for many years and find the level of awareness on how economies run very poor. Political expediency usually trumps economic imperatives.
Large corporations are, by and large, great fans of big, intrusive government.
No, Adam they’re products of big, intrusive government. The more government intrudes on business, the more business is compelled to act like, and with, government.
Family run business and the professional dentist, doctor, lawyer; you deal with everday are often incorporated. Incorporation is a tool to keep more of one’s earnings away from the self important hand of government.
Corporations aren’t people,they’re run by people,and owned by people,and in that sense Romney’s correct.
As for nasty deeds done by corporations,that’s a decision made by nasty people at the top of said corporation. The Left has the idea that corporations are inherently evil, an idea that’s the basis of almost every movie Hollywood’s made about corporations.
If a person relies on Hollywood for their information on anything,they’ll find they’ve bought into propaganda,not the facts.
Some of the worst anti-corporation left-wing socialists I’ve ever encountered are teachers,and they especially despise medical corporations,such as those that exist in the U.S.,the epitome of corporate evil,I’ve been told.
BUT, teachers in Ontario seem to have no problem with the fact that their pension fund is the majority shareholder one of the biggest sports corporations in Canada,the Toronto Maple Leafs.
I guess idealism stops when you’re making a good return on your investment from an evil corporation.
fiddle: Corporations are like governments, nobody ultimately responsible.
Oh, really?
Dennis Kozloswki, Tyco, serving 8-25 for fraud
Andrew Fastow, Enron, 10 years and $24 million fine
(Fastow’s wife got jail time as well)
Ken Lay, Enron, convicted on ten counts, dies of “heart attack” (suicide?) while awaiting sentencing
Jeffrey Skilling, Enron, serving 24 years
3 British bankers were also sentenced to 3 years each for their involvement in Enron
And let’s not forget Conrad Black.
That’s just off the top of my head. So I call “shenanigans” on your comment.
Adam:
How, exactly, are Apple and Google fans of “big, intrusive government”? Has any government, anywhere, told people that they have to buy iPods or iPads? The government of China has certainly been a great friend to Google. Closer to home, what about RIM? Governments all over the world are trying, with varying success, to either crack or shut down their messaging service.
I’m sure neither of you fine gentlemen will let these facts upset your biases.
Does anyone else share my hunch that the left, as we have come to know them and to love them
~Louise
I know them and hate them, as a corporation knows them and hates them.
~ Oz
I think of them as cute little children clinging to fairy tales. They just can’t believe there is no Santa, or, more correctly, continue to pretend there is a Santa so they can wake up and find lots of goodies in their stockings, supplied, of course, by mom and dad.
// How did it come to pass that this simply stated fact became a topic of debate? //
Because the the legal definition keeps changing
It’s interesting that the features of corporate personhood were not created so much by passing laws as by court cases, some rather peculiar.
// The 14th Amendment was adopted in 1868, and it gave the federal government ultimate power over the states in respect to the rights of newly freed slaves. The amendment sought to overturn state-level legislation that was being created to limit the liberties of freedmen after the Civil War. The federal government circumvented each one of these laws with a broad sweep: Through the 14th Amendment, Congress granted equal protection under the law to every person .That last word is important, since in the eyes of the law, a corporation is an artificial person.
While the 14th Amendment opened the door for corporate Constitutional rights, the issue wasn’t really addressed until 1868. A dispute over whether a county has the right to tax a corporation turned out to settle this much larger issue in a very strange way.
In the case of Santa Clara County v. Southern Pacific Railroad, the Supreme Court decided that only the state that charters a corporation can tax it. […]
But a note written by the court reporter at the heading of the decision went further than that. Although another, private note from the Chief Justice said that the court had purposely avoided the issue of Constitutional corporate protection, the reporter chose to make his own addition to the records. He noted that the court had decided that corporations are persons under the 14th Amendment, and as such are subject to the same protections under the law as anyone else.
What’s strange is that the justices hadn’t ruled that way at all. Even fishier, the court reporter was a former railroad president . Ultimately, since it was a headnote (a commentary prefix to the court record) written by the reporter, it didn’t constitute law. But it did set precedent. //
If the coroporation is a person, the question arises “What kind of person?”
Also, in the spirit of some above comments —
“If corporations have the same rights as people, we shouldn’t be buying & selling them — that’s slavery.”
“Corporations are an oppressed minority forced to move headquarters from state to state in search of friendlier tax codes–sometimes being forced to live just off our shores in tiny mailboxes.” [half the Fortune 500 US corporations have their headquarters in the same small building in a suburban mall in Delaware — it’s a ghetto]
I still havent seen any real evidence proving whether or not this is a good thing. it’s true that it’s easy to get away with any personal involvement in the actions of corporations. but that doesnt make the idea of a corporaton inherently bad. it just makes the idea of an unregulated corporation bad. when corporations have as much influence as they do today, a regulatory body needs to be able to assess the impact that a corporation has. just like the scientific community provided technology to create an enormous level of efficiency and productivity, they also need to be able to demonstrate the impacts of prolonged and intense use of these technologies. we as people need to educate ourselves in order to make the necessary changes in our lives. which will drive corporations to change. i’d really like to see how the legal rights of corporation have allowed them to avoid legal actions. but i dont have any off hand …
Corporations are fictional people with legal rights. The literal root translation of the French word “corporation” is suggestive of this fact, and indeed the word comes to the French via ancient Rome, where the practice of making a man out of straw and incorporating it originated. This is also the origin of the expression “strawman argument”.
The left demonizes corporations…..probably from reading the blatherings of the mentally crippled Noam Chomsky.
The left also bleats about the “greed” of corporations. But let’s take a look at that.
Unions attempt to extract the highest compensation for the lowest productivity.
Corporations, on the other hand, attempt to produce the most or best in order to compete in the market at the lowest cost.
Now who is greedy?
The same people who are against big corporations are also for big government. They are happy with that unless of course it is the “wrong” government that’s in power.
“Beggers” can’t be choosy.
Of course corporation are not people.
People have legs, brain, feeling.
Corporation might be treated as people for tax purpose (which is wrong, but can be debatable).
But it is a matter of fact corporation are not people.
…and Quebec is a leech, not people.
qndp misses the point. Incroyable!
Of course, corporations are not literal people. The concept is that, under the law, corporations are treated as people, and not just for tax purposes – that is your myopic view of the situation. In fact, corporations can do many things that people do – marry/merge, give birth/spin off, die/dissolve, break the law/break the law, etc., etc.
As a representative of the people who refer to English Canadians as “square heads”, you don’t have very much imagination, do you?
QNDP answers Kate’s question without even trying,good work mon frere.
Corpotations are depersonal;ized to make them easier to attack. Big oil,Big banks,and out west we have Big grain,which I found out yesterday is behind the movement to topple the wheat board. BTW,that was mentioned by one of the guests on CBC’s ‘power and politics’.
One more thing,Rosemary Barton does a better job than Evan Solomon,mainly because I don’t have to adjust the volume every time she speaks. Can’t CBC take a few dollars out of their billion and buy that guy a better microphone?
Quebeckercommie probably doesn’t even know about Soylent Green.
And Quebeckers as a group are not people. How stupid is quebecois NDPiste? I mean really?
Clearly he doesn’t even know what a corporation is. Typical.
The issue I take most with Quebec is that government hasn’t done a good enough job in integrating them into society.
When an economic system that has produced so much wealth for so many people cannot spend the resources to ‘educate’ those that benefit you have to question the smarts involved. Not only does corporate North America do a lousy job but the political party that supposedly understands the philosophy but embraces it cannot do any better! I don’t know about the Republicans but the CPC party in Canada is inept. The majority of elected members would have no idea how to run a small business let alone balance a set of books.
The free market capitlist society is as bankrupt as the left in the intellectual challenge of communicating with the populace.
Until the corporations start communicating with the voting public, and educating them, this will not change. The business community has without comment permitted the left to use public schools for socialist indoctrination.
Well Now, Quebecois NDPist:
I agree with you that corporations are not people in the blood & flesh sense. But corporations are in fact the representations of people, especially small businesses, which, across Canada, employ roughly 50% of the workers in Canada.
I was born and raised in Quebec. I know you, and those like you. Your pseudo-intellectual arrogance dictates that you and your ilk will happily destroy all meaningful commerce, put good people out of work, simply to prove your point that you and yours are intellectually superior and be-damned with the unwashed masses who happen to work for a living.
Oh….and throughout the process, you will bleat about Quebec’s “humiliation” at the hands of the rest of us. All of Quebec’s perceived problems lend truth to the notion that you and your fellow citizens continually are accepting handouts from the rest of Canada, and sneer at us as you do so.
At this point, I sincerely hope you separate…you’ll go bankrupt….but don’t even THINK of crawling back.
But I digress. Being the founder, owner and operator of a corporation,albeit a small company, I find it an essential means of doing business.
Being primarily in the securities business, we went through a coup[le of years of financial challenges.
With our income seriously reduced, my company did not have enough cash flow to pay my employees, a team of smart, dedicated people that I had painstakingly assembled and nurtured as though they were family.
Using my corporate vehicle, I was able to put my own resources into the company to pay their salaries. Because keeping them on staff was incredibly important to me…they were not only my employees, my support, but also my friends.
So Pal…crap on corporations all you wish…the truth is, they are putting food on your plate and money in your pocket.
Hollywood has so trashed Corporations with buisness in general. All people see is what they potray. Greedy people with no scruples out to control the world Populated by one dimendional charchters with no empathy or social concience.
JMO
It is an interesting government decree indeed.
Slavery is treating a person like property.
A corporation is treating property like a person.
NDP does not have a brain or feelings.
Frogs have legs.
Eh?
“The majority of elected members would have no idea how to run a small business let alone balance a set of books.”
ct, are you talking about American elected members? The elected members in Canada certainly do know how to balance books as evidenced by having one of the most stable banking systems in the world.
The left demonizes corporations….
you need wonder why?
get serial
Canada is far from sitting pretty regarding balancing the books. We just are the best looking in an ugly contest.
Responsibility means cutting the meds when you don’t need them.
Quebec can easily prove it is not greedy.
Refuse transfer payments.
SYF – but I thought the discussion was whether corporations (and perhaps provinces) were people, and here you’re going all the way to suggesting that it’s time Quebec get a job, move out of the basement, and start acting mature?
Corporations are complex systems. They have cultures, and can be described in emotional and spiritual terms. In the eyes of the law, they are people.
As corporations are made by and driven by people, they are certainly in some sense alive.
That many corporations, through their bureaucracies and inattendence, deny the inherent driving force of employee emotional investment and therefore refuse a major ingredient of any successful team, does not negate their potential.
That it is popular to view a corporation, not as an invested team but an inherent conflict between employees and their masters, which necessarily lessens their potential, does not mean organizations are meant to be that way.
Any team driving for something has spirit and fight and emotion. They also self-organize. In at least some way, that team is alive. That most organizations do not view themselves that way is a crying shame.
We ask too little of our corporations, maybe because as employees we are asked to give too little.
Ah, the useful idiocy of the small dead, teabaggin’ mind. Dear Leader Steve can sleep soundly in his bed.
Yes, and most universities are corporations, as are most “NGO”s.
Are leftists stupider than they are ignorant, or vice versa?
Corporations are like governments, nobody ultimately responsible.
At least, public corporations.
When you lose a debate, start name-calling.
Right, phil?
Does anyone else share my hunch that the left, as we have come to know them and to love them, are on their way down the tube? Or at least all the old ideas they have clung to so tenaciously for so many decades are setting on the western horizon. I can’t think of a single idea that they have championed that has turned out too well. Well, maybe one or two over the past couple hundred years. Or maybe one.
point of article – 6′
qNDP’s height – 5′ at best
Unfortunately Louise, they’re taking the rest of us with them down the tubes.
Does anyone else share my hunch that the left, as we have come to know them and to love them
~Louise
I know them and hate them, as a corporation knows them and hates them.
Bravo Bruce.
Take a look at EBD’s second Reader’s Tip in tonight’s Tips at 11:12. If you go to his link you will see the mindset of two of the commenters in this thread.
Of course corporations are like people…sociopathic people.
A corporation exists to dissolve the responsibilities of the human beings who run it. For example, Company A decides to pollute a river. If anyone has a problem with that, they’ll have to sue Company A, not the 12 members of the board or the investors. Most individuals would be ashamed to be named in a pollution suit, a fact which might deter them from committing such a crime. Company A has no shame, however.
Bhopal, anyone?
A corporation exists to dissolve the responsibilities of the human beings who run it.
And here I thought they existed to make profits.
I’ll bet you didn’t notice that you could replace the word ‘corporation’ with ‘government’ in your rant and ‘board or investors’ with ‘parliament or voters’.
Anyhow, your logic is smack.
A legend in your own mind.
I can’t argue against the logic of the article but there is one thing that I think is missing.
If I own a business, which may or may not be a legal entity called a corporation, then to a very great extent, I identify with that business. I will operate that business in a matter consistent with my values. I contend that this is true of any privately held company (at least those where the owner also operates the business), though it is certainly more difficult as the business gets larger.
However, a publicly traded corporation is not owned by any one person. Moreover, the majority of owners do not have a direct or day-to-day involvement in the operation of the corporation and as such it is not likely that it will behave in any way consistent with the owner’s values (which will be diverse). In the end, the lowest common denominator, generating value, wins. This leads to a certain level of anonymity which tends to result in these corporations acting in ways wholly different than well adjusted, sane individuals.
Also, before you go linking corporations with small government, lets look at that carefully.
Large corporations are, by and large, great fans of big, intrusive government. GE, Google, Apple, GM all come to mind. Big business benefits from more regulation. Walmart supported Obamacare precisely because they have their own health insurance company and mandating all employers increases their competitor’s costs creating a government mandated advantage (cf. http://pajamasmedia.com/blog/why-wal-mart-embraced-obamacare/). When governments increase minimum wage, they can typically weather the added cost, wait for their smaller competitors to start to fail and then reap the benefits of less competition. On average government regulation benefits big business and harms small business. (One could argue, I guess, whether government or business created this situation but at this point does it matter?)
In this regard, I recommend this article from CATO — http://www.cato.org/research/articles/cpr28n4-1.html although there are other sources for this information (Tim Carney’s book “the Big Ripoff”, for example — http://www.dailymotion.com/video/xggdav_do-government-regulations-actually-help-big-business_news.Or) this article — http://julieborowski.wordpress.com/2011/07/25/big-corporations-and-big-government-go-hand-in-hand/
My logic is smack, eh oz? In fact, it’s profits without responsibilities, ie. sociopathic behaviour.
How about when Ford Motor Company calculated that it was cheaper to pay off the legal costs of the dead and injured when a rear ended Pinto turned into a carbeque than to to fix a defect? Or the Corvair? Or cigarettes? Etc, etc…
Iberia, it is irrelevant to the fact that you are wrong, that some corporations just happen to have done some evil things.
Individual people do wrong evil things too.
Corporations do not exist to dissolve the responsibilities of the people who run them any more than governments exist to dissolve the responsibilities of the people who run them.
You are a psychotic idiot.
Fcuk off oz.
Have a nice day, Iberia. (8^D
Corporations are not people, but they are comprised of people working together for a purpose. As such, many of the rights of individuals apply to the personnel of a corporation — notably freedom of speech and expression, which is what most of the leftist objectors don’t want to admit.
Corporations cannot do some things that individuals can do. Individuals can get married, and corporations can merge; however, one corporation can buy another, but one person cannot buy another. Their respective situations are not fully analogous.
There’s a Soylent Green joke in here somewhere.
Corporations are defined as people in the law in that a corporation has rights and standing. Rights to protect property (IP) etc., Standing, ability to be bound by a contract as well as the rights to be sued (or sue)
The system wouldnt work very well if it wasnt recognized as such. There would be no way to hold them accountable or have a contract (think warrantes, health and safety regulation etc if they didnt have standing)
That being said, the one kernal of truth in OZ’s statement is that corporations do exist to limit liability. Hence the name li,ited liability corporation. Without that all companies are partnerships and all shareholders would be responsible and culpable for the losses.
The LLC was an ingenious invention that enabled fanstastoic growth.
It is false to say there is no responsibility, the directors are responsible, the ausitors are responsible and indivdiuals within the corporation can still be held responsible for criminal neglgence. What you cannot sue is granny down the street just because she owns .001% of a company.
Now the left howled at romney because it is a difficult point to make because corporations are not people, and defintiely do not have all the rights as people but they have standing and are recognized as legal entities for the purposes of the law.
Mitt’s other poitn was, as I pointed out. Corproations are owned by people, including granny down the street. In fact by all of us through Canada Pension Plan investments.
This latter bit is the core of the argument that corporations should pay no tax, since all money is ultimately distributed to individuals, which at the end of the day is where all tax and cost comes from anyway. The question is which people are paying the cost, not whether people pay the cost.
Anyway, 2 minutes to explain, 2 seconds to jeer at. Usually a bad formula, Mitt shouldnt have said it, not because it is wrong but because it gets misinterpreted.
Kelly @ 8:36
I know it isn’t right to generalize and I am sure there are politicans who are capable of understanding business. PMSH is one I believe.
However if you feel that Canada is in the position it is because of its’ banking system then I suggest more reading. I have been involved in conservative politics for many years and find the level of awareness on how economies run very poor. Political expediency usually trumps economic imperatives.
Large corporations are, by and large, great fans of big, intrusive government.
No, Adam they’re products of big, intrusive government. The more government intrudes on business, the more business is compelled to act like, and with, government.
Family run business and the professional dentist, doctor, lawyer; you deal with everday are often incorporated. Incorporation is a tool to keep more of one’s earnings away from the self important hand of government.
Corporations aren’t people,they’re run by people,and owned by people,and in that sense Romney’s correct.
As for nasty deeds done by corporations,that’s a decision made by nasty people at the top of said corporation. The Left has the idea that corporations are inherently evil, an idea that’s the basis of almost every movie Hollywood’s made about corporations.
If a person relies on Hollywood for their information on anything,they’ll find they’ve bought into propaganda,not the facts.
Some of the worst anti-corporation left-wing socialists I’ve ever encountered are teachers,and they especially despise medical corporations,such as those that exist in the U.S.,the epitome of corporate evil,I’ve been told.
BUT, teachers in Ontario seem to have no problem with the fact that their pension fund is the majority shareholder one of the biggest sports corporations in Canada,the Toronto Maple Leafs.
I guess idealism stops when you’re making a good return on your investment from an evil corporation.
fiddle:
Corporations are like governments, nobody ultimately responsible.
Oh, really?
Dennis Kozloswki, Tyco, serving 8-25 for fraud
Andrew Fastow, Enron, 10 years and $24 million fine
(Fastow’s wife got jail time as well)
Ken Lay, Enron, convicted on ten counts, dies of “heart attack” (suicide?) while awaiting sentencing
Jeffrey Skilling, Enron, serving 24 years
3 British bankers were also sentenced to 3 years each for their involvement in Enron
And let’s not forget Conrad Black.
That’s just off the top of my head. So I call “shenanigans” on your comment.
Adam:
How, exactly, are Apple and Google fans of “big, intrusive government”? Has any government, anywhere, told people that they have to buy iPods or iPads? The government of China has certainly been a great friend to Google. Closer to home, what about RIM? Governments all over the world are trying, with varying success, to either crack or shut down their messaging service.
I’m sure neither of you fine gentlemen will let these facts upset your biases.
Does anyone else share my hunch that the left, as we have come to know them and to love them
~Louise
I know them and hate them, as a corporation knows them and hates them.
~ Oz
I think of them as cute little children clinging to fairy tales. They just can’t believe there is no Santa, or, more correctly, continue to pretend there is a Santa so they can wake up and find lots of goodies in their stockings, supplied, of course, by mom and dad.
// How did it come to pass that this simply stated fact became a topic of debate? //
Because the the legal definition keeps changing
It’s interesting that the features of corporate personhood were not created so much by passing laws as by court cases, some rather peculiar.
// The 14th Amendment was adopted in 1868, and it gave the federal government ultimate power over the states in respect to the rights of newly freed slaves. The amendment sought to overturn state-level legislation that was being created to limit the liberties of freedmen after the Civil War. The federal government circumvented each one of these laws with a broad sweep: Through the 14th Amendment, Congress granted equal protection under the law to every person .That last word is important, since in the eyes of the law, a corporation is an artificial person.
While the 14th Amendment opened the door for corporate Constitutional rights, the issue wasn’t really addressed until 1868. A dispute over whether a county has the right to tax a corporation turned out to settle this much larger issue in a very strange way.
In the case of Santa Clara County v. Southern Pacific Railroad, the Supreme Court decided that only the state that charters a corporation can tax it. […]
But a note written by the court reporter at the heading of the decision went further than that. Although another, private note from the Chief Justice said that the court had purposely avoided the issue of Constitutional corporate protection, the reporter chose to make his own addition to the records. He noted that the court had decided that corporations are persons under the 14th Amendment, and as such are subject to the same protections under the law as anyone else.
What’s strange is that the justices hadn’t ruled that way at all. Even fishier, the court reporter was a former railroad president . Ultimately, since it was a headnote (a commentary prefix to the court record) written by the reporter, it didn’t constitute law. But it did set precedent. //
If the coroporation is a person, the question arises “What kind of person?”
Also, in the spirit of some above comments —
“If corporations have the same rights as people, we shouldn’t be buying & selling them — that’s slavery.”
“Corporations are an oppressed minority forced to move headquarters from state to state in search of friendlier tax codes–sometimes being forced to live just off our shores in tiny mailboxes.” [half the Fortune 500 US corporations have their headquarters in the same small building in a suburban mall in Delaware — it’s a ghetto]
I still havent seen any real evidence proving whether or not this is a good thing. it’s true that it’s easy to get away with any personal involvement in the actions of corporations. but that doesnt make the idea of a corporaton inherently bad. it just makes the idea of an unregulated corporation bad. when corporations have as much influence as they do today, a regulatory body needs to be able to assess the impact that a corporation has. just like the scientific community provided technology to create an enormous level of efficiency and productivity, they also need to be able to demonstrate the impacts of prolonged and intense use of these technologies. we as people need to educate ourselves in order to make the necessary changes in our lives. which will drive corporations to change. i’d really like to see how the legal rights of corporation have allowed them to avoid legal actions. but i dont have any off hand …
Corporations are fictional people with legal rights. The literal root translation of the French word “corporation” is suggestive of this fact, and indeed the word comes to the French via ancient Rome, where the practice of making a man out of straw and incorporating it originated. This is also the origin of the expression “strawman argument”.