Corporate Personhood and the power of bad anologies.

[Fovea]

The ruling that gives corporations the power to contract is a deeply flawed one.

To consider a corporation a sort of person for the purpose of law is such an inexact metaphoric fit that it needs to be addressed.

Rather than consider a corporation a person who cannot die, be imprisoned, or swear on a deity who created them, corporations are more like countries without sovereignty. Their actions are like the action of a state, rather than a person, in that they are collective actions. Their crimes are more like war crimes in nature than felonies, in that they are, well, corporate...

Therefor, we should consider corporate charters as being treaties, and that corporations operate on the sufferance of the *people* upon whose land they sit.

This places corporations on a more constrained level, whose existance carries no implied protections under the constitution of the united states.

Much of the worst damage corporations do is indemnified by their state as a fake person. Remove that, and redefine the nature of the American economy for the better.

[keep_it_real]

1. To remove corporate "personhood" is the beginning of corporate reform

If I recall correctly all corporate charters say something to the effect that the corporation must be for the welfare of the community. So if a corp put profit over the general welfare the the corp charter can be rescinded.

[RaleighNCDUer]

2. The American revolution was, in large part, a rebellion against

corporate power - corporations like the British East India Company were creating laws in Parliment that resulted in such things as the tea tax and stamp tax and restricting colonial trade. It is significant that the first major revolutionary act, the Boston Tea Party, was an action against the British East India Company.

[fedsron2us]

3. Utopia Limited

Gilbert and Sullivan were satirizing this nonsense over a century ago

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Utopia,_Limited

[bain_sidhe]

4. All the rights of persons, with none of the responsibilities

Or even any of the penalties for criminal behavior. Can't put a "corporation" in jail. Best you can do is fine them... and even then, the people who actually *did* it aren't liable for the money.

It was a recipe for disaster from the get-go.