Reading 08 — Corporate Personhood

The concept of corporate personhood revolves around the idea that corporations can be extended some rights that previously were only guaranteed to individuals. These include rights like freedom of speech and donating to federal campaigns. Granting corporations these rights gives rise to many legal, social, and ethical consequences. Legally this means that corporations are allowed to forward any political cause of their choosing, or even allowed to refuse to comply with some government mandates on religious grounds. They are also given the right to a jury and speedy trial, and are protected against unwarranted search and seizure, but they are not protected against self-incrimination. Socially this means that large groups of people with numerous resources have the same ability to influence political campaigns as you and I do. This, leads to the ethical consequences which primarily consists of: is this okay? To me it does not seem fair that a large corporation like Google can use their massive capital to fund their chosen candidate, while I can only donate a little bit of money and vote. If the members of Google want a certain candidate to win, they can individually support them.

Speaking of Google, I decided to read about their antitrust lawsuit. I think what Google did was horrendous, and I’m not sure that the punishment fits the crime either. Yes, $2.7 billion is a lot of money but according to statista, Google made $109.65 billion in 2017. That’s the equivalent of someone who makes $100,000 a year being fined about $2,500, which isn’t that big of a deal when you think about it. Google had the ability to (and did) actively prevent competitors from having a fair chance at actually competing with them. Instead of using their resources to construct a vertical search algorithm to compete with Shivaun Moeran and Adam Raff’s algorithm, they essentially made their product invisible on Google. This is completely unethical, immoral, and objectively bad for innovation. What’s the point of trying to make a new product that in some way rivals a product of the big 5 if they have the ability to completely erase it overnight?

I think this is a case where a company is too big and powerful. Don’t get me wrong, I love Google’s products and I enjoy having everything work seamlessly together, but there still must be room for other products to rise. Google should only have the power to improve their products, not sabotage other products, and if Google’s product ends up being better than the other product, then the market will show that.

Regardless of whether or not companies should be afforded the same rights as individuals, if they are then I think they should have the same ethical and moral responsibilities. If you want to think about companies as people, then you can think of choosing which products to buy as choosing friends. You may not want to be friends with someone who has drastically different beliefs than you, just as you may not want to buy from a certain company if you have different beliefs. I think all companies should have to be transparent about that if they are treated as people.