Do you think this is a good analogy? You think we should have the same process for an individual painting their house and a multi-trillion dollar corporation attempting to dominate markets? Do you see any differences in the two situations?

>You think we should have the same process for an individual painting their house and a multi-trillion dollar corporation attempting to dominate markets?

I'm not claiming that microsoft should be allowed to do the merger on the basis that individuals can choose to paint their house blue, only pointing out that "microsoft isn't elected either" isn't a valid rebuttal to the objection that unilateral decisions by unelected bureaucrats are undemocratic.

But Microsoft’s purchase of a competitor and subsequent significant modification of an existing market is also a unilateral decision.

The thing is that the CMA is appointed by the government, which is elected.

It’s like complaining about a speeding ticket because the cop wasn’t elected.

Limited Liability Corporations aren't citizens. Satya Natella is welcome to take MS private as a sole proprietorship.

Microsoft is certainly a legal persona with many of the same rights and tools as a regular citizen would have and oftentimes more, unfortunately.

Corporations have the same rights as people; otherwise your freedom of speech and other rights could be abridged while you're conducting business as a corporation, which we don't want.

You don't conduct business as a corporation. The corporation conducts business.

The corporation conducts business through its agents. What point are you making?

This isn’t making sense to me. Why does a corporation need freedom of speech? Are you saying that if it were otherwise, I would lose my first amendment rights when I’m on the clock?

I assure you my rights would be in no way limited by rules preventing what the Microsoft Board of director's do with other people's money.

What kind of mental model breakage made you put "a citizen" into a position of an unaccountable megacorporation in your analogy?

Unaccountable mega corporations are part of the commonwealth. Per citizens United they have rights too

I can't really tell if this is sarcasm, but whatever rights corporations have in the UK certainly isn't established by a United States Supreme Court decision.

This forum is sometimes exact same as r/USdefaultism

You're right, the concept of legal personality was established by common law from before George Washington was even a twinkle in his father's eye. See: Case of Sutton's Hospital.

A corporation is just a group of people deciding to do something together according to certain rules. It wouldn't make sense that one person, with a lot of resources could do something within their rights, but a group of people with the same pooled resources couldn't do that thing.

Kant would like a word.

It absolutely makes sense and we regularly treat synthetic organizations differently than individuals. It's the only way to build good society.

You said yourself that corporations can only do what they do according to certain rules.

Those rules are not the same as those for individuals.

That is precisely what it means to say that one person, with a certain amount of resources, can do things that a group of people, with the same amount of pooled resources, is forbidden from doing.

The rules generally exist describing how group decision making occurs, how liability is distributed, etc, not rules limiting the rights of what the group can do.

Lord Templeman, law lord, in Hazell v Hammersmith and Fulham summarized the law thusly:

> That report[Case of Sutton's Hospital], although largely incomprehensible in 1990, has been accepted as "express authority" that at common law it is an incident to a corporation to use its common seal for the purpose of binding itself to anything which a natural person could bind himself and to deal with its property as a natural person might deal with his own

That’s a super weird analogy. The citizen wanted to do something and was rebutted by the mayor. The mayor was elected.

Microsoft is complaining that the mayor, in their example, was not elected.