LLC

Many of my libertarian buddies are having a fine time making fun of liberals for their wailing angoise following the recent Supremo decision on corporate financing of campaigns. I'm sympathetic, not so much because I agree with Will and Julian on the merits, but because all of this Progressive foot-stomping and wildly ineffectual whining that this is just going to RUIN democracy is bathetic to the point of hilarity. The consequences of the many attempts to limit direct corporate participation in the electoral process, culminating in the erstwhile McCain-Feingold régime, were, as is so often the case, nearly the exact opposite of what was publicly intended by the laws' proponents. The formation of massive industry groups and their attendant political action committees was a result of the legal limitations on corporate giving, and the mutual alignment of diverse industry competitors into collective, cooperative industry advocacy organizations has not diminished the power of big business. It has enhanced it. Industry groups, their PACs, and their lobbying arms are unquestionably more powerful today than they were before McCain-Feingold. There is probably an apt evolutionary metaphor here. Environmental hardship can often encourage successful adaptation.

Now on the matter of corporate personhood I tend to follow La_Rana's more rigorously considered line, and while I laughed at Julian's glib (but not inaccurate) set of scenarios in which prohibitions on corporate behavior would rebound to limit the expression of individual rights, I also would look forward to a future in which corporations and collectives of all kinds are reduced to merely passive platforms, holding no opinions and having no editorial boards, declaiming any responsibility for the content they carry or the acts practiced within their walls in order to indemnify themselves and limit liability.