While this guy is over the top: http://marketplace.publicradio.org/display/web/2010/01/28/pm-fox-commentary/
I like his conclusion that if corporations are people with 1st amendment rights, they should be committed to an asylum for being crazy.

Corporations are run by old boys clubs and the people who run them have too many exemptions from liability. Shareholders are given a sanitized slate of board members with different specialties (who don’t identify with employees at all because only a couple can actually be company employees) by the existing board and management. Executive management is chosen by the boards. Management hires their friends and dilute shareholder value by loading them up with giant pay packages of cash, stock, and options, which come regardless of performance.

This is exemplified by derelict banks like Citi paying out more in bonuses than they brought in as revenues. Vanguard fund managers, who own (by proxy) as many shares as anyone (aside from the federal government) complained about having no power to stop management from stealing the assets of the company they own. “Incentive” Payment beyond a certain level passes up the law of diminishing returns, and there has to be plenty of competent, out-of-work bankers in this economy to take the jobs if they want to.

There has to be a corporate governance way to handle the varied political interests of corporate stakeholders (Share and debt owners, management, employees and customers). Allowing a few people in management to blow other peoples assets to buy air time or lobby congress for their whims and short term gain at the expense of society at large is anything but FREE speech. Like every other large organization, a little bit of sunlight and full transparency works wonders. Public companies should file a lobbying plan, objectives and outlays with the SEC (and broadcasters can file the political income side with the FCC as well).

The other side of this equation is making management responsive to owners. Large national corporations are pursuing congress for special treatment, so the interstate commerce clause needs to be brought to bear to protect owner rights over the use of their assets.

We’re not perfect, that’s the problem in the first place, and why we’re in this situation. The point of laws to limit this kind of abuse is so that we (collectively) don’t have to worry about this on a continuous basis. It’s not practical and arguably not sustainable. I agree that we do need to be engaged and involved, but this is a side-effect, as you point out, of an even greater problem. That problem needs to be fixed and this issue will more or less go away.

That said… Unfortunately I don’t have any better solution to propose here either. =)

In the for-profit health insurance industry, the customer is the entity that is making the decisions about purchasing insurance – in general the corporation, not the individual. While more government anti-trust control might be helpful, it would not solve the key problems of the health insurance market: inability to provide universal coverage, and rapidly escalating costs.

The first way this happens is that it forces corporations to “cast the die”; in other words, capitalize on a highly inflexible business strategy. So when markets (and laws) change like they always do, suddenly the company doesn’t have a leg to stand on. Example: Chrysler and GM.

The more fundamental problem is the complacency, mediocrity, and illusion of control that is fostered inside a corporation by legal favoritism. A great example of this is the anti-trust exemption enjoyed by for-profit health insurance companies here in the US. It’s my observation that sometimes corporations develop the attitude that the government is their “customer,” and customers are not. In my opinion, abandoning basic respect for your customers is often the first step towards bankruptcy.

The problem here is the definition of a corporation. If we are to apply the Constitutional test, then we need to understand what a corporation was in the eyes of the Founders. A corporation was a legal entity chartered by an individual state for a defined period of time to perform specific economic or other activities. If the entity failed to perform those activities or violated the law, the charter would be revoked. To consider that legal entity to be a person and to apply the rights enumerated in the Constitution and Bill of Rights to that entity is the mistake here.

The individuals who own shares, or works for, or directs a corporation are and should be free to speak and assemble and otherwise participate in the political process. The legal construct with which they are associated is not a person and should not be endowed with the rights of a person. As Thomas Jefferson wrote, “I hope we shall… crush in its birth the aristocracy of our moneyed corporations which dare already to challenge our government in a trial of strength, and bid defiance to the laws of our country.” No profit-making corporation can claim to be a free association of citizens, nor can its bank accounts be construed as the collective contributions of its employees and/or shareholders to be used on their behalf.

One last note, I disagree with Professor Lessig. We are far too polarized a nation and far too dominated by corporations to engage in a sane process of Constitutional reform.

Bad idea.

And this video by Reason hits a couple of the points I’ve highlighted here, as well as a couple more that are worth considering.