[zmgsabst]

There two situations:

1. You and your friends hire that lobbyist with your private funds.

2. The corporation as an entity hires the lobbyist.

They’re saying the second should be illegal and it’s unclear how your personal rights are impacted by that.

[notquitetrue]

The corporation is the legal embodiment of our joint interests. It is the only reasonable place to put the lobbying efforts. The silly thing you propose would in fact be workable for a small number of owners like this hypothetical, but how would a public corporation with diffuse ownership engage with the government under this proposal?

It’s really no different than a company defending itself in court. A legislative or regulatory proposal can be just as confiscatory or punitive, or have as many unexpected consequences, as a lawsuit. In both cases, the business needs to lawyer up and represent its interests.

[hilbert42]

"The corporation is the legal embodiment of our joint interests."

You've just admitted the reason why you shouldn't be allowed to lobby as such—as I said earlier, your joint effort represents an unfair power advantage over other individual citizens.

Proof is in the pudding, take a good look at our fucked democracies.

[notquitetrue]

So should all joint influence efforts be banned or just ones that have economically productive elements? Forming groups and trying to influence politicians is the only way to get things done. They can’t listen to 300 million atomized individuals. Are you suggesting the NAACP should be illegal?

The solution isn’t limits on people’s rights to debate and to advocate for their interests, it’s limits on the power of the thousands of elected rats running around DC and state capitals and city councils. We need less politics which means more centralization in the federal government and more power for the President.

[mrkeen]

"Groups" can have alignment among their members. Members can join/withdraw as they please.

Corporations are not a diffusion of their workers' voices, they're a diffusion of whoever owns 51% of stock - maybe even just one person.

[jcranmer]

When there was a Congressional hearing on Youtube's Content ID stuff, one of the people present was some millionaire country singer complaining loudly about how much money he was losing because of Youtube. And my thought was "what this needs is a poor Youtuber scraping by on near-minimum wage to talk about how Content ID fucks them over." Except those people can't individually afford to show up to Congress to complain at a hearing.

There is a fundamental asymmetry between rich and poor people that is a real problem and that we don't really have a comprehensive solution for. But banning poor people from pooling resources together to get someone to talk on their behalf is not a step up; it's moving in the opposite direction.

[ensignavenger]

Poor youtubers can support the EFF, they can call/write or even visit the local offices of their congress critters. Most congressional hearings are nothing more than dog and pony shows anyway.

[jcranmer]

But that would be a joint lobbying effort that is unfair per GP's contention!

[zmgsabst]

That’s exactly the point, the corporation wouldn’t:

Those small, diffuse shareholders aren’t typically represented by the board or executives, who are substantially controlled by a minority cabal. Do you think people with DIS in their retirement funds are happy Iger burned half the value on his politicking? — no, only his weirdo financier friends are. So why should we allow them to confiscate more assets from those small, diffuse shareholders to advocate their private politics and interests to the government?

If small, diffuse shareholders want to lobby Congress, they can do so individually as well, eg with a letter writing campaign or at public events.

A company has no interest in swaying the government, which represents the interests of the public. If the public (not the corporation) has concerns, they can privately advocate for those.

[lucianbr]

> The corporation is the legal embodiment of our joint interests.

Would you stand by this statement when the corporation is caught doing some illegal evil thing, like denying employers their rights, or damaging the environment? Even if you would, most shareholders of large corporations don't. They suddenly discover being a shareholder is a very "at arms length" thing.

Might work nicely if corporations were "the embodiment" at all times, or at no times. But selectively, it is quite bad.

[notquitetrue]

If you intentionally undercapitalize a business to avoid foreseeable liabilities, the courts can pierce the corporate veil. Otherwise, limited liability is thought to provide the necessary incentives for widespread equity ownership and investment and desirable economic risk taking. In any case, limited liability is not a constitutional right and could be modified or abolished. Free speech and freedom to petition the government are guaranteed rights though. The government can’t just circumvent the first amendment by making waiver of those rights so economically necessary that every business has to do it to be competitive. The courts don’t buy that logic nor should they.

[ysofunny]

it's different from a company defending itself in court if only because a court is a judiciry power affair whereas lobbying congress interacts not with the judiciary branch of government but with the legislative

[notquitetrue]

Part of my point is they’re not that different in practice. A law that bans your way of making money is worse than a lawsuit. And in a difficult tort lawsuit, the judges are making a lot of the same kinds of value determinations that a legislator does, such as whether the risk of harm from a practice is justified by the utility of it.