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Comment by ClarityJones | Hacker News Reader

Citizens United is a very sound ruling.

People have a right to support candidates > they can print a sign and stand on a street corner > printing signs costs money > people have a right to spend money supporting candidates.

People have a right to assemble > they can stand on a street corner with their friends > they can hold a big sign together > they can have lots of friends and form a group and print a really big sign.

We want to encourage private business > limiting liability for owners who do not participate in the business would increase access to capital > we offer corporate forms that shield investors from liability > identity of owners may be kept confidential.

People complain about the wrong thing. The problem isn't that people are allowed to support candidates with their money, buy airtime, etc.. It's that companies have secret owners...

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You said "People" a lot in your post. Corporations are not "people".

Only natural persons should be able to contribute to political candidates.

Corporations can lobby, as a corporate person, just like a union or other organization, but not contribute.

They can run ads themselves, but there needs to be a much greater wall between PACs and candidate campaigns, with the previous restrictions now null and void due to lack of enforcement.

I don't understand what you're getting at.

If it's okay for Corporations can run ads themselves, then your objection isn't to wealthy people supporting candidates or even them doing so secretly, but... only when the little guy pools donations and they happen to be pool donations via a corporation?

I'm against anything secret about spending on political campaigns.

Candidates should only accept funds from natural persons, that amount should be limited per person.

PACs and other candidate-adjacent activities should require 100% transparency on the source of funds and not be allowed to co-operate/co-ordinate with any candidate's campaigns. Companies can fund PACs, but they should be required to receive shareholder endorsement and not co-ordinate with their employees.

Laws impacting on the 1st amendment require strict limitation on how the government legislates and for an explicit need.

In this case, it is to ensure the integrity of the political process of selecting candidates and electing members of Congress.

Corporations are just groups of people. That's the logic.

The problem isn't "corporations can do the same thing as people."

The problem is anybody (solo or as a group) can legally run an unrestricted indirect campaign.

Elon can do the same, or more, as an individual than just about any corporation. That's just as problematic as Ford or Meta buying an election.

Dark money contributions are a closely related problem that we ought to fix at the same time.

> Citizens United is a very sound ruling.

Corporations only have the powers granted to them by the state. Contributing to politics need not be one of them.

Yes and no.

No, state's cannot e.g. discriminate on the basis of race by allowing corporations only composed of certain races. States also cannot infringe on the right to assemble or speak, by prohibiting people from supporting political candidates when they are organized as such a group.

But, generally, yes. States can require that the owners / members / corporate books / etc. of a company be disclosed publicly. If owners don't want their books disclosed, then they can forego the immunity that the corporate forms provide.

Money is not speech. Money is power.

Speech is speech, and what people forget about the First Amendment is that it prevents the government censoring their speech.

> People complain about the wrong thing. The problem isn't that people are allowed to support candidates with their money, buy airtime, etc.. It's that companies have secret owners...

This was a major crux of Colbert’s “our lady of perpetual exemption” bit. People absolutely know about the shadowy machinations CU enabled. The lack of transparency is a major critique.

I wouldn't say CU enabled it. CU didn't address the secrecy of corporate forms. That wasn't at issue. CU was only about ~"Can people use money with their friends to support a candidate."

To say that repealing CU is the solution is to allow the critique to go unresolved, while arguing ~"People shouldn't be free to support political candidates."

> Citizens United is a very sound ruling.

> People have a right to support candidates > they can print a sign and stand on a street corner > printing signs costs money > people have a right to spend money supporting candidates.

Individuals printing signage is not where most of the funding is going though, is it?

> People have a right to assemble > they can stand on a street corner with their friends > they can hold a big sign together > they can have lots of friends and form a group and print a really big sign.

This isn't how most of the money is being spent either, is it?

I don't know how you seem to either believe the point of the right to free assembly was to give richer corporations more sway, or be completely oblivious to the fact that that is what's actually getting people angry, not the fact that citizens want to stand with signs by the street corner. Assuming you don't have a conflict of interest leading you to that conclusion, I... don't know what to tell you.

I think your objection is fairly clear in terms of 1) you point out the difference between e.g. standing with a sign vs. more expensive options, and 2) you say "right to free assembly was to give richer corporations more sway."

Fundamentally it sounds like your complaint is that wealthy people are presumably more able to be effective with their efforts than folks who, e.g. can't afford as big of a bullhorn.

Citizens United wasn't about that. There wasn't a law saying no person shall spend more than $1k/yr supporting a candidate.

This is a completely inhuman and unamerican take. Money buys secrecy, it always has. Money is a tool, exercising speech is a right. For the Supreme Court to equate them is ahistorical, plutocratic, and terrible. You sound like you support giving corporations the right to vote as well,

Where do you draw the line between money and speech? IE, would you "simply" ban all political advertising completely - one can scream from a soapbox and that's it?

People yes.

Corporations no.

What is a corporation but people? Companies are groups of people. They're one or more owners, some managers, possibly some staff. If you take away all the people, then there's nothing there.

Legally, the corporation itself is similar to a person and has rights unto itself, as stupid as that sounds. Those rights are different from those the individuals who run the company have.

exactly. A corporation is as much a person as it has the genes that make a human.

This is ultimately about power.

Democracy is built on the idea that people are equal and have equal rights. This is only sustainable if the power differential between people isn't too large.

Corporations consist of people, yes, but the power to control where the efforts of these people are directed is concentrated on very few people, giving those people a large amount of power -- so large that without any checks on their influence on government, it undermines democracy.

It's the same argument for why super-wealthy individuals are so problematic. They're literally destroying the fabric of democracy through the power imbalance afforded by their wealth.

A corporation is a liability and pseudonym shield.

A corporation having contribution rights multiplies the otherwise imposed contribution limits on the underlying humans.

A corporation allows tax planning opportunities not afforded to the bottom 90-ish percent of the country (such as shifting income to alternate years to avoid progressive taxation, and utilizing expenses to lower that income in ways a W2 cannot)

Corporations are granted benefits that people do not get, and CU disturbs the balance of power.

Assets, mind share, etc. All the things that get sold off in bankruptcy proceedings.

A railroad company also has a huge amount of steel roads with cross country right of ways. You could fire everyone, and it'd still be extremely valuable. It might even be more valuable.

Even in asset-lite software land, "Atari" the name still has a lot of value, even though none of the people are there anymore. They own the right to control the things that the neurons in millions or billions of people's brains are tied to, that their habits tie them to.

Twitter, you can fire almost everyone, make the online square less pleasant for a lot of the people, the network effects truck on. People continue to use it even as they hate using it, because most everyone else is.

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