Corporations are things owned by people. This is what Mitt Romney meant when he said, “Corporations are people, my friend!” (Don’t you love the condescending tone of that “my friend”?) I don’t accept this, of course. Another example of how wrong this is, is that we can’t set up our cats as employees, pay them, and then have them give $2500 to a candidate of the cats’ choice. If corporations are people because they are owned by people, why aren’t pets people because they are owned by people?
It is a serious question. I don’t know why.
No one said corporations are MAMMALS, that’s why.
Well, I do think cats are people, but I do not think corporations are people. Cats can feel emotion and pain. Besides the baser emotions of greed and fear, corporations, and many of the humans who own them, do not feel emotions or pain. Therefore, it makes more sense that cats should be defined as people, and corporations should not. Don’t you?!
@Andrea – I don’t get it.
@Morwalk – I totally agree. I didn’t mean to minimize actual mammals. I was just satirizing the concept that corporations were people. This is the only argument that I’ve ever heard: corporations are people because they are made up of people. But this is clearly false, so I guess what they really mean is that corporations are *owned* by people. Hence my comment.
In fact, corporations are much more like alligators. It is all stimulus, response. I find all that Ayn Rand discussion of businesses’ "enlightened self-interest" pretty funny. What big corporation thinks of anything but its quarterly profits?