I don’t think there’s any relevant distinction between Microsoft and the ACLU — both are large, organized, have specific interests, and are capable of drowning out individuals. Of course, the ACLU supposedly exists to protect the rights of these individuals and so their interests might be better aligned, but I don’t think this matters. Corporations, unions and nonprofits can all articulate their messages to anyone who wants to hear them already, so I don’t see the point in allowing them to get any louder. I go to the bar for music, I don’t want it coming to me, especially uninvited.

but you are doing the same thing that voters can do (by ignoring the messages)

I agree — I can leave right now, and all is fine. But I’m saying that I worry this will be changed by the law in question. In a finite world, I can only run so far to get quiet space. I feel that I (and others) should have the right to stake out my ground and decide what messages enter, when I’m in my own private space, and that doing so might as well be easy. Right now, we’re using a technology (legislation) to keep everyone speaking the same volume. If we remove that, I have to find a new technology (right now, the internet — soon, very intense spam filters).

There are two ways to keep a room at a comfortable temperature. I can keep the heater on low, and the AC off, or I can turn both on full blast. Both have the same effect, but one is expensive. I believe (and this is subjective) that legislation was actually working to keep all the voices at reasonable levels. Eliminating it will just invite an expensive filtering tech arms race. Why bother inviting that when there’s no real benefit associated with it?

My point is that people don’t actually like competition. This includes people who own corporations and, yes, people who run html-based websites. Given the chance, they will quash would-be competitors before they become a threat. They will back policy that raises the barrier to entry for new competition and policy that enables them to generate higher returns- even to the detriment of the general population. Personally, I don’t think society is best served when the loudest voices belong to groups with such narrow and explicitly self-serving interests. A person who runs a successful enterprise now shouldn’t have more influence than the person who might like to start a successful enterprise in five years, at least to the extent that we can maintain a reasonable balance.

I’m not saying that there’s a nice neat line to determine which groups should or shouldn’t be able to spend this or that amount of money. I’m not saying existing or recently overturned laws are perfect. But at the very least, I’d say that corporations shouldn’t be able to write our fucking legislation.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corporate_personhood_debate

Same go for unions; yes employees can coordinate their actions and act as a group but without the government protects afforded to unions specifically they would still be as vulnerable to employer “retaliation” as individual employees acting alone. The fact that we have such laws supports this.

The whole point of having these “entities” is to garner special treatment for the group of individuals different than that afforded to lone individuals – and such preferential treatment is almost always legal in nature. But, such protections should be additive – adding extra protections that would not normally be present; not (subtractive?) – removing existing protections the individuals already have.

Might that have something to do with the much longer history of governments than corporations?

@ bill at the time of our founders, there was no such thing as a corporation. Surprised are you. Framers didn’t know about something, the corporation, whose speech rights they apparently granted.

Main articles: History of corporations and List of oldest companies

[Very long comment cut as we have a 500 word limit here. Just give a link instead of long quotes. RH]

Weasel, the first part of the comment was an obvious parody of the original post. I was pointing out the obvious similarity to previous claims about who deserves personhood.

Yeah, I got that, I simply found it tasteless and a hair shy of proverbial usenet invocation of Hitler.

I think an important point that no one seems to be discussing, is the fact that even if we deny corporations or (an organization for that matter) the right to free speech, or any other right, the members of that organization as individuals do still posess those rights, and can speak on the organizations behalf if they feel so inclined, so it’s not as if said entity deprived of a voice or representation.