Comment Re:Good Riddance! (Score 3, Insightful) 1105
The argument is not that a corporation itself is a conscious being. An enormous number of people think that is the argument, but it's not. It's a huge straw man argument that's repeated ad nauseam, especially since Citizens United.
The *actual* argument is that corporations are *groups of people* (the shareholders) and that groups of people have the same rights as individuals. Doesn't that seem a lot more reasonable?
Your other argument is that they're not trying to ban speech, they're trying to ban the 'funding of speech'. It's the same thing. What you are saying is this: 'a group of people, in the form of shareholders, should not be allowed to pool their resources in order to get a message to the public.' Why do you want this? Because you don't want the public to be influenced by their message. You are trying to *abridge* their freedom of speech. Cutting the funding is just your *method* of preventing the speech. It's like saying "I'm not preventing your freedom of speech, I'm just duck-taping your mouth."