Political Persuasion- how did you get there?

[Alex]

Except the profit motive pretty much drives all people as well and it, more than anything else, is what is probably the inevitable death of individual democracies.

But the biggest legal change I've always advocated is that while for certain legal reasons it is necessary to treat a corporation as a person there are obvious places where this analogy breaks down and we need to come up with better rules. Unlike people, corporations are potentially immortal and this causes difficulties in Intellectual Property law and estate management, for example.

In the political realm they also create a situation of representation without population. I'm against campaign finance reform because I do believe that how I spend my money is a speech issue. If I have $1 billion and I want to spend it promoting the election of Joe Blow to the senate then I think that is my right. I do not think freedom of speech should extend to non-human entities. I have no problem with completely removing corporations from the political realm and requiring that any and all financial or other support must be traced back to a real human. If Bob Iger wants to give $1 million to Nancy Pelosi and encourage her to extend copyright to 1,000 years from creation, that's fine with me. If the Walt Disney Company wants to give $1 to Nancy Pelosi for the same, I have problems. Of course, this applies to unions and many many other indirect lobbying groups as well.

[innerSpaceman]

Ah, but that's where the whole issue of the collective then comes into question ... which is why and how our system of government purportedly exists in the first place. Unless it's to be every man for himself, humans endeavor to create various collectives for their mutual benefit. Government itself for defense, common infrastructure, more recently for so-called "entitlement" programs of heath and welfare and retirement security. Many other entities, private and public, are set up to achieve for mankind what man alone could not.

Why should political speech be an area prohibited to this kind of beneficial collective endeavor? Otherwise, I am in agreement with most of what Alex wrote. Perhaps if campaign contributions could be traced back to a set of humans ... So that Mr. Iger's wealth speech can be matched by the Concerned Citizens of Hollywood.

I have no particular problems with unions needing written authorization from their members to back politicians. Nor would I have a problem with written authorization from shareholders for corporations to do the same.

The devil would be in the details. I agree that humans should retain all the rights, and entities none ... as long as humans remain free to organize in order to pool the benefits of those human rights.

[Alex]

I have no problem with political collectives such as Political Action Committees where individual humans come together to explicitly combine for political speech. But in my view, that should all still resolve to individual human beings.

If 1,000 Bank of America employees (or 1,000 shareholders) want to get together to lobby for issues seen as beneifical of Bank of America then I'm fine with that but Bank of America should not be able to directly participate. Same for a union. If 1,000 members of the union want to get together then fine. But the union itself should not be able to directly participate.

[alphabassettgrrl]

I voted out of my "norm" this last election. I actually voted for a mainstream candidate. Usually I vote third-party, in part for being disgusted with the main ones. Neither of them represent me.