Leaving is the second-best option when you are being robbed of your capital rights. Fighting back is the first best option.
Your solution to the problem of shareholder rights in corporation is that shareholders will leave corporations, hence corporations will be destroyed. How is that a solution that results in the existence of corporations?
Scineram I apologize for callign you out, as your last statement was the first time I have ever seen you write a full paragraph. I do appreciate the contribution but I do not think it follows logically that shared ownership can only be developed by legal avenues alone.
You asked to look back at a time when corporations did not exist, a time before states allowed incorporation. I think looking back that far you would not have found an economy large enough for such business models to make sense. Historically speaking economies were geographically smaller and confined. There are hundreds of other variables for why corporations may not have made sense back then.
Perhaps it would be the case that private business’s would simply grow out of pleasing the consumer alone. I would buy that argument. I also think however to the contrary that a private business with a good track record would benefit themselves, and the public, by beginning to sell out shares of their company.
If you invest in a business and they fail, there have been no violation of rights.
Re-write this so it makes sense please.
When you start a sentence which states “Your Solution” it makes me think you are putting words in my mouth. I have presented no such solution to anything, I am asking a question. I am simply asking how/why it logically follows that joint ownership amongst many parties would not exist in a stateless society. I will not accept history as a valid example as most historically examples are economies that were a fraction of the size we have today and then suffered from numerous counter-productive reasons.
I am not necessarily sure there would be more risk. I would imagine that there would be various rating agency’s and a myraid of free market mechanisms which keep track of these thigns on behalf of the consumer.
So the value judgment has been made on someone’s behalf for everyone else?
Agreed. But don’t be surprised if people ask you “how will it work, then!?”
They fail to understand that it is not your job to design or implement a working system, but for free individuals to come up with one as they please. Asking “How would X work in the absence of Y? Give a detailed answer or you concede the point that it’s impossible.” is as fair as asking someone from 1000 years ago “How could man fly? If you can’t come up with a detailed answer of how man can fly, you concede that it is impossible.”
There is no proof that in a free society, corporations wouldn’t develop or exist. No doubt, there can be anecdotal evidence showing that there were situations which were hostile to the existence and development of corporations, but that does not create a logical argument against the possibility of them existing and doing well in a different time or place.
filc,
I assume you agree that corporations are creations of the state. As such, without the state there would be no corporations.
People of course could still decide to lend someone else money in return for a partial ownership in the business venture, but they would not be shielded from liability as such. So why would people want to make this arrangement, without getting major control of the business? I think it would be far too risky for people to do. As such, I don’t see this king of arrangement taking place. You would just have people lending other people money with a promise of payment and interest in return.
That is an opinion you hold. And it may be a valid one but I did not ask about whether or not you personally would risk investing in such a firm. I asked if it follows logically that they would not exist at all.
Let me ask you this. Do drivers only exist because the state grants drivers licenses?
If you dislike the word corporation, what do you think about the concept of a public equity firm as Nielso brought up. I feel like some people are eager to get bogged down in semantics, I am simply only concerned with generally public traded business.
That’s exactly it. The best case against the existence of some kinds corporations without a state is just a personal value judgment of “I wouldn’t like it.”
I think it does, given that it does not make sense to buy shares of a company that does not have state protection.
Does a drivers license create a driver? No. Does a corporation license create a corporation? Yes.
Why would anyone buy shares without protection from liability? Why not just lend the business owner’s money?
I would be happy to buy a share of a company that I speculated was going to grow in the near future.
The same reason they do so today. The stocks I trade in today are not protected. If those companies fall I will lose, no one will bail me out. Yet I continue to invest and millions of american’s continue to invest along with me, all via incentive to profit. I do homework finding the safest avenues, it’s worked out well for me so far. I don’t see how the state offers protection where a free market wouldn’t.
The only difference I see is people would be investing in company’s that offer good produce to the market, not fascist companies with heavy state partnerships.
You have to pretend a level of ignorance when you talk to me about some of these things. I haven’t a clue as to what this statement has to do with anything.
Again non-sequitur. In the absence of the state it doesn’t follow that there would be no shared ownership.
You see the flaw in your reasoning?
You have to get a state licenses to do business in any state, does that mean there will be no business’s when there is no state?