Corporations are evil

Or are they?

But before one jumps to the conclusion that therefore corporations should be denied the right to influence political decisions in the interests of efficiency, more must be considered. For example, last month, over one hundred public corporations, most of them high-tech firms, filed a brief opposing the legality of the executive order signed by President Trump barring various immigrants.1) This can be viewed as collective action by firms in defense of capitalism and the free flow of goods and services. Those opposed to firms lobbying regulatory agencies would probably approve this defense by corporations of human rights. Nor was this case unique. Corporations, like Apple, Facebook, and Google, have regularly defended human rights.

The above quote is from John C. Coffee Jr (Adolf A. Berle Professor of Law and director of the Center on Corporate Governance at Columbia Law School) in an interview at the Pro-Market blog. The idea that firms can be defenders of human rights is not an idea that many of our anti-corporation, anti-capitalism, anti-globalisation, anti-free trade warriors have given much thought but it is an idea that deserves more attention than it gets.