If it’s just for convenience then why were they given the right to speech which also happens to be a right to financial participation in the electoral process? You don’t need those things to run a business, but you absolutely can use them to accelerate the corruption of society.
For free speech, that would be similar. A company can have a social media account or make broadcasts or advertisements, and having to have an individual as a proxy would just be cumbersome. And yes, that includes things like lobbying. Otherwise, you could have a company pay for private individuals for the service of lobbying on their behalf and essentially have no cap or regulation. Formalizing what they are allowed to do also allows you to go after them for things they aren’t, again without needing to prove individual culpability. And if we decide they have too much influence in politics, it gives us a lever to pull to reign them in.
If it’s just for convenience then why were they given the right to speech which also happens to be a right to financial participation in the electoral process? You don’t need those things to run a business, but you absolutely can use them to accelerate the corruption of society.
For free speech, that would be similar. A company can have a social media account or make broadcasts or advertisements, and having to have an individual as a proxy would just be cumbersome. And yes, that includes things like lobbying. Otherwise, you could have a company pay for private individuals for the service of lobbying on their behalf and essentially have no cap or regulation. Formalizing what they are allowed to do also allows you to go after them for things they aren’t, again without needing to prove individual culpability. And if we decide they have too much influence in politics, it gives us a lever to pull to reign them in.
Or how about this: lobbying should be tightly regulated so that nobody has the amount of influence that corporations currently have.
That is never going to happen, because they have too much influence in politics.