Ben Cincotta
Business Ethics
Mr. Davey
November 30th, 2018
Gee’s
Freedom of speech is one of the most basic rights awarded to citizens of the United States of America. Coming along with the right to freedom of speech is the right to freely lobby politicians by sharing your ideas with them. A gray area appears however when deciding who and what is given this constitutional right to protest and to state your opinion to those in office. Some groups such as corporations try to lobby politicians but some say that it is unconstitutional and antidemocratic for them to do so due to the fact that they do not qualify as moral individuals or and therefore should not be given full human moral rights. One thing that separates humans from corporations is the fact that they do not have any interests of their own but rather follow the interests of their members. Since corporations are not a living being on their own they are not able to make decisions on their own distinct from the decisions that are in the best interest of its members. One distinction between people and corporations is that while corporations may be able to be classified as moral agents they do not qualify as moral patients due to the fact that they do not have any interests on their own separate from the interests of their members. Since the corporations do not qualify as moral patients they do not qualify as being able to have rights on their own including the right to free speech and therefore the right to lobbying. As Quentin Gee mentions in his paper “Corporations, Rights, and Lobbying” there are certain groups that can be qualified as moral patients but not moral agents, such as children or pets. This means that there are groups that have interests on their own but do not provide to the interests of others. The opposite can be argued for corporations, they offer value to other moral individuals while they do not have any interests on their own. Corporations can not be considered moral patients in part because they go not have any interests of their own and do not act in their own best interest. As Gee points out “If the good of the organization simply means the attainment of its goals and objectives for itself, then there might be no urgency in achieving such goals and objectives, since organizations do not have normal lifespans. (Gee pg.4)” If a corporation’s goal is to do what is in the best interest of itself then it logically would have no motivation to do so quickly due to the fact corporations do not have the same mortal lifespans as humans. It is possible to argue that a group agent, such as a corporation does have interests separate from its members by arguing that the interest of corporations is to stay operational and to turn a profit. If these were to be described as a interests held directly by a corporation then a corporation is then considered a moral patient. However a problem with that is that any decision a business makes can be argued that it is in the best interest of the shareholders to turn a profit and that is the reason that the decisions were made. If corporations were to be considered moral individuals, individuals who are both moral agents and moral patients, then it is possible that the corporation would make decisions outside of the best interest of its members. A possible rebuttal to the argument that corporations have urgency to get things done is that while the corporations may not be necessarily mortal it may have urgency because of a goal and objective that has been set for the company. However this again brings up the problem that the corporation is serving the interests of just its members and still does not have any interests of its own. The inability to separate the potential interests of a corporation from the interests of the shareholders and owners makes it impossible for the corporations to be considered a moral patient. I believe that Gee is correct when saying that if a corporation can not have any interests of its own then it should not be allowed to use constitutional rights given to citizens. While it may be in the best interest of the shareholders to have corporations hire lobbyists it consolidates the power of our democratic system to just the executives of large corporations who are about serving their best interest but may not even be serving the best interests of their corporations. It can be argued that lobbying may not serve as a tool to profit for all members for a corporation but rather for just those at the top. The ones at the top claim that they are lobbying for the welfare of the company but it is more specifically to serve their interests since the corporation can not have any interests separate from its members, especially the ones with the power to make decisions.
As further defense that corporations should not be given full human status is how corporations are not currently given all of the constitutional rights that are assigned to people. This is in part because of the fact that the corporations are not considered moral individuals and that corporations act almost exclusively with what is in the best interest of its employees and those who own stock in the company. Gee points out corporations are not currently awarded the 5th amendment in court, which is a basic right that US citizens are awarded. The fifth amendment protects against self incrimination in a court of law. Corporations are not given this right because they do not have the ability to incriminate themselves but rather only incriminate the members of the corporation who were the ones who were committing the crimes. The corporations can not act in what is in their best interest but rather only act in the interest of others. Corporations also are not given other rights such as voting that most moral individuals in the United States are given. Corporations are not given this right to directly influence American politics partly because they do not have interests of their own separate from their members and their members have the right to vote as individuals on their own. When it comes to lobbying corporations try to influence American politics by buying lobbyists and trying to get politicians vote certain ways. Corporations are not given the right to vote as an individual because they are not able to be defined as moral individuals and they would only act in what is in the best interest of others. Corporate lobbying is an example of moral individuals that have a role in a corporation using a corporation, which is a moral agent and has no interests on their own, to get what is best for the individuals involved in the corporation.
By defining corporations as moral agents but not moral patients it means that they can not be described as moral individuals. To quote Gee “There are no good reasons to hold that group agents, corporations included, are moral patients,even if they may be moral agents. They are thereby not complete persons, and not entitled to the same moral rights and considerations of persons. (Gee pg.11)” To build off of the conclusion that he derived I would further say that not only is corporate lobbying wrong because corporations do not have the right to lobby, I would say corporate lobbying devalues the voting power of Americans by letting a non moral patient have such power to influence.