1907: [US] Congress bans direct contributions to candidates from corporations. 1947: Congress expands restrictions by barring corporations and unions from using funds from their general treasuries to support candidates, which would include advertising to help a candidate, for example.
Jurisprudence should be lean and clear.Cause and Effect should constrain law.
The word "corporation" derives from corpus, the Latin word for body, or a "body of people". Entities which carried on business and were the subjects of legal rights were found in ancient Rome, and the Maurya Empire in ancient India.[6] In medieval Europe, churches became incorporated, as did local governments, such as the Pope and the City of London Corporation. The point was that the incorporation would survive longer than the lives of any particular member, existing in perpetuity. The alleged oldest commercial corporation in the world, the Stora Kopparberg mining community in Falun, Sweden, obtained a charter from King Magnus Eriksson in 1347. Many European nations chartered corporations to lead colonial ventures, such as the Dutch East India Company or the Hudson's Bay Company, and these corporations came to play a large part in the history of corporate colonialism.
Clearly this practice is thousands of years old. The corporation as legal entity predates the person.
The question becomes on what authority can the state affect person-hood. The answer is very little if any at all. Therefore Using criminal law to constrain their behavior is problematic As abstractions corporations have no Innate or Intrinsic capacity for behavior.
Only the behavior of Rational Mechanisms and Leverscan be constrained.
Corporations are constrained by corporate law. If you Want to limit corporate power then use corporate law to do so.
Nicely put. Cuts right to the core of what's wrong with corporate political action of any kind.
I don't see what the significance of this court case is. The horses have long ago left the barn. There are already millions and millions of corporate dollars flowing through our political system. Just look at the contributions of the insurance and pharmaceutical industries to our national political leaders. Do you think these dollars have no effect on the outcome of the health care debate? Whatever the decision here, the corporate dollars will continue to flow and will continue to have an outsized impact on political decisions. I do not think that the sine qua non of our political system should be the well being of corporations.
Why libertarians refuse to see the threat posed by the huge and unbridled power of large corporations to our freedoms escapes me.
Your argument is oddly divorced from contact with American history (or for that matter, the history of other democratic polities). Money talks. Concentrations of wealth can gain control of and corrupt the democratic process. The ban on direct corporate support of candidates is an attempt to prevent our democracy from devolving into a plutocracy. That's been our politity's natural weakness from the beginning. The sharp concentration of wealth we saw from the 1890s to the 1920s and again since the early 1980s owed to the seizure of the political process by monied interests more than it did to (ostensibly nonpolitical) economic of technological factors. The cheap conceit of libertarian arguments of this sort is that governments (democratic governments!) are the main constraint on freedom, the main concentration of power. The best reply remains this classic post: http://examinedlife.typepad...
The most effective and biggest voices have already taken control of government and persuaded them to change laws in deleterious ways: the FIRE industry (Financial, insurance, real estate)
Is there any wonder who gains the most from easy money policies and asset bubbles and how those parties have engaged in regulatory capture?
Reform campaign financing and curb lobbyism; that is the solution.
“Pull” is not merely nepotism, it is influence over the government. The government has been influenced to privilege some kinds of corporations (media ones) over others.
Fine, but that's still not the definition of "pull" I was working with.
Moreover, adding the restrictions we place on media corporations deeply complicates your view. Many of the same people who favor campaign contribution restrictions also favor restrictions on broadcast ownership.
The question is whether YOU can more confidently say you are not brainwashed and have accurate beliefs than your counterpart, who would likely claim that his/her beliefs are perfectly sensible while yours are deranged.
Maybe that's the question to you, but to me this scenario just demonstrates why thought experiments asking me to consult with selves in alternate worlds is just an inherently problematic and suspect idea.
"Pull" is not merely nepotism, it is influence over the government. The government has been influenced to privilege some kinds of corporations (media ones) over others.
This seems like asking whether the opinion of my alternative self after having undergone brainwashing should be trusted on the topic of brainwashing.The question is whether YOU can more confidently say you are not brainwashed and have accurate beliefs than your counterpart, who would likely claim that his/her beliefs are perfectly sensible while yours are deranged.
I think it should be mentioned that while there is a lot of money in the political environment, in the grand scheme of corporate America there is very little in it. The Obama campaign raised something like $0.75 billion, which isn't a lot compared to what some corporations take in as profit each year.
I wish I knew why there wasn't more money in politics. It seems like there should be?
Self-interested (e.g., corporate) special interestsDue to the incentives facing private businesses, corporations will lobby for policies which serve their own self interests above all else (though those self interests may including signaling altruism, which may require actual altruism). We can expect these interests to be well-informed because otherwise they would not expend resources influencing politics.
These interest groups can create harm through programs like sugar tariffs or corn subsidies, or help matters by supporting free trade and the like. To me, a multitude of self-interested and informed groups seem better able to provide for the public good of good policy than an uninformed public, but they'll certainly do some harm too.
Signaling (i.e., non-corporate) interest groupsThese are largely groups of people trying to signal their intelligence and altruism via politics. They are largely uninformed because they have no significant incentive to make accurate political and economic predictions.
Media firms:These are incentivized to give their customers what they want. Since customers are largely interested in politics to signal their own intelligence, allegiance or altruism, we should expect media firms to help them do these things. They have no reason to be more informed than their customers demand (which is little).
Because of the low number of opinions large media firms can express, I would expect their influence to reduce the variety of political opinions. This can get rid of silly ideas but consolidate popular yet bad ones, such as the Iraq war.
The meanings of "pull" here aren't related. By pull, I mean that I consume a piece of media because I find it attractive--trustworthy or entertaining. And there are problems and dangers with that, but it's not related to the "pull" of quid-pro-quo nepotism.
This seems like asking whether the opinion of my alternative self after having undergone brainwashing should be trusted on the topic of brainwashing. The whole danger of autocracy and plutocracy is that ideas and arguments can be overruled by the force of coercion or bribery. Assuming my alternative autocratic/plutocratic selves bought into their respective systems, they're simply going to be beyond any argument. And by the logic of their worlds, they shouldn't even be trying to convince me, they should be trying to bribe or coerce me.
The currently banned sources are only banned very, very weakly--there's still a great deal of money in the political environment, and the currently permitted sources are actually still on friendly terms with the banned sources. I can't guarantee that my alternate self wouldn't trust people with money more than I do here, but I can pretty much guarantee that it would only be for bad reasons.
Why do we recognize corporations as entities in our legal code? Is it so that they can engage in politics? Could we ever elect Microsoft as president?
Why SHOULD we allow corporations to engage in political speech?
If Bill Gates has something to say, let him say it. Let him speak for himself. As a single citizen, not as someone who represents the employees, shareholders, and indirectly even the customers of Microsoft.
What is the history of corporations engaging in politics? Is it a good history? What positive and negative examples can we find looking back over the history of the corporation?
Can we say that media outlets are a special type of business without introducing a fatal inconsistency?
Isn't something like the New York Times really more in the entertainment business than in the "politics" business?
This does not change the fact we sing rightly and freely in this world but coerced and wrong in the other world.It should make you more skeptical about our aristocracy of pull. Do you think you could convince the version of you from an autocracy? Or would he (or she) be as horrified by our world and the conventional wisdom there as we might be of theirs?
Jurisprudence should be lean and clear.Cause and Effect should constrain law.
The word "corporation" derives from corpus, the Latin word for body, or a "body of people". Entities which carried on business and were the subjects of legal rights were found in ancient Rome, and the Maurya Empire in ancient India.[6] In medieval Europe, churches became incorporated, as did local governments, such as the Pope and the City of London Corporation. The point was that the incorporation would survive longer than the lives of any particular member, existing in perpetuity. The alleged oldest commercial corporation in the world, the Stora Kopparberg mining community in Falun, Sweden, obtained a charter from King Magnus Eriksson in 1347. Many European nations chartered corporations to lead colonial ventures, such as the Dutch East India Company or the Hudson's Bay Company, and these corporations came to play a large part in the history of corporate colonialism.
Clearly this practice is thousands of years old. The corporation as legal entity predates the person.
The question becomes on what authority can the state affect person-hood. The answer is very little if any at all. Therefore Using criminal law to constrain their behavior is problematic As abstractions corporations have no Innate or Intrinsic capacity for behavior.
Only the behavior of Rational Mechanisms and Leverscan be constrained.
Corporations are constrained by corporate law. If you Want to limit corporate power then use corporate law to do so.
One is legal; the other isn't.
The bribe can be spent more easily on the personal consumption of the recipient.
What's the difference between a campaign contribution and a bribe?
Could we ever elect Microsoft as President?
Nicely put. Cuts right to the core of what's wrong with corporate political action of any kind.
I don't see what the significance of this court case is. The horses have long ago left the barn. There are already millions and millions of corporate dollars flowing through our political system. Just look at the contributions of the insurance and pharmaceutical industries to our national political leaders. Do you think these dollars have no effect on the outcome of the health care debate? Whatever the decision here, the corporate dollars will continue to flow and will continue to have an outsized impact on political decisions. I do not think that the sine qua non of our political system should be the well being of corporations.
Why libertarians refuse to see the threat posed by the huge and unbridled power of large corporations to our freedoms escapes me.
Your argument is oddly divorced from contact with American history (or for that matter, the history of other democratic polities). Money talks. Concentrations of wealth can gain control of and corrupt the democratic process. The ban on direct corporate support of candidates is an attempt to prevent our democracy from devolving into a plutocracy. That's been our politity's natural weakness from the beginning. The sharp concentration of wealth we saw from the 1890s to the 1920s and again since the early 1980s owed to the seizure of the political process by monied interests more than it did to (ostensibly nonpolitical) economic of technological factors. The cheap conceit of libertarian arguments of this sort is that governments (democratic governments!) are the main constraint on freedom, the main concentration of power. The best reply remains this classic post: http://examinedlife.typepad...
The most effective and biggest voices have already taken control of government and persuaded them to change laws in deleterious ways: the FIRE industry (Financial, insurance, real estate)
Is there any wonder who gains the most from easy money policies and asset bubbles and how those parties have engaged in regulatory capture?
Reform campaign financing and curb lobbyism; that is the solution.
“Pull” is not merely nepotism, it is influence over the government. The government has been influenced to privilege some kinds of corporations (media ones) over others.
Fine, but that's still not the definition of "pull" I was working with.
Moreover, adding the restrictions we place on media corporations deeply complicates your view. Many of the same people who favor campaign contribution restrictions also favor restrictions on broadcast ownership.
The question is whether YOU can more confidently say you are not brainwashed and have accurate beliefs than your counterpart, who would likely claim that his/her beliefs are perfectly sensible while yours are deranged.
Maybe that's the question to you, but to me this scenario just demonstrates why thought experiments asking me to consult with selves in alternate worlds is just an inherently problematic and suspect idea.
"Pull" is not merely nepotism, it is influence over the government. The government has been influenced to privilege some kinds of corporations (media ones) over others.
This seems like asking whether the opinion of my alternative self after having undergone brainwashing should be trusted on the topic of brainwashing.The question is whether YOU can more confidently say you are not brainwashed and have accurate beliefs than your counterpart, who would likely claim that his/her beliefs are perfectly sensible while yours are deranged.
I think it should be mentioned that while there is a lot of money in the political environment, in the grand scheme of corporate America there is very little in it. The Obama campaign raised something like $0.75 billion, which isn't a lot compared to what some corporations take in as profit each year.
I wish I knew why there wasn't more money in politics. It seems like there should be?
I see the breakdown as:
Self-interested (e.g., corporate) special interestsDue to the incentives facing private businesses, corporations will lobby for policies which serve their own self interests above all else (though those self interests may including signaling altruism, which may require actual altruism). We can expect these interests to be well-informed because otherwise they would not expend resources influencing politics.
These interest groups can create harm through programs like sugar tariffs or corn subsidies, or help matters by supporting free trade and the like. To me, a multitude of self-interested and informed groups seem better able to provide for the public good of good policy than an uninformed public, but they'll certainly do some harm too.
Signaling (i.e., non-corporate) interest groupsThese are largely groups of people trying to signal their intelligence and altruism via politics. They are largely uninformed because they have no significant incentive to make accurate political and economic predictions.
Media firms:These are incentivized to give their customers what they want. Since customers are largely interested in politics to signal their own intelligence, allegiance or altruism, we should expect media firms to help them do these things. They have no reason to be more informed than their customers demand (which is little).
Because of the low number of opinions large media firms can express, I would expect their influence to reduce the variety of political opinions. This can get rid of silly ideas but consolidate popular yet bad ones, such as the Iraq war.
The meanings of "pull" here aren't related. By pull, I mean that I consume a piece of media because I find it attractive--trustworthy or entertaining. And there are problems and dangers with that, but it's not related to the "pull" of quid-pro-quo nepotism.
This seems like asking whether the opinion of my alternative self after having undergone brainwashing should be trusted on the topic of brainwashing. The whole danger of autocracy and plutocracy is that ideas and arguments can be overruled by the force of coercion or bribery. Assuming my alternative autocratic/plutocratic selves bought into their respective systems, they're simply going to be beyond any argument. And by the logic of their worlds, they shouldn't even be trying to convince me, they should be trying to bribe or coerce me.
The currently banned sources are only banned very, very weakly--there's still a great deal of money in the political environment, and the currently permitted sources are actually still on friendly terms with the banned sources. I can't guarantee that my alternate self wouldn't trust people with money more than I do here, but I can pretty much guarantee that it would only be for bad reasons.
Why do we recognize corporations as entities in our legal code? Is it so that they can engage in politics? Could we ever elect Microsoft as president?
Why SHOULD we allow corporations to engage in political speech?
If Bill Gates has something to say, let him say it. Let him speak for himself. As a single citizen, not as someone who represents the employees, shareholders, and indirectly even the customers of Microsoft.
What is the history of corporations engaging in politics? Is it a good history? What positive and negative examples can we find looking back over the history of the corporation?
Can we say that media outlets are a special type of business without introducing a fatal inconsistency?
Isn't something like the New York Times really more in the entertainment business than in the "politics" business?
This does not change the fact we sing rightly and freely in this world but coerced and wrong in the other world.It should make you more skeptical about our aristocracy of pull. Do you think you could convince the version of you from an autocracy? Or would he (or she) be as horrified by our world and the conventional wisdom there as we might be of theirs?
How do you know the currently banned sources would not be just as trusted as the now allowed sources?