Should Corporations Have More Leeway to Kill Than People Do?

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/25/opinion/should-corporations-have-more-leeway-to-kill-than-people-do.html

by wallflower • 14 years ago

6 3 14 years ago

ericHosick• 14 years ago

Corporations are a legal entity created and enforced by government: an abstract concept that exists only in the minds of people (same with Government: an abstract concept that exists in the minds of people). As such, to give a corporation more rights than individuals is really saying that the principals, and perhaps employees, of that corporation are given more rights than others (limited liability is an example of rights given to principals of a company that individuals do not necessarily have).

Really, the headline should read "Should (some) People Have More Leeway To Kill Than (other) People".

vannevar• 14 years ago

[T]o give a corporation more rights than individuals is really saying that the principals, and perhaps employees, of that corporation are given more rights...

This is a common misconception, and probably at the root of the logical fallacy that has resulted in the absurdity of corporations being treated legally as conscious beings. In reality, decision-making and action can be so diffused in a large organization that no individual could possibly be held morally responsible for the resulting collective action. If you've ever been caught in a human stampede, you will understand the feeling of being part of something terribly destructive, and yet helpless to stop it. A corporation (and any other large social organization) is a complex adaptive system, truly a separate entity in its own right. But not an entity with anything resembling human intelligence, and certainly not an entity that can be deterred by legal sanctions any more than a mob can be deterred, short of sanctions that actually dissolve the entity. The best we can do is to deter piecemeal identifiable individual actions, but this does not come close to solving the problem of regulating corporate behavior, and in fact can obscure the problem by perpetuating the myth that for every corporate action there is a responsible human decisionmaker.

hoodq19• 14 years ago

As jaded as I sound, it's a little naive to look at this like its about law or justice. Its much more about power and influence. And corporations have a disproportionate amount of it.

I think we're all going to be a little disappointed next week and we'll have three justices to thank: Chief Justice John G. Roberts, Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas. They have regularly allowed conservative platforms and politics to come before law to influence their decisions. (And that's not meant to be flame-bait for conservatives because when the liberals have the majority, they pull the same stunts.)

The really sad is that after the Bush v. Gore decision and Citizens United, the court lost its credibility and left the public entirely disillusioned with the legal process.

Should Corporations Have More Leeway to Kill Than People Do?

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