Corporations are People, Too.

Throwing Up Your Hands And Giving In To Crony Capitalism, Because the Current state System Protects Privacy Rights Through Corporate "Person" Rights

 

The Cato Institutes Daily Podcast on April 12 featured Jim Harper: Privacy Rights and 'Corporate Personhood'.

 

Harper's conclusion is that providing "person" rights to corporations protects our privacy rights. 

 

But isn't "corporate personhood" a legal construct - not an inherent right? You might say that you lose your privacy rights for anything held by a corporation, if the corporation is not a "person." But isn't that because we have developed our legal system to treat them that way? We could more easily say that everyone's privacy rights extend to the information that they own, no matter where it is stored. Making that change would be a fight against 125 years of Constitutional, statutory, and case law. But individual rights are more valid, and absolutely a million times more inherent, than corporate rights.

So, you can tell someone that they will lose privacy rights, if corporations are not "people," but that doesn't mean that there is not another solution that is based on real individual rights.

The flipside: Should I incorporate my car, because State seizure laws allow the taking of property without a proper legal proceeding, because the property doesn't have rights?