In light of the recent SCOTUS ruling, I found myself compelled to think about the nature of the corporation, the decision to refuse to differentiate it from living people, where political speech is concerned, and the implications of that on our society and our nation as a whole.
This diary is just some thoughts right now --thoughts I want to share for greater consideration...
The natural world presents us with some observable realities, we accept, until such time as reason brings us understanding otherwise.
The genesis of the corporation is known to living human people.
Corporations are a construct, a product of human, living, people.
Human, living people depend on the machinery of the natural world to exist, grow, then die, having run a natural course of life.
The machinery of law, the courts, our government and currency all provide the foundation for the corporation to exist and grow, in much the same way as the natural laws of the world provide the foundation for living people to exist, grow and die.
Arguably, without living, human, people the corporation will exist, as other constructs would exist, as other products of our creative energy, such as law, books, movie, stories do.
Corporations need living, human people, to grow and act, like living, human people need the natural world to do the same.
People, without the natural world cannot act, corporations without people cannot act, and simply exist, like a rock or other simple, non-living matter does, impotent.
There are elements, not alive, but being necessary for living things to exist. Food, energy, forces are elemental kinds of things.
For corporations, beings are necessary as only beings invoke constructs, granting them power, life, mobility.
We living, human people, are the element of life for corporations, just as the natural world is an element of life for us. "we, us and our" refer to living human beings, not constructs, like corporations.
We are constrained by the machinery of the elements. Corporations are constrained in like kind, by our machinery, law, government, currency, need.
We the people then hold ultimate power over corporations, they are a product of us, subservient to us, as we are subservient to our creator, or the natural world.
Our genesis is not well understood to us as beings, and I make that statement to express the hierarchy of power, not to initiate a debate. It is enough to know we simply are, and without some greater authority, free to act as our natural inclinations and mutual respect for our peers demand.
Because we are both the genesis and necessary living elements to corporations, we then share a burden for managing them, and through them, power over one another, for the corporation in addition to being a construct, is also a proxy for our actions.
Corporations cannot act, but through our creative force of will and our living state of being. A corporation may exist without people to service it, but it may not act, and is rendered impotent.
This is the difference between a being and a simple living thing. Arguably, we can be considered constructs of some greater being. Again, the point is not to debate our genesis, as we may simply be an artifact of the natural world too, but to convey the idea that although corporations are living, and can be considered "people" within the body of our law, they are not "beings", in that they cannot act, but through our creative force and mobile selves.
We own corporations fully and completely then. They have no force of life that entitles them to status on par with other living beings, who we have determined have an intrinsic right to freedom.
Because a corporation has no intrinsic creative force of will and no body with which to act freely, a corporation serves it's owner and has no reason to exist, but for either the pleasure, enlightenment, empowerment, or enrichment of it's owners.
Corporations may own one another.
Corporations may consume one another.
Corporations may exist so long as their owners find them to be of value.
Corporations have no moral sense, or obligation, acting as a reflection of their owners values.
Corporations have been deemed people, with rights, but are not beings, as we are beings, and the animals we know are lesser beings. Again, this is because the corporation has no creative force of will, and no body with which it can act on that will, freely as all beings do naturally.
These core ideas are the nature of things where the natural world, living beings, and corporations as people are concerned.
A corporation is not like we are, and I've explained why and how that is true, without violating the law as it stands today.
My thoughts today wander to the implications of this SCOTUS ruling, and here is where I got, and I would be interested in hearing your thoughts as I'm just wanting to process this stuff and maybe start on getting it sorted where my personal politics are concerned. Perhaps you are doing the same.
That is the point of this diary, if there is one.
What is happening is our founding principles are being circumvented through the corporation.
If we factor out the corporation and consider our founding ideas, we are all equal peers, under the law. We have core rights, and responsibilities and that is the foundation of our civics here in the US.
Having a free state of public debate is not just a luxury, but some necessary thing, if we are to grow, build and improve our society, without doing ourselves, or the natural world that empowers us, undue harm.
There are always some of us, who are more self-serving than not, or who are broken in ways that deny having a moral conceience. We have law, government, a society so that we may regulate ourselves, to protect us from ourselves and those of us, who harbor intent to do harm.
The construct of law exists to remedy conflicts of property and freedom in a way all can live with, abide by, and be better for.
By granting corporations the status of people, we have given those nefarious people among us a proxy with which they can act for their own interests, and avoid meeting the terms of the social and moral contract we all adhere to for the greater good.
Because corporations are not beings, "they" don't act without a being somewhere realizing and enabling that action. "they" don't have a social contract to abide by, and that is why granting them the status of people is a mistake.
It is a mistake because corporations have no intrinsic right to freedom like we do, because they are not beings as we are, only constructs, and as such really are an expression of their owners desire for greater freedom, not some force that brings with it said greater freedoms.
Put simply, there are people in this world who don't hold other people in equal regard. They may do so for class, race, gender, location, faith and all sorts of reasons. They are self-serving people, in that they hold the needs of themselves, including gratification, power and wealth over the needs of the society as a whole, and the world.
A productive enterprise is one where wealth is created in such a way as to be a net value gain for the people. It is possible to exploit the law and people and the world in a harmful way and continue to make wealth, and this is self-serving and destructive.
Giving corporations this complete freedom of speech, "money as speech", without also constraining them as we the people are constrained by our needs and the natural world, does nothing more than grant any of us, who have sufficient wealth, to act above the law, doing harm without accountability, and stand above others, violating equality of law, and violating the social contract, checks and balances necessary for an equitable social justice.
That's what this ruling did. It says that really ugly people can invoke a corporation, do harm through it, profit from that, then place all accountability on the corporation, where our means for legal remedies are largely ineffective.
This is a mistake.