Comment by mattmaroon

Comment by mattmaroon 19 hours ago

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Corporations aren’t people in the literal sense which the 13th amendment uses, nobody ever said they were. They just have the ability to do some people things. They can have a bank account or sign a contract. They cannot vote or enlist or do lots of things people can do. (The technical name is ‘juridicial people’ and what they can or cannot do is spelled out in law quite well.)

Money isn’t speech, and no court ever said it was. The ads you buy with money are speech. What’s the difference between a Fox news editorial show or a right-leaning ad on Fox News? (The answer: who pays for it.) If news organizations are just things owned by people, what makes them more worthy of expressing opinions than other things owned by people? Just because they have “news” in their name?

You just think they’re half-assed because you have the cartoony idea of what they are expressed by media that doesn’t like them. They’re quite sensible.

otterdude 18 hours ago

I guess my larger point is that words are manipulated to get to a desired effect in the justice system.

Slavery is defined as the practice of owning a "person" which the 13th amendment prohibits. As corporations are people why couldn't this apply using the same flexible level of logic our court system uses??? Its just picking winners and losers!!!

Regarding "money is speech", this is the implication and argument from Citizens United. https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/research-reports/citi...

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  • mattmaroon 18 hours ago

    Slavery in the 13th amendment is not defined at all, and nowhere is there a legal definition of slavery that would include a non-human person.

    And the latter is simply you (and others, you didn’t invent it) paraphrasing a ruling inaccurately. I paraphrased it more accurately.

    So again, the only word manipulation is going on outside of the legal system and you’re arguing against straw men. The actual legal system (not the carton of it you imagine) is not nonsensical in either case.

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kannanvijayan 19 hours ago

Unfortunately the practical effect of whatever policy that comes out of this theorycrafting has left your media landscape an absurd and abject failure. Where the idea of objective truth being open to the highest bidder and allowed to change on a week by week, or day by day basis without challenge.. is a reality Americans now live every day.

If the theory is "sensible", who cares? At some point you do want to connect it to reality and outcomes, no?

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  • mattmaroon 18 hours ago

    Unfortunately it isn’t that simple. The opposite of our media landscape is countries that think they have free speech but really don’t, like most of Europe.

    I’ll take having all the information in the world (true or false, purposefully curated for propaganda or organically reported) over any society that locks people up for social media posts deemed “fake”.

    I have faith both in the marketplace of ideas leading to the best outcomes, and that the ability to lock people up over false speech will be weaponized eventually.

    The American media landscape is the only possible result of true freedom of speech combined with the internet. It’s faaaaar from perfect but I do believe it’ll be the best in the end.

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    • kannanvijayan 5 hours ago

      But right now America is factually less free than either Europe or my own country. You simply do not have due process anymore. Most of the protections of your constitution have been interpreted away to nothingness.

      I just don't see how these so called valuable principles have actually materially served your people in being able to protect or defend the values you claim to hold.

      Faith is fine, but you do need to evaluate ground truth at the end of the day. Outcomes matter.

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      • mattmaroon 3 hours ago

        That’s just propaganda. If we didn’t have due process, Donald Trump would be in jail. Or, if you think he’s the reason we lost it, half the Biden administration would. The idea that the legal system has somehow melted down in the last nine months is just scaremongering.

        Norms are being violated, for sure, and the courts are being pushed to determine the bounds of the law. I won’t say I’m a fan of most of it, but it’s a far cry from lack of freedom.

        I don’t know what your country is, so I can’t respond, but if you can be locked up over a social media post (assuming reasonable exemptions like direct incitement to violence) you’re not free. You just have been told you are.

        The keystone freedom is free speech and almost nowhere else truly has it. It’s a spectrum for sure, and Europe is a lot closer than, say, China, but we’re the far extreme.

        Any good outcomes also come from that same freedom of speech. It’s a double-edged sword, for sure. You have to take your anti-vax movement along with your Wikipedia.

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