spat
.700 Nitro Express
Business *never* pays taxes. They collect taxes from the consumer for the government.In some ways I agree that corporate laws should change. Corporations enjoy the protection of our government systems. I have always believed that corporate taxes should be very high for this reason.
For example, corporations benefit far more from our public roads (transporting their goods) than the average citizen. The tax code should reflect that.
But when it comes to property rights, I have to side with corporations here. Any building Walmart owns is under their control and therefore they get to decide what is allowed and what isn’t, no different than your home.
Saying you want corporations to pay more taxes is exactly saying that you want to pay more taxes, you just want them hidden in the price of goods and services.
As for corporate rights, corporations have none. They are merely a group of real people (shareholders) acting collectively. However those people do have rights. So whatever rights a pair of partners in a business has, a corporation should be able to exercise on behalf of its shareholders too.
So, google, walmart, etc effectively have the same rights (and responsibilities) as corporations as they would if they were owned by one very rich guy.
That said, some of these companies are so omnipresent in their sphere that anti-trust issues creep in.
There is also the aspect of their responsibility for what is conveyed over their system. If they want to exercise editorial control over the content then they can't claim a common carrier exemption.
Think of it this way, FedEx isn't responsible if they deliver a box full of cocaine because they are a common carrier. But if they decided they were going to open and inventory every package they handled, then they would be.
As soon as google or Facebook or whatever start having "community standards" and picking and choosing what content they like and what they don't, then they should be responsible for all the content on their service.
They don't get to say "we don't like that post so we're deleting it, and we're not responsible for that other post because we don't control it" Either you are in control of the content or you are not. You don't get to pick and choose based on which way works best for you legally in some situation.