It'd basically mean that rather than a company being an independent entity that can take investments and so on, you might end up with rich people being the only ones able to start companies.

This book is interesting on the subject: https://amzn.to/2XxbbSX

reviewed here in The Economist: https://www.economist.com/business/2011/01/27/the-crescent-a...

It would be interesting for sure.

If corporations cannot get those benefits, how will we as a society get any benefit from people working together for something complex? You cannot make a workable spaceship, car engine (a car might be possible once you have an engine that meets emissions, and several other complex parts). Our modern world is mostly designed around retirement plans owning corporations - without some legal shield 3/4ths of the US should go to prison for Enron

Will it be a few rich people who enter into all those contracts and pay their people? At what point do the rich refuse because they have too many people signing contracts on their behalf that they dare not take the risk?

There could well be other solutions to the problem. It could be that some alternative is a "better" compromise. However it is not easy to come up with something that doesn't have flaws that are worse than what we have.

How about, you still protect the rights of people that make the corporation - as individuals. In other words, if the corporation can name a specific individual whose rights are being infringed, then they have a case. But the corporation by itself can't claim infringement of its rights.

So for example, with Citizens United, there's no restriction on individuals that make up the company from making political donations from their own personal funds - including those that they earn as owners or employees of said company. But the company cannot use the funds that it owns as an entity in its own right for the same purpose. If its owners want to use those funds for that purpose, they can have the company pay it to them as dividends (taxed accordingly), and then spend them as they see fit - with their own name attached to any such use.

Note that this effectively protects free speech qua speech even for corporations, because there's ultimately always a person speaking.

That doesn't work, for the exact example you cite. I am not rich enough to afford to buy a TV ad (this includes both production costs and airtime - I'm not an advertising expert nor a good actor so I'd need to hire people to make a good ad). The only way I can afford to get a TV ad out is to get a bunch of like minded people together: create a company with the express purpose of buying our ad, but your just prohibited our company from buying that ad.

Seeing as one individual person can own a corporation and thus have unquestioned control over how the Corp spends its money, then yes one person's individual rights are being infringed upon -- namely the right to use ones material resources to further political interests. In the case of one or a few owners, the owners could alternatively authorize a share buyback to simply transfer money between then and the firm

They're welcome to do it in that manner - and the very fact that they can shows that it's not really an infringement on their right. The point is that it's still freedom of John Doe to speak, not freedom of John Doe LLC to speak.

> Now that would be an interesting system, if corporations were deprived of the benefits of legal personhood.

Then they would just not exist: a corporation is exactly a grant of legal personhood.

The problem is that corporations as you are thinking of them (private companies) are not the only kind of legal person.

Governmental organizations are also incorporated persons, including governments themselves (otherwise you wouldn't be able to sue the United States).

Non-corporate entities like nonprofits, partnerships, cooperatives, educational institutions, etc are also legal persons, and need to be for the same reasons.