[ugh]

I think it’s a useful concept. Let me try to convince you of that: nearly everything we do requires corporations. A human alone cannot possibly get his opinions heard without help from other humans. In the end we really need corporations. We might to often have that wrong picture in our minds when thinking of freedom of speech, of the noble thinker, alone in his room, writing down his opinion and the government anxious to shut him down. That’s probably not how it ever worked.

You need a publisher, you need an ISP. The government might very well grant you freedom of speech. If they can limit the rights of corporations however they damn well please that freedom of speech is not worth very much.

Corporations are how humans do stuff. Corporations are important. Corporations have to be protected from the government.

[azzleandre]

You're right. I have to agree with you on that. And I may haven't been clear enough, about what my problem is with awarding personhood to corporations.

I think that you can't judge corporations the way you can judge humans. You have to apply a different "personhood" to a company, since corporations are not natural. They don't consist of what a human being consists, but of what human beings contributed to that consistence.

[ugh]

Yes, I think they are different. Personhood is a useful concept but – I guess I’ll have to agree with you – only to a point. I would argue that corporations should have rights, yet not necessarily always the same ones persons have. It’s quite obviously complicated :)

[elblanco]

If only we had a descriptive word for corporations to help us distinguish them from persons...