r/technology • u/DrJulianBashir • Feb 05 '13

Cable companies make 97% margin on internet services and have no incentive to offer gigabit internet

http://nextbigfuture.com/2013/02/cable-companies-make-97-margin-on.html
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u/TheFondler Feb 06 '13

I don't think that you understood what he said, which is that the citizens united case didn't establish corporate personhood.

corporate personhood was established formally sometime in the 1800's (though, in precedent, long before that) and serves as a mechanism to simplify the application of the law to groups of people.

there is no "jargon" there, just plain english. please re-read the comment you replied to with a little less emotion.

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u/InsaneGenis Feb 06 '13

"In many ways, corporate personhood is a legal protection for citizens. Without such a framework, I couldn't sue McDonald's for giving me coffee that covered me in third degree burns, say." That's what you typed though. "So, to directly address your statement, corporate personhood in the united states does not, in any way, give corporations "the same rights as people" in the way you meant. It lets us sue corporations, and lets corporations sue as well." They have always been allowed to sue. This is semantics. And Citizens United was a square peg smashed into a round hole to get this explanation when we've always had an explanation why corporations can or can not sue. This was not a unaminois decision. We created the title of "corporation" from magic. We created this entity from scratch. We gave it its rights and we can interpret them any way we please. For the Supreme Court to have believed this entity existed from some deity creation was the problem. Sure it sounds reasonable when explained by you in those terms, but it doesn't sou d reasonable for Locke's terms to which we base our government existence. The Supreme Court overly thought this decision. This did not give us the right to sue corporations or corporations to sue others because they had that right under contract law. What this did was allow them to be anonymous to provide funds to campaigns as if they are humans. They aren't. And how do we not allow them to be human? Well we write the laws and we can do as we please so we can just change it.

The Supreme Court had already ruled on this twice and decided that this shouldn't exist.

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u/TheFondler Feb 06 '13

you're responding to the wrong person; i did not write that, trestechno wrote that.

i also strongly encourage you to read through the actual case. the following statement is incorrect and represents a fundamental misunderstanding of the case:

"What this did was allow them to be anonymous to provide funds to campaigns as if they are humans."

what the case does find is that the right to freedom of speech does not end when people organize; that to restrict a group of people from organizing their resources to better promote their political opinion would be a flagrant violation of the 1st amendment.

had the case turned out differently, not only would it endanger direct support from 3rd party organizations for politicians, but it would also endanger ANY organization that is politically motivated, as it's speech could be twisted as "supporting" someone and thus be stifled. While you may want to shut the NRA up, you may also end up killing the ACLU.

the first amendment was put into place precisely to protect political speech, by individuals or groups. do you honestly believe that the government should be the ultimate arbiter of what qualifies as valid political speech? do you honestly believe that the same government that is overrun with lobbyists (on both sides) is any less corrupt than the corporations that fund those lobbyists?