The argument against corporate personhood seems reasonable -- after all, corporations are legal entities, but how can they be treated the same as people? The word "corporation" comes from the Latin Corpus (body), a "body of people." That is, a group of people authorized to act as an individual (OED).
In the U.S. (and in some jurisdictions abroad, mostly who follow Scottish or English styles of lawmaking), corporations have been considered "artificial people" for a very long time. Certainly from a legal standpoint, corporations can do many of the same things that people do -- buy and sell property, hire / fire staff, sue and be sued, etc. After an important ruling in the 1880s, corporations' status became ensconced in case law, mostly through a bizarre set of circumstances.
Is this status as an "artificial person" really that bad? After all, the concept of corporate democracy is a key aspect of the form of capitalism practiced in the U.S. (and other places, like the Republic of Ireland). Corporations, like it or not, are an integral aspect of the economic (and broader) world we live in. If the notion of this personhood were dispelled, would there be negative impacts? I heartily say, yes!
When (not if, but when) artificial intelligence becomes viable, and robotics, married with the computing power of quantum computing, yields autonomous artificial people (be they androids or other forms of robots), will we not see a huge legal (and possibly physical) fight to deny or confirm such artificial persons' rights? What about clones? Would they become second class citizens? Laugh now, these Star Trek scenarios may not be so far off…
So let's refine the concept of corporate personhood -- it is probably the model for how we treat our robot/belly-buttonless brethren in the future -- and not throw the "artificial" baby out with the bath water.
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