
"The Supreme Court has just predicted the winners of the next November election" - stakent
http://www.alternet.org/rights/145322/supreme_court%27s_%27radical_and_destructive%27_decision_hands_over_democracy_to_the_corporations
======
joezydeco
"In other words, as Stephen Colbert put it last year, 'Corporations are people
too.'"

That's true.

So let's take this to it's logical conclusion as expressed here:
[http://www.huffingtonpost.com/rob-warmowski/corporate-
murder...](http://www.huffingtonpost.com/rob-warmowski/corporate-murder-
charges_b_432633.html)

"Shouldn't it follow that when a corporation is bankrupted -- killed -- that
its management could be found guilty of the capital crime of murder?"

~~~
bhousel
bankrupted != killed

You can always get some more money and start a bankrupted corporation up
again.

~~~
joezydeco
Your shareholders might disagree.

------
pasbesoin
It's another form of privatizing privilege and socializing cost. A corporation
is granted privileges of personhood, but spared the liabilities. A corporation
can't be imprisoned, and it's very difficult and expensive to criminally
prosecute its executives (its brain?) and impossible to do the same to its
shareholders (its body). (It's also difficult to seek civil remedies; if you
are not of comparable size, they can often effectively spend you into the
ground or, financially, keep you from even starting.)

There's a reason we lock people away, other than to prevent them repeating a
crime: It's a form of punishment and control that -- for most -- exceeds
financial penalties. Corporations are, as an entity, immune from this. And the
bulk of the people who enable their activities are, as well.

In light of this, I see no problem with a reasoned limitation of their
privileges. They do not exist as living beings (I initially used the word
"corporeal", but I imagine that would confuse some or my intended meaning be
deliberately mis-interpreted in counter-argument); they are not granted the
same privileges.

(For those who don't make the connection: The "socialization" of cost means
the costs incurred when corporations engage in criminal behavior. This might
be be seen to include the prevalence of such behavior, as a result of a lack
of effective controls against it.)

