Frankensteins and Freeloaders

Citizens United enunciated a holding that takes the corporation's status as a person to its logical end, giving it the same First Amendment rights that humans have. While the logic is satisfyingly simple, elegant even, I believe it is fundamentally wrong.

Besides the fact that corporations don't feel, a portion of Stevens' argument that I think isn't given enough attention, I think the best argument against it is as follows:

Through economies of scale, the number of people adversely affected by an unfavorable (from the consumer's perspective) law or political outcome sought by a corporate entity through lobbying or political expenditures is great. That is, the cost of the outcome (which translates as the profit for the corporation) is spread across many people. The number of people adversely affected is so great that it makes economic sense for the corporation to spend money (a lot of money) on the outcome they desire. And because the cost of such an outcome is borne by so many, each individual is really not having to pay that much if they just let it happen. In fact, they pay less than they would if they tried to fight it. Freeloaders exacerbate the costs borne by the few who are silly enough try to fight it.

Consider the following. Say corporation X spends $1,000,000 on a lobbying campaign to get a law passed on the Hill. That corporation has determined that it makes economic sense because they will bring in or save $2,000,000 off of the effects of the legislation (making $1,000,000). Corporation X is a national corporation, with 10,000,000 customers. The legislation spreads the cost at $.20 per customer of the corporation. Of course, there are no incentives for individuals to try to stop this law. They just pay the 20 cents. Rational apathy. Moreover, if anyone wanted to, the fact that so many are unwilling to fight it adds additional costs to the fighters...the freeloader problem.

Now perhaps the overall value of Corporation X to society outweighs this 20 cent cost, but there is something fishy about all of this. In the aggregate, does this cost and all the other costs we acquiesce to add up to a significant number? Probably. A more interesting question to me is what the aggregate effect of such acquiescence costs us in terms of human dignity. Perhaps it's still outweighed by the benefits that the corporations add to our lives. I don't know. On an intuitive level, it seems we are giving corporations more life than they deserve. We created them. They are supposed to serve society. And, for the most part, I think they do. (And I plan to be a corporate lawyer.)

But I am not under any illusion that there is not a real danger that we are creating Modern Prometheuses.