>>What rights to corporations have?<<
Karen -
I won't attempt to come up with an exhaustive list, but here are a few things off the top of my head.
They have been guaranteed "freedom of speech" in the form of being able to contribute to political campaigns.
They have the legal right to shelter income from taxation by opening tiny branch offices in foreign countries, and declaring that they are no longer US corporations.
They have the right to sell shares to the public, use the proceeds to build, say, a nationwide data network, then run out of money and declare bankruptcy. Then, they can sell their assets (the data network) to banks to raise money and come out of bankruptcy, simply declaring the stock they sold to buy those assets to be worthless. (I was on the losing end of a deal like this, which is why I bring it up.) No individual could legally do something like that.
On another front, there are people who have been trying to give corporations special protection from lawsuits - protections that individuals don't have. Personally, I don't see that the big corporations are the ones who need the protection.
I know someone who was sued by Mattel because of a work of art that they claimed infringed the Barbie copyright. The case was frivolous, and my friend would almost certainly have prevailed in court. But Mattel's lawyers kept flooding the court with motions, each of which had to be defended. My friend could not afford to pay the legal bills to keep fighting, and was forced to simply give up.
Just a few examples.
- Allen |
