@goedelchen Fair point about Enron, etc, but I think we're talking at cross purposes. I'm not suggesting that it's a bad thing that companies are treated as “persons” to some extent - I'd agree that doing so is pretty much essential for the human race to carry out any activities involving more than a few dozen people.

What I'm suggesting is that the problem that leads to the original comment “I'm so old I remember when "corporation" didn't mean "person"” comes not from corporations being treated as people, which as you rightly point out has happened for a long time, but from the gradual drift to corporations being accepted as amoral actors single-mindedly maximising shareholder value, treating fines as just the cost of doing business and getting caught, right up to the point where they're egregiously breaking the law.

The case I have in mind is the major oil producers who not only overtly argue against action on climate change, as you might expect from any “person” whose interests are at stake, but also covertly fund arguments against the science behind the calls for action when they know from their own research that those arguments are not valid. If a real person acted in that way they'd receive social pushback even though lying isn't a crime as such. With corporations we just shrug and say well, that's what corporations do to maximise shareholder value.

@GeePawHill