How do corporations feature in libertarian philosophy? How is it that a corporation can be a legal person that owns land, has contractual rights and obligations,etc.? How can a group of people be a moral agent if in fact it is the individual people who make decisions?
I doubt they’d exist in a recognizable form. I would also think that there would be many more cooperative production facilities than there are now.
I’ve been wondering if there is a cohesive philosophy of collective action out there…Individual cooperation with complex dispositional interactions _action/reaction; dialectics) seems to be about the best we can do…Groups can only act through a bureacratic agency as far as I know; the iron law of oligarchy, the vanguard of the proletariat, representative democracy; hierarchy, etc. are all demonstrations of group action and or group agency.
As to LLC, there are some posts on here that explain why LLC is a state-granted privilege (as it is right now).
A corporation is a collection of individuals operating under one will. Therefore, many consider this entity with one will to be one moral agent.
Companies will do the same exact thing they have already done in the United States. They will form trade associations to establish rules for their benefit which will initially manifest in their contracts and eventually form an entire commerical system that is only about money. The profit motive is the seed of capitalism that will inevitably lead to it’s own destruction. I am not against capitalism per se but when the profit motive becomes the only moral foundation of a people that society must eventually face the reality that there is more to life than profit. There is no system or solution that can make everyone moral. The ability to make a bad choice is the fundamental flaw of choice. In my opinion the only saving grace of unbridaled capitalism is that it doesn’t claim to force anyone to be moral. If the people in a capitalist society are moral it will flourish, Once the people in a capitalist society become immoral it will fail but isn’t this true of any system? Is there any other system that doesn’t claim it can force people to be moral?
How can those individuals transfer their agency to the one will? Your statement doesn’t make any sense. How is the individual agency diminshed, in what capacity is their agency made to be equally distributed to the one will? Why can not Rousseau’s social contract be workable in some regard if the corporation can do it? Can one corporation then do it with another? Because if they can then presumably their will be possible a situation where the entire world population has distributed their agency into some bureacracy where the result is only one will and one agency.
Pretty much.
Its the same thing but theres no limitation or transfer of liability. In fact its highly unlikely to get very big because theres so much liability. If you let your roommate borrow your car, and you know he is going to use it to commit a crime, you just became an accessory. Likewise if corporate assets were used in the comission of a crime, the management, board of directors, and ownership would all face liability.
this works because you cant tell people that they are unable to make contracts that share ownership. You can divide ownership into shares, and those shareholders can elect representatives, all voluntarily and noncoercively and stuff. You just might have a problem (aka dispute) with all of them at some future point.
Bob Johnson of Johnson Plumbing made a contract with a hotel to provide plumbing service for a month. If he doesn’t provide the service, he has to pay a fine (or return money, etc.).
He suddenly dies, and Johnson Plumbing is inherited by his son, Bill. The hotel insists that the same terms apply to Bill, or, rather, to Johnson Plumbing, of which Bill is the current owner. Bill asserts that he never personally made any contract with the hotel; he just inherited a building and a bunch of money from his father.
Which side would libertarian law support?
Stephan Kinsella has written a lot on the topic. Here is one of his articles:
Also, I would recommend listening to his course which he taught at Mises Academy titled “Libertarian Legal Theory”. The course covers this topic, plus a bunch of others. It was released for free by him here:
Thanks for the links.
I can’t find where specifically I can listen to his lectures. All the links seem to be just advertisements of the course.
Throughout the page there is clickable links above each Google Doc which says:
(mp3 download)
Bill asserts that he never personally made any contract with the hotel; he just inherited a building and a bunch of money from his father.
Which side would libertarian law support?
I would say it depends on the wording of the contract. If Bob pledged his property (performance bonds are not unheared of even today), then the hotel has a claim to that property, and withholding it would be theft. The contract need also probably to specify that any party may perform the service, not just Bob, though I presume the hotel might waive absence of such a clause anyway.
So, in other words, Bill does not have to perform the service, unless he wants to keep the performance bond (or in absence of it, his reputation). BTW, exactly the same terms applied to Bob.
What else is there to life?
Contracts:
Under libertarian law, in my view, corporate personhood is nothing but shorthand for a complex of ordinary contracts. The legal relationships established by a creditor lending on terms of limited liability to the corporation could be replicated exactly by a series of like contracts between the creditor and each of the shareholders; the corporate “person” is injected between the creditor and the shareholders as a mere legal fiction whose function is only to simplify the arrangements for practical purposes. As such, corporate personhood does not represent any substantial addition to the body of law, but only an addition to the body of legal terminology. It is incorrect to think of “the corporation,” with respect to any contracts to which it might be party, as a moral agent in any real sense: i.e. in any sense other than as a shorthand for numerous moral agents.
Torts:
Nor is it appropriate to think of corporations as moral agents with respect to torts. Each employee of the corporation is liable for his own tortious actions in the same way as any other person whatsoever; his employment by the corporation changes nothing. Likewise, a given shareholder is not liable for the tortious actions of an employee of the corporation simply in virtue of being a shareholder; his liability (like that of any other person whatsoever) depends entirely on what if any involvement he had in the commission of the tort.
But the shareholders could end up with profits, but without being economically liable.
But the shareholders could end up with profits, but without being economically liable.
They could also end up with losses, what is exactly your point? That their liability is limited to 100% of their investment?
I read somewhere that corporations are a legal entity enforced by the state. I started think about that - and it’s true. I don’t really think that corporations need to exist in a libertarian society for people to group together to do business. Through the current status of corporations, I believe that there can indeed be “corporate tyranny.”
That one can only loose what one puts into a LLC, but one can make alot more than one puts into a LLC, without being economically liable for potential damages that occur after one has received dividends that far exceeds what one put into the LLC in the first place.
That one can only loose what one puts into a LLC, but one can make alot more than one puts into a LLC, without being economically liable for potential damages that occur after one has received dividends that far exceeds what one put into the LLC in the first place.
If you bet on a single number in roulette, you can make a lot more than you put on the table, so?
Probably we should examine closer what you mean by “potential damages”. Competitors receiving less profit? Employees of competitors getting fired? People or their property getting hurt by employees of the LLC? I do not see the former two cases as an issue, and in the latter case the specific employees who aggressed are liable. Are you aware of “I was only following my orders” defence?
If the shareholders receive dividends, and later on its discovered that the oprations of the company has hurt other people/damaged other peoples property, the receivers of the dividends wont be liable, eventhough they profitted from the business practises. And it`s the owners/receivers of the dividends who have the funds to pay for the damages, not the employees.