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Monday
February 1, 2010

Why the First Amendment? by Tibor R. Machan

All the fuss about the various US Supreme and other court rulings pertaining to campaign contributions would, I believe, subside once the matter were put into the right framework, namely, the exercise of the right to private property. It is not about free speech but about freedom to use what belongs to one as he or she--or they-- see fit. (Read more...)
Discuss this Article (60 messages)

Thursday, February 4, 2010 - 11:35am

Curtis,

It is even scarier than that. What if it became possible for anyone, corporate, partnership, individual, American citizen, illegal immigrant, or foreign citizen to contribute money for the EXPLICIT purpose of transferring the money that belongs to Americans into the pockets of foreign dictators?

Oh, wait! We already do that... it is foreign aid, and politicians of the left and the right, Republicans and Democrats are ardent supporters of various forms of global redistribution.

Fiddling about with the contribution laws will not stop that. If Congress and the Executive have powers to give away our money, it will happen. It is just a part of the bigger picture: If they assume legal right to spend money on things not required to support individual rights, they will do it. Take away that power, and those lobbyists will have to look for some other line of work, and those contributors will find better things to spend that money on.

Thursday, February 4, 2010 - 12:32pm

I'll contains my responses to questions asked of me, save one quick additional response to Ted.

John,

You don't even think they [corporations] ought to exist, correct?

Incorrect. Not that it matters here, but I'm fine with the existence of corporations. I'm not sure Objectivism should be, which is why others and I started threads to discuss it. My thread's topic differs from Phil's. Have you visited my thread on this topic?

Did I not address this? I'll quote what I said earlier, I don't understand why you keep repeating your arguments, this discussion is becoming circular.

"...the fact that our government does not have as Rand called it a "clear separation of state and economics" is why there is so much corruption. Corruption would not even be an issue if the law forbids government from interfering in the market. If an elected official forcibly took money from some to give to another, whether motivated by bribes or corrupt philosophical premises, it should be illegal just the same."

No, you did not address it. You seem to be saying that corruption is only a problem for mixed economies. I responded that corruption can still occur under a capitalist system. My point is that, even under capitalism, you still need to figure out how a government may protect against corruption. It is not enough simply to separate state from economy.

Ted,

Answering your analogy bit, ships are like corporations in that they are run by people but are not, themselves, people. And that's as far as that analogy needs to go. (I picked ships instead of other stuff like cuisinarts because I've heard that ships can have standing to sue and be sued.) If you want an analogy about being invented and designed by law, then to that end, corporations are like a tax structure. We tend to have lots of choice about how we use a tax structure (by this food, pay this tax; make this amount, pay this percentage), but the structure was invented and designed by law. Similarly, we have lots of choice as to how we want to organize our business (S Corps, C Corps, public, private. . .), and like the tax structure, those structures are invented and designed by law. And that's as far as that analogy need go.

Ultimately bribery means paying a government official to do something he legally and constitutionally shouldn't

Your bit here makes sense if you use "bribery" this way, but that's not how I'd use the term. Bribes aren't necessarily payments for an official's illegal act. Check my earlier "bribery" link.

Teresa,

Jordan, so you concede that contributions dont equal bribery?

Concede? Makes it sound like I lost a point I adopted. If you read my posts, you'll find that I never equated contributions with bribery, and instead, that I wanted to discuss bribery first to clarify a principle as to why that is an unacceptable use of one's money.

Curtis,

What I mean, if I'm not clear, is whether non-Americans will be able to contribute to affecting our elections and our issues?

My understanding is that they will be able to.

Jordan

Thursday, February 4, 2010 - 2:51pm

Jordan:

No, you did not address it. You seem to be saying that corruption is only a problem for mixed economies. I responded that corruption can still occur under a capitalist system. My point is that, even under capitalism, you still need to figure out how a government may protect against corruption.

WITH LAW ENFORCEMENT

How much more clearer than that can I get?

Thursday, February 4, 2010 - 2:56pm

"Answering your analogy bit, ships are like corporations in that they are run by people but are not, themselves, people. And that's as far as that analogy needs to go. (I picked ships instead of other stuff like cuisinarts because I've heard that ships can have standing to sue and be sued."

That's begging the question, isn't it? A ship can sue or be sued as a corporation. My understanding is that the Catholic Church is considered one of the oldest extant corporations, and that monasteries are organized as corporations and that merchant ships have long been run as corporations. But ships don't themselves file suit, and it's not because courts aren't built in navigable harbors.

My understanding is that the purpose for incorporation is in part to deal with an ongoing business concern that will potentially outlast the existence of any of its current parties individually. But that is a voluntary action of those parties seen as in their interest so that the death or misfortune of one party does not necessarily mean the end of the business for all. No one is forced into a corporation, just as no one is forced to invest in a ship or join a monastery. And a if the members of a corporation chose to end it as a concern, according to the terms to which the consented, what is to stop them?

Thursday, February 4, 2010 - 3:07pm

I tried to address it briefly here: (As to the problem of foreign companies gaining leverage with government, once again this isn't the fault of businesses but of the system that lets government mess with the economy.)

Thursday, February 4, 2010 - 4:03pm

Ted,

I have no idea if ships can sue and be sued on account of their corporate status. It's really irrelevant, which is why I put that bit in parentheses. My analogy would've worked just fine with cuisinarts -- the painfully mundane and simple point of the analogy being that people aren't necessarily equivalent to the things they run.

John,

The "how" refers to how the law would read, not how it would be enforced. Did you truly think I was asking about enforcement? If so, we should stop attempting to communicate. And I'll ask again - did you visit that other thread?

Jordan

Thursday, February 4, 2010 - 4:56pm

Jordan, I actually have no idea what you're getting at. So when you ask how you deal with bribery, I am honestly answering your question as best as I can understand. If you wanted to ask how you would word the legislation for bribery, then why didn't you just say so?

As far as how it would read, I don't understand why it's necessary to write out some kind of imaginary legislation in order to argue the principles. The country already has bribery laws on the books, does it not? You're more than welcome to research them. You're the lawyer so I assume you have better access to those resources than I do.

I am saying I would like it for it to be illegal to interfere in the marketplace, as Rand said a "clear separation of state and economics" placed into the Constitution.

And no, I didn't visit the other threads on corporations, I don't have time to chase down and read several threads. I have no problems with the idea of a corporation. My business is an S-Corporation and it doesn't change my opinion that I ought to have the right to spend my business's money how I damn well please.

Thursday, February 4, 2010 - 5:14pm

Figure this would add a little fire to the discussion.

"Following the Supreme Court decision implicitly granting corporations the right to free speech (by determining that political spending is a kind of speech), a corporation has decided to take what it believes to be �democracy�s next step�: It is running for Congress."

http://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/02/02/corporation-says-it-will-run-for-congress/

EXXON/Carl's Junior for 2013 :(

Thursday, February 4, 2010 - 5:56pm

lol, that's funny, Warren. Exactly the kind of goofy cynical sarcasm I'd expect. The comments are equally lame, especially the communist dolts who still believe corporations are created by the state, not by people.

Thursday, February 4, 2010 - 6:12pm

Justice Thomas speaks about the ruling to a group of students.

�Go back and read why Tillman introduced that legislation,� Justice Thomas said, referring to Senator Benjamin Tillman. �Tillman was from South Carolina, and as I hear the story he was concerned that the corporations, Republican corporations, were favorable toward blacks and he felt that there was a need to regulate them.�

Ouch.

Friday, February 5, 2010 - 3:23am

I guess then members of a basketball team or orchestra or family aren't persons and should not be able to run for Congress, either, because basketball teams, etc., as such may not. Corporations aren't persons qua the group that they are but those who make them up, own them, manage them, etc., are persons and, yes, could run for office. (This has become a bit silly, with various fallacies now in evidence.)

Friday, February 5, 2010 - 7:56am

They instruct 'corporation Turettes' at most universities, have for decades.

Here is the obvioius explanation.

1] America was in a global conflict with a competing meat eating totalitarian worldview for over 50 years, at least three generations have come of age in a period of global struggle for world dominance of ideas. One of those ideas was communism, totalitarianism, 'forced association for our latest realy, realy good idea.'

2] A liberal America, with its open borders and universities, was totally open to attack by way of those universities. Of course we were. It is ludicrous to believe we weren't. We were susceptible to attack, our meat eating adversaries were not fools, they attacked us where they could.

3] A once deliberate attack over generations has created a self-replicating source of instructed robots, 'corporation Turettes' being one of the obvious symptoms.

Corporations are the result of free associations of free people, 1 or more makes no difference, acting freely in commerce. The communist/totalitarian/collectivist/herdist/tribalists, for whom the word 'freedom' is a slur, something to mock, respond when tapped on their knee with the word 'corporation' by dutifully jerking their knee and regurgitating their once instruction by fellow instructoids.

The communists/totalitarian/collectivist/herdist/tribalists would prefer there to be a single 'corporation', the State. They have nothing against the concept 'monopoly', they aspire to be 'the Monopoly,' aka, monopolists with guns -- something forbidden to the 'corporations'-- plural, that they knee-jerk despise.

Saturday, February 6, 2010 - 2:46am

Ted: Well, Jim, it's typical that a shoddy architect like you who has been repeatedly sued for breach of contract and once been brought up on charges of negligent homicide should think it's okay for people to utter blatant falsehoods with the full protection of the law.

Ted: tactics like that only work if people believe it when someone utters such rubbish as the example you gave above.

Such a slur would not work here, for example, since no reasonable person intelligent enough to frequent this site would believe such an over-the-top slander. And, since the statement contains an easily disproven falsehood (that I am an "architect"), that falsehood can be used to impeach the other allegations.

The reality is that in a political campaign, it is legal to print bullshit like that about your opponent. This tactic backfires if enough people sense the person offering up such slander is lying. The problem, of course, is that the target audience is likely to be of less than average intelligence, and might believe a slightly more subtle attack.

Saturday, February 6, 2010 - 6:14am

I don't mean to imply that everyone with 'corporation Turettes' is consciously a communist/totalitarian/collectivist/herdist/tribalist.

There are also the weak-minded, who went to university, were eager to sit-up and bark for the local keepers of hip, and pretty much accepted their instruction, unquestioned. Much of this was also feckless rebellion, practically hardwired, a need to be anything but their parents Oldsmobile...

Think about what that means, when their parents lived in a free nation.

It doesn't help much when there are deliberate attacks on children to make them weak minded, and susceptible to indoctrination. Since practically the minute we open our eyes, we are under a constant program of indoctrination to be properly 'socialized.' We accept it as an axiom, a given, and don't even see it anymore.

This is where the 'useful idiots' of the deliberate communist/totalitarian/collectivist/herdist/tribalists come from/are manufactured by the millions.

And of course, useful idiots vote, too.

Saturday, February 6, 2010 - 6:39am

John, you wrote:

If you had a clear separation of state and economics, and if the law prescribed legal sanctions against elected officials should they try to interfere in the market...

That is a true supposition. But it isn't true political reality as reality now stands. I'm not asking about an ideal state. I'm asking: What are the consequences to our political system as it exists today? Does the SCOTUS ruling allow for foreign corporations to participate, presuming they are registered to do business in the U.S.?
Jordan, thanks for giving me the only "yes or no" answer (you said yes) even if it is only to your "understanding."

Machan, I must assume you agree with Jordan that the answer is yes, when you say

(As to the problem of foreign companies gaining leverage with government, once again this isn't the fault of businesses but of the system that lets government mess with the economy.)

I agree it isn't the fault of business. I agree it is corrupt government that allows for it. I agree we need separation of economics and state, and I agree with John that corruption in a capitalist society is still possible and still needs some sort of objective regulation.

But at least I finally got my answer. All anyone had to do after my first post was say "YES".

And once again let me say I wish I could participate more often, as I was doing, but until I get another computer up and running I'm stuck using one that isn't my own, so I'm limited for time.

(Edited by Curtis Edward Clark on 2/06, 6:50am)

Saturday, February 6, 2010 - 10:51am

No, Jim, it is not legal to print intentional malicious defamatory falsehoods against someone in a political campaign or elsewhere, yet it being legal to do so ("anyone or any collection of individuals ought to be able to spend however much of their money they want on political speech, and say anything they want, even if blatant falsehoods") is something you, as a notorious toddler-fixated child molester, support.

Saturday, February 6, 2010 - 10:54am

Has anyone read Robert Hessen's In Defense of the Corporation?

"Hessen's achievement is to have unearthed the essence of the modern American corporation from beneath many layers of intellectual graffiti. He skillfully shows that corporations are based on voluntary association -- the same principle which distinguishes the institutions of a free society. And he has demolished the idea that corporations are "creatures of the state." This is a penetrating and impressive book." -- Paul Seabury, Department of Political Science, University of California at Berkeley

Saturday, February 6, 2010 - 1:10pm

Excellent book - have had it ever since it came out... he holds a view much at odds, tho, with almost everyone else's notion of what a corporation is...

Saturday, February 6, 2010 - 2:27pm

"Sen. Kerry Backs Changing Constitution to Deal with Supreme Court Decision" Susan Crabtree, The Hill, February 2

Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.) on Tuesday threw his support behind a constitutional amendment aimed at gutting the impact of a Supreme Court decision lifting key restrictions on corporate campaign spending.

"I think we need a constitutional amendment to make it clear once and for all that corporations do not have the same free speech rights as individuals," Kerry said during a Senate Rules Committee hearing.

Sen. Arlen Specter (D-Pa.) is the only other senator so far to back the idea of taking on the Herculean task of passing a constitutional amendment in response to the high court's 5-4 Citizens United ruling�.

Saturday, February 6, 2010 - 9:33pm

As to reality as it now stands, it's a mess and there just is no principled, consistent way of dealing with it. Mostly a Hobbesean jungle. All I try is to educate for a better time. There are still some paths to improvement open though they aren't universalizable so each must find the path best suited to his or her situation.