Should Corporations, LLC, Etc. Be Abolished as legal...

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Two very fundamental errors need to be pointed out.

First is Fnord's claim that a company is not considered a person in any way. This is completely incorrect. The whole purpose of incorporation is to create a new legal person. A corporation can sue, and it can be sued. It has the right to own property, and the capacity to enter into contracts. Prior to the development of corporations, these were activities limited to "natural persons" in Common Law.

However, a legal person is not a natural person. Only a natural person can be a citizen. Only a natural person can vote. It should never be assumed that a corporation's being a legal person is somehow equivalent to the package of rights enjoyed by natural persons.

The second fundamental error is zer0netgain's assertion that officers and directors are not liable for their actions. Officers are employees of corporations, and in any employment situation, an employer is liable for the actions of its employees, provided that the employees were acting in the normal course of their duties. This is the principal of "vicarious liability." It matters not whether the employer is a corporation, a partnership, a proprietorship or a natural person, the doctrine still holds. Meanwhile, directors, when they act within the scope of their authority are protected because their action is to cause the corporation to act. It is the corporation's action that give rise to the liability.

But when officers and directors step outside their authority, then the land alters. Now personal liability will attach, because of the failure to adhere to the conferred authority.

Finally, there are specific statutory obligations that fall on officers and directors (most often directors) regardless of whether they act within their authority or not. For example, in Canada, directors of corporations are personally liable for the remission of deductions taken at source from employees for payment of income taxes, CPP premiums and EI premiums. If the corporation fails to remit, the directors can be sued personally. In British Columbia, the directors of companies are personally liable for up to two months of unpaid wages not paid to employees.

Corporate personality is an essential feature of the Common Law and Civil Law worlds. Without the capacity to enter into contracts, the entire raison d'etre of corporations would disappear.

And the limitation of shareholder liability is equally important. Shareholder's liability for the debts of the corporation is limited to their investment. (That's what "limited liability" really means.) If I invest $1,000 in ABC Ltd. and ABC Ltd. goes bankrupt, I kiss my $100 goodbye. But that's it. Without the ability to protect investors from exposure to the debts of corporations, equities would, quite simply, disappear, and the only investment vehicle left would be bonds.

Corporations and private enterprise are the free market by definition. There would be no free market without the private sector, it would be a complete tyranny, or communism, which ever you want to call it.

HAH.

No, worker cooperatives and credit unions operate within markets, and they are not private enterprises. I am not much of a market socialist myself, but people need to stop ignoring the fact that they exist. Mutualists are against private property (but not personal possession) because they believe in property based on occupancy and active personal use. Private enterprises need state violence (privatized or publicized), or else the people occupying and using the offices, factories etc. have the option to call their own shots. Private enterprises are dictatorships, where one individual has absolute authority because of state violence. Private enterprises are central planed economies.

Let me start a free enterprise called: Crush the Unions Co. It will be the most publicly loved company, while it actually engages in anti-union lobbying. We will be hq'd in Japan, and also own our own manga publishing division, and start custom car shops all over osaka and tokyo. With this we will crush the union, and make sure everybody pays, and gets paid.

Your assessment seems to me irrelevant to the question at hand. Cooperatives and credit unions are, generally, organized as corporations. They enjoy the same legal personality that a for-profit business corporation enjoys. Were this not the case, they would not be capable of forming contracts.

Also, your assessment is wholly incorrect. Cooperatives and credit unions are most certainly private enterprises. The ownership of the assets of the organization and the entitlement to share in the proceeds of the organization's activities lie with private individuals--the membership. In this sense they are in exactly the same position as the shareholders of a business corporation.

I would question the first. Corporations were birthed out of mercantilism, thus not a capitalist institution, and thus the reason for me questioning it. I think that corporations as a legal identity need to go away, in favor of a more loose way of organizing businesses (instead of 5 or 10 ways to form a business, you could have thousands). Now as far as liability is concerned, I agree with 99% of this, but what about the owner? Shouldn't owners of a business (in certain instances where they know they day to day operations) be able to be sued? That is what I am saying. If an employee errs outside the company, then of course they should be sued. But my question was, do we need corporations (as a legal entity) to exist? Or could we just form a corporation or whatever to fit our needs? In other words, why not have a free market in terms of structures of businesses?

Worker cooperatives are not private enterprises nor are they organized like them.

Individuals are individuals, and if everyone in the enterprise has a say in the decisions that effect it, it is ultimately owned collectively. There does not need to be a state recognizing collective ownership in it's law for it to exist.

Repeating a lie does not make it true.

Worker cooperatives are private, because the ownership is limited to closed class of private individuals. Just because they hold the property collectively in no way diminishes the private character of the proprietary interest.



Collective ownership is still private ownership.

And there absolutely must be a state to recognize collective ownership. Property is a creation of law. A collective's ability to hold property to the exclusion of individuals who are not members of the collective depends upon one of two things: the law; or the use of force. The former requires a state, the latter is a short road to warlordism.

Corporations and capitalist cooperatives are private because the members don't have equal say. In a private enterprise all the power is nested into the hands of a single individual, and I'm not saying the shareholders of a corporation can't influence the decisions the ruler makes.
In a worker cooperative, every member is a shareholder and every member has equal say in the decisions that effect it.

An enterprise does not need a state to have exclusionary qualities. The collective can do the exclusion themselves without any third parties, and rightfully so because they are the people occupying and using the facilities. You may argue that there is private character, but that does not mean it's private property.

Warlordism is a type of statism, another example of how terrible vertical collectivism is. Rulers have no place in an anarchist society.

Monopolies like private property occur when a single individual has absolute rule over something not attended for direct personal use and as a result relies on violence from third parties (states) to subordinate the people who occupy it. CEO's need state power to control the people within the institutions, otherwise the people involved have no reason not to expropriate the property and self manage.

No, corporations are private because the equity is not owned by the state or agencies of it. It has nothing whatsoever to do with the governance structure.



But where do they get the ability to do that? There is no exclusion without property, there is no property without law; there is no law without a state.

You cannot just put up a sign and say, "This building belongs to the 123rd Workers Coooperative." The Cooperative must either buy it, or build it on land that they own. In either case, the agency of the State is involved because land title is within the exclusive jurisdiction of the state.



Warlordism happens when there is no responsible government in the state to prevent it. Anarchists societies always devolve into warlordism. They always have, and they always will.

Your romantic dreams count for nothing in a world full of actual people.

I would disagree with the first point, even though I believe in free markets. The economic output is private, but the economic structure is a state granted charter (look it up). These can be revoked at the states will. my argument originally was should you be required to form a charter in order to have a structure? Since corporations as they stand are government entities, they are not a natural part of the free market. The hierarchy (chairman, investors, board, ceos) would be though. The thing that separates them from just another organization is their charter. Should we abolish charters?

There has got to be some way of limiting business liabilities without making a corporation into an artificial person.

In state law this is true, but in the real world things are not binary. There is more types of ownership than state and private. The state does not recognize collective ownership, because it's role is to enforce private ownership. The state does not want the people to self manage the commons.

In an anarchist society law is derived from community assemblies, though the firms can be autonomous and make their own constitutions.

Because of the state.

You are still thinking in terms of state law.

Warlordism happens when people allow themselves to be commanded by unjustified authorities. Anarchism is a rejection of unjustified authority.

the only thing LLC saves you from is law suites from past clients.because most creditors you deal with wholesale will force you to sign something that makes the owner of the limited laibility corporation personaly responsable for whole sale debts.

Well there's a disagreement. I don't think this hierarchy would take very long to dissolve if the state died yesterday. Private property is mainly what makes this type of organization possible.

Oh, will you please just go to law school for four months.

"Ownership," only exists in the law of property. There is no such thing as ownership outside a system of laws.

And you are certainly wrong when you claim that the state doesn't recognize collective ownership. Look up the meaning of joint tenancy--that is the essence of collective ownership. Other examples include partnerships, cooperative corporations and religious communities. Anywhere where a person has a legally enforceable, undivided one-part interest in property, the law has recognized collective ownership.

You seem to believe that "private property" means "property owned by an individual." Your logic is inherently flawed. Private property is all property that is not public property. And public property is limited to that which is owned by the state and by its agencies.



First, name one--any one--anarchist society that has ever existed after the onset of civilization?

Second, your anarchist society has just created a state. As soon as you create law, and the law is applied to the members of a society, and that society has a defined territory from which it can effectively exclude others, you have all the hallmarks of a nation state. Your anarchist society has just evolved into what it sought to replace.



You're being tautological. I am thinking in terms of law. There can be no law without a state.

And of course I am thinking of law, because property is a legal concept. It has no meaning outside of law.



Anarchism is the dreamland occupied by fools. It is doomed to fail in every attempt to create it in a society composed of a population greater than one.