In Which I Agree with Mitt Romney

"Corporations are people, too."

And that's the root of my disagreement with the US Pirate Party's platform:

Putting People Before Corporations

The Supreme Court and Congress have expanded the power of corporations for over a hundred years and made them more powerful than people. Whether it is the Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision that allows corporations to buy elections, or Congress’ cuts in corporate tax rates while raising payroll taxes, real people end up with the short end of the stick. The Pirate Party will make sure our laws put people before corporations.

When I say that corporations are people, I'm not doing the "corporate personhood" thing.

A corporation is not a person.

It is a group of people who jointly own a business.

And those people should be treated exactly the same as other people. Same free speech rights, same tax demands (if any -- but of course there shouldn't be any), etc.

If you and I form a standard non-corporate business partnership to, say, sell shipping containers, and one of our containers falls on someone, any culpability/liability attaching us to that  tort will reach not just the capital we've invested in the business, but to our personal assets.

State privilege, in the form of "limited liability," artificially insulates the owners of the partnerships called "corporations" from that risk. The most they can lose is the money they've invested in the partnership.

That has distorting economic effects. It makes buying corporate stock artificially more attractive than buying into a regular partnership or starting single proprietorship because, with a wave of the state's magic wand, it reduces risk and cost, relieving the owners of the need to purchase insurance against ruinous litigation/judgments.

I don't think that law and governance should discriminate against corporations or their owners. I think it should simply not subsidize corporations and their owners by creating a special class of business that, solely due to those subsidies, is relieved of market risks.