some thoughts on the supreme court ruling about corporate campaign contributions
Governments exist to protect the interests of its citizens. People are generally interested in safety, freedom, and the ability to pass on their genetic material. Some say that the latter is the most important interest of living things in general. Last time I checked, humans are living things… well, until the robots take over, so inherently, people are concerned about both their current stability / happiness as well as the sustainability / wellbeing of the world in the future.
Corporations exist to maximize shareholder value.
…there is one and only one social responsibility of business—to use its resources and engage in activities designed to increase its profits so long as it stays within the rules of the game, which is to say, engage in open and free competition without deception or fraud. - Milton Friedman
Shareholder value is defined as the present value of the future cash flow of the company. The present value of cash flow in the future, however, decreases exponentially as time goes on because of risk associated with the time value of money. As a result, most companies will probably not make short term sacrifices for the good of the far, far future. If the world were to end tomorrow, in the next year, or even in the next hundred years, however, the present value of future profits could be adversely affected in some material way. Thus companies typically do not engage in morally apprehensive behaviors; they still care about general standard of living (if people have more money, they have more spending power), the environment, global relations, etc. For the most part, there is an immense amount of pressure to do what will maximize profits now and for the near future.
This brings the interests of corporations (who represent shareholders) and governments (who represent people) into direct conflict. You can say that, in the end, shareholders are people, so don’t corporations reflect the interests of people too? Sure, but future cash flow is only a part of what most people care about, so corporations represent only a portion of peoples’ interests. Shareholders and other individuals should be able to contribute to campaigns with their own money or by selling some of the shares they have (it’s not like shares of a company are horribly illiquid). Thus, corporations should not be defined as individuals and should not be able to directly contribute money to elect officials who are supposed to represent the people.
Disclaimer: I wrote this from a purely political / practical perspective and did not attempt some sort of elaborate deconstruction of the terms “freedom of speech” and “corporation” because I feel it is somewhat irrelevant. Everything is inherently political; we have a lovely system of checks and balances where Congress and the president can essentially override the constitution if the necessity, for the good of the people, is strong enough. Heck, even the Bill of Rights was written for political reasons.
