The idea that “corporations are people” goes back a long way in this country. In 1886 the Supreme Court ruled that a corporation’s money “was protected by the due process clause of the 14th Amendment.”
That was the amendment that abolished slavery. If you’re failing to see the connection that means you’re a reasonable person, but certain bad actors within the courts have time and time again ruled that corporations should have the same rights as people, with their philosophy being that because corporations are made up of individuals, that the collective corporation should be afforded the same rights as the individuals which comprise it. To deny a corporation the right to give unlimited campaign contributions to a certain candidate would be akin to holding black people as slaves, is the legal argument.
This is a dishonest and idiotic notion for a variety of reasons, particularly coming from a country which doesn’t allow prisoners or felons to vote and is hardly worth tearing down because on its face it makes so little sense in the first place. What if a member of your corporation is a felon and can’t vote? Does that mean everyone else in the corporation loses their voting rights? Does it work both ways? Why would it be necessary to give a group of people rights when everyone in that group already has rights? If a corporation is a person then why can’t you put a corporation into a maximum security prison when that person decides to knowingly dump nuclear waste into a slough or decides to open several thousand bank accounts in other people’s names without their consent or when that person decides to conspire to mislead the government on the fuel emissions of thousands of cars they have built or when that person gets drunk and crashes their car and spills millions of gallons of oil into an ocean or when that person lies to regulators about their earnings and thousands of people end up losing their mortgages or…
Clearly this is a copout designed specifically to limit the liability of a very specific type of group which very often happens to have a lot of money. One Direction is a group. Why don’t we give One Direction the same rights as a corporation in that case? Why don’t we allow One Direction to steal money from citizens, to occasionally engage in eco-terrorism, to engage in wire fraud, check fraud, mail fraud, insider trading, market fixing, money laundering, Ponzi scheming, and tax evasion and if they should get caught doing any of these things, none of the members of One Direction will go to jail and they will pay a small fine and continue making music as One Direction with no significant changes to their behavior.
Assume for a minute that corporations are living breathing people even though a ten year old would correctly think this stupid. They’re not missing anything. If they are, they’re incredibly privileged people.
How many people do you know who pay only 20 percent of their income in taxes? How many people do you know, such people as the always down to hang out Verizon, the hosts amazing pool parties American Airlines, the we hooked up at that party one time Hewlett Packard, the smokes too much pot but has cool opinions on movies General Motors, the cries at college basketball games Xerox, or the posts annoying political opinions on Facebook E*Trade, who all recently paid zero dollars in taxes despite making billions of dollars that year? You know any dudes like that?
You have any college buddies like Freddie Mac who defrauded other people out of billions and didn’t do any time? Any girlfriends you meet for brunch like Apple who laundered billions of dollars in an overseas tax shelter and shrugged their shoulders when the government found out about it?
That’s not to say that all corporations are bad. They’re just not people. People are by definition individuals who can be held accountable. So a group of businessmen should not be granted the same rights as an individual. If someone lies to you, you can confront them. If a corporation lies to you they just transfer your call between different departments, the calls being handled by individuals.
Mercury Insurance (traded as MCY) and Hyundai Motor Co (traded as KRX) both recently lied to me. I should clarify, representatives of the companies lied to me. A company can’t lie, because it can’t speak, because it’s not a person, you fucking pricks.
I noticed that my car insurance premium had gone up, yet I hadn’t been in any accidents or anything, so I called Mercury Insurance and asked them why. They responded that I had been driving more miles than I had predicted. I asked them, out of curiosity, how do you know how many miles I’ve been driving? I haven’t reported that to you. They informed me that they get this information from a third party, and that it had been reported to that third party by a company who had serviced my Hyundai. This was apparently part of a program called Real Drive, which I somehow checked a box and was enrolled in, and which authorizes Mercury to gather information from third parties I asked who this mysterious third party was, and they flat out refused to tell me. It’s a secret. If this was a person, he would be a shady dude and you would not want to associate with him. But it’s not a person, it’s a corporation, and this is standard practice.
I then called the only place which had serviced my Hyundai, which is Keyes Hyundai in Van Nuys, and asked them if they report a vehicle’s information to a third party. They said no, which turned out to be a lie. I then called Hyundai’s corporate headquarters and was informed by National Consumer Affairs Specialist Ivan Villa that it is not Hyundai’s corporate policy to report vehicle information to a third party.
Interesting. So, Mercury Insurance had got my milage from a third party, which could only be Keyes Hyundai. So I called Keyes Hyundai back, told them I knew they were lying, and pressed them some more and was told to email their General Manager, Brian Sobel. Here is the exchange:
ME: Hi. I was curious if your service department reports mileage of vehicles to a third party, can you confirm that this does or does not happen?
BRIAN SOBEL: Please call me on my cell phone to discuss. 818-419—-
ME: Will do, but it’s a pretty straightforward question isn’t it?
BRIAN SOBEL: Yes, straight forward question. Not as easy to explain over email.
ME: Ok I will call you. But does your dealership share mileage info with a third party?
BRIAN SOBEL: Is Carfax and Hyundai motor considered 3rd party? If so, the answer is yes.
Ok, so fucking YES! The answer is YES. Prior to this admission I had been lied by no fewer than five people at Hyundai who had denied this policy. If you knew a person who acted like that you’d want to punch them in the face.
I assume Carfax is sharing this information with Mercury Insurance. I have some questions as to the legality. I could call Carfax and then be transferred to IHS Markit (the company which bought the company which bought Carfax, traded on the NASDAQ as INFO), and go through the whole rigmarole of misinformation and actual and feigned incompetence and indignation but what’s the point?
If these corporations are people, then they’re the kinds of people who can get away with whatever they want and answer to nobody. They’re the mayor’s alcoholic son who everyone knows they covered up that hooker he killed, or the socialite who took too many Xanax and mowed down that homeless guy in her Bentley and was given a ride home by the cops.
Those people suck, and they’re the same people at the heads of these corporations.
It is not a coincidence.