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Comment by anthonypasq | Hacker News Reader

companies have speech rights that you would be infringing on by doing this

But why is a company's right to speech more important than a real person's civil rights? A company is a mere legal fiction and it's rights should not be given equal weight to those of actual human beings, especially for a corporation as large as Amazon.

Edit: I know the issue becomes murkier for things like mom and pop shops and sole proprietorships, but I am willing to make distinctions based on scale.

Because a company is a group of real people making decisions together. There is no “legal fiction” deciding to not associate with certain others.

I still fail to see how that coordinated group of people motivated by profit takes precedence over the civil rights of an individual.

I fail to see how an individual loses their civil rights just because they joined a "coordinated group of people".

The individual who joined the "coordinated group of people" (the corporation) still have their individual civil rights, but the legal entity they constitute should not have it's rights valued on the same level as individual human beings.

If the corporation is being seen as a single entity then you should not consider it's employees' individual rights as the same thing. Or even combine them together to give more weight to the corporation's rights.

Freedom of association inherently involves groups of individual people mutually deciding to not associate with particular individuals.

> the issue becomes murkier for things like mom and pop shops and sole proprietorships

No it doesn't. The mom, the pop, and the sole proprietor are people; they have rights, which certain curtailments of their business might interfere with. The businesses themselves do not.

"Corporations are people too, my friend."

I'll believe it when Texas executes one.

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