Corporations Are People, Too
In America, corporations can sue, own property, donate unlimited funds to political campaigns, and dominate the news cycle for a week by changing their logo.
Hard to believe we’re still talking about Hacker Carol.
In case you’re new here, I refuse to give brand recognition to the mediocre chain restaurant that rhymes with Hacker Carol. The mediocre chain restaurant is capitalizing on all the publicity over its logo change, but they won’t get any here. Not like the company needs it.
Hacker Carol has taken over the American news cycle for nearly a week. Never has Hacker Carol scored so many stories in the press. Fox News has covered it every day. ABC News even quoted Hacker Carol, which is common practice for the media. Still, it weirds me out every single time I see it.
I mean, did the reporter interview the old guy on the stool next to the barrel? No, he lost his job as the mediocre chain restaurant’s logo. So, who is being quoted? Who is Hacker Carol speaking for? The CEO? The executives? Every staff member? And now that Hacker Carol is providing commentary to the American public, I’ve got a few of my own. Who does Hacker Carol think will be the best team in the NFL this year? Does Hacker Carol support the Second Amendment? What are Hacker Carol’s thoughts on Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce’s engagement?
In the news media, when a company releases a statement, it’s often the company that is attributed with the quote, not an executive or, you know, an actual human being. This blurs the line of accountability. Is it Hacker Carol who cancels holiday bonuses or a greedy executive who hasn’t missed a bonus since he took the job?
Which brings up an interesting point about America. Turns out corporations are people, too. More accurately, a “juridical personality” or more plainly “corporate personhood”. Sounds terrifyingly evil. If that’s what you think, you’d be absolutely correct. “Corporate personhood” is a legal concept where the law treats a corporation as a separate "person" with its own rights, like owning property and suing others. That’s right, my dear reader, in America, corporations are almost equal as citizens.
A great example of this is during the financial crisis of the late 2000s. The crash caused 8.7 million people to lose their jobs and resulted in U.S. unemployment hitting 10% in October 2009. From 2007 to early 2009, U.S. household wealth fell by $11 trillion. To save the country from economic collapse, Congress passed a $700 billion bailout bill to reward guilty parties for scamming Americans. Think anyone was held accountable?
One guy.
Kareem Serageldin, an executive at Credit Suisse, was sentenced to 2.5 years in prison for mis-marking the prices of bonds to hide losses. That’s it. Because in America, people go to jail and corporations get fined. Executives? Besides wasting time on court proceedings and crisis meetings, the boss keeps their salary and benefits while the American taxpayer’s wallet gets a little lighter.
Even worse, in 2010, Citizens United v. FEC granted corporations the right to spend unlimited money on political ads. Political spending is the highest it’s ever been ($16 billion during the 2024 election cycle), while policies that average Americans are demanding become nothing more than promises during campaign season. The Court ruled that restricting the amount of money a business could spend on political ads as a violation of the First Amendment right to free speech. That’s right, a corporation’s right to free speech. It’s also why every American who watches anything on any platform is bobbared with nothing but political ads every election cycle. The Citizens United decision gave corporations a megaphone and the regular American two tin cans and a long piece of string. So much for one person, one vote.
What can we do?
Not sure we can do anything, but what we shouldn’t do is quote corporate entities in such a way that it appears the reporter had a sit-down interview with Hacker Carol or any other business entity. How hard is it to email a business executive and ask for a human name to attach to a quote? I mean, it is a hell of a lot easier to copy and paste whatever a business posts online, but by further humanizing corporations, reporters are giving them more influence and less accountability for executives. That’s not a good thing. Especially considering an American corporation has almost as many rights as I do.