Corporations are people.

If I have not bedeviled my my debate partner here enough already, I shall be happy to accept this new challenge of his, as well. In any case, I am delighted to have found it, and thank him for having presented it.Are Corporations "People?"I think that I am well advised to advance cautiously, and expect some semantic ambush here; it is absurd on it's face to think that corporations represent some previously undiscovered type of high primate, newly recognized as something more than a distant cousin of homo sapiens. I anticipate that my partner will attempt to describe corporations as "people" in much the same way that the American people are "People."As I look over the Google Online Dictionary, I learn that my fears may be justified. One definition of "People" includes groups of people - as in "those people, standing over there." Drat. However, there is a problem with using semantics to "win" these sorts of contests. That is, there may be a 'catch' that goes unnoticed, but the use of such trickery veers very close to fallacy - the specific fallacy types that first come to my mind are straw manning (the use of the language was unintentional, and does not represent the true argument being presented); the Red Herring (the semantic switch constitutes a distracting change of subject); and Special Pleading (ignoring the evidence presented in order to score points on unrelated arguments.) I am sure there are others.I will therefore, use the word "people" to mean "human," just like everyone else does. Further, I will interpret the word "people" as being a plural form of "person." As it relates to this debate, I will be countering the following argument:"A corporation is a person"Just as much as I will be countering the pluralized form of the argument: "Corporations are people."I am more or less certain that my partner will protest this usage, and argue that what he intended to say was that "corporations are (groups of) people." However, this is not necessarily the case. It is entirely possible for a corporation to exist - and to not be composed of people at all. The legal agreement between the state and any given corporate charter is the sum total of corporate personhood - the entirety of the corporation's board itself could just as easily be made up of monkeys as people - or rather more likely, dead persons (in the case of older, defunct corporations whose charter has yet to expire). Therefore, as it is possible that non-human corporations could exist, or corporations could exist that are completely without any active human membership, the statement that "Corporations are people" cannot always be a true statement. A better means of expression: "Some corporations have human memberships."I should also point out that the proofing tactic of reversibility also fails to uphold the premise. Reversibility, for readers that are unfamiliar with the practice, goes like this: If A=B, then B=A. If two things are identical, then they are also interchangeable. In other words, we can replace a particular word with its definition, with no loss of coherence. In this case, reversibility fails. If corporations are people, then people must also be corporations. Clearly, this is absurd, since people must necessarily always be individualized; I am a member of a coporation, but I am not ten people. In answering this challenge it occurred to me to ask myself, "why do we have this? Why is this, of all things, not taken for granted?" If Martians from Mars were to arrive on earth, green, antenna-bearing, but otherwise able to do many things that humans can do - they would not be called humans. Yes, they could incorporate, and follow other earthling laws besides. Why should corporations be treated so generously? With some caffeine, I did some research - and developed one likely explanation. "Corporations are people" has become a sort of rallying cry for the modern conservative movement. Ridiculed by the Left, the Right has sought to defend this notion on the grounds that the hated liberal would find it noxious. I feel that this is a simple in-group affirmation - and makes no sense outside of that usage. Therefore, we must defend humanity from becoming collectivized and corporatized, in order that we may refute a simple ad hominem taunt. But why would any sane person think this to begin with? I assume that it may derive from a series of SCOTUS* (Supreme Court) decisions that have largely found that corporations can sue and be sued, taxed, and negotiate contractual agreements as single entities - and participants in these legal agreements are protected by the 14th Amendment. [1] However, this was not some Frankenstein experiment to create life - it was a simple legal agreement between the state and the new entity that was designed for the convenience of the public.I have mentioned that there are no legal requirements that corporations be made up of human people, either as individuals or groups. I think that I should produce at least one example of this in order to disprove entirely the notion that corporations are necessarily people. The town of Lewis, Vermont, legally incorporated, has had many periods in its history when not a single living person made up any part of the legal entity. Therefore, this 'corporation' (towns are corporations, just as are labor unions and national governments - not a lot of people know this) was not "people" in any sense of the word - it was not made up of people, it was not operated by people, and it had no decisions made on its behalf by people - because the entire corporation often had no people in it anywhere. [2] Therefore, the statement "corporations are people" cannot be true in all cases. In order to have a semantically compelling argument, my partner would have needed to state the argument: "Sometimes (usually), corporations have people in them" instead of the more definitive "Corporations are people." In other words, I can demonstrate that corporations are not always people, and my partner cannot demonstrate that they always are. Can the statement ever be true? Sure. But not in the generalized sense indicated by the title of this debate.For the record, I am not making any definitive statement here. I am not attempting to fully argue that corporations are - or are not - people. I am simply testing the premise that they necessarily must be. I want to state this explicitly, in case there exists any misunderstanding as to what my role is. The premise is that corporations are people, and it is my task to demonstrate that this may not always be true.Therefore, my counter argument, as of this round, is:Corporations cannot always be considered people:1. Some corporations do not have any human membership 2. There is no legal reason why the corporation must be comprised of humans3. The premise is an ad hominem taunt, and cannot actually be discussed[1]http://en.wikipedia.org... [2] http://en.wikipedia.org...* I enjoy using "SCOTUS" instead of The Supreme Court of the United States, because it saves time and space, and I feel that it is insulting to the high court.