Um… whut? I was merely establishing that, according to the law which the incorporators voluntarily utilize to their advantage, the government creates a new, legal person, which owns all assets and bears the primary responsibility for them as that owner. The letter of the law here leaves no doubt as to that.
Of course, somebody from whom I draw heavily doesn’t happen to be a senior fellow at this insitute.
It doesn’t follow.
The text of the Fifth Amendment only states that it applies to people. A court, whose opinion represents the official interpretation of the law, said that it applied to corporations, and that corporations are therefore legally people. Finally, the law under which most corporations incorporate states that such corporations can own assets. How, therefore, does it not follow that legally, the corporation is the person that would own the corporate assets it’s said to own?
JCFolsom, is there a reason you are not responding to my posts to you? Oversight?
So your argument rests on the rationale and legitimacy of state law?
Is it just me, or is this backwards? You don’t think the state is legitimate, but you use it’s laws to make your points about legitimacy?
I don’t think the state is legitimate, but I do think that those who unjustly restrict the rights of others by voluntarily marshalling the power of the state ought to suffer the bad along with the good. They voluntarily incorporated for its benefits, thereby illegitimately restricting the rights of others for redress of grievances. Since they signed on to this, we ought to take them at their word, for which they were more than willing to take benefit, and treat their property as we would any property held by an apparatus of the state.
Thanks for dealing with the oversight.
Seems to me like you’re trying to have it both ways. You don’t think the state is legit. You don’t think corporations are legit. But since corporations exist under the state paradigm, you will accept that they … are legit to order to illegitimize them?
I’m not trying to be a smart ass here, but isn’t this pretty much vulgar libertarianism on steroids?
It just seems to me that if the state is illegitimate, then how can it make any of it’s constructs you admittedly don’t recognize, legit?
It’s kewl. Sorry you felt ignored. I just am responding to folks in the time I have.
The point is not that the construct is legitimate, but merely that in participating, the incorporators have voluntarily ceded ownership of their property. It isn’t important who they ceded ownership to or why, but that they did. Since the person that “owns” it now is fictional and illegitimate, that property is open for homesteading.
Yeah, but I think you’re really taking a lot of license with this. In order to make the position that the fictional corporate person is created, you have to grant that the state has the legitimate power to do so.
Then there is the issue that if the corporate person is legitimate in ownership of the property, then you have no right to homestead it.
It was clever, and took several posts to figure out. Kudos to you for that. But I’m quite sure it’s a paradox.
There is no paradox. I can say I give widget x to the unicorn over there and walk away. Now, there is actually no unicorn. However, I have already surrendered my claim to the widget. Thus, whoever wants to can come around and take the widget. See? The corporation is a unicorn, one the state says actually exists and, if I just give my stuff to him, then negligence with that property will be blamed on the unicorn. At the same time, I can claim all the profits from the unicorn.
You’ve just changed the argument though. You said that the state legitimized the corporate form, now you say it does not exist at all and is a figment of imagination. Which again is clever, but fails for different reasons. Clearly the capital is not given to a non-existent fictional entity.
Your whole anti-corporate deal, is based on extra legal privileges for a non-person created by the state. So either the corporation exists, or it does not. If it doesn’t then it doesn’t act, and thus you have no reason to beef over it. It’s just a bunch of silly shareholders depositing their cash on the ground outside a skyscraper, praying for dividends.
Ok, ok, let me start over, and yes, perhaps slightly revise. . .
If I say, “I no longer own this asset,” then you can homestead it. Right?
If I say, “I used to own this asset, but now it belongs to Bob,” implicit in that statement is “I no longer own this asset.” The difference being that you can’t homestead it, because it belongs to Bob if he claims it. Right?
Likewise, if I say, “I used to own this asset, but now it belongs to Megawidget Inc.,” the same implication exists. Right?
Now, let’s say I give an asset to Megawidget, but only because a third party, the State (another corporation, really), promises me that by doing so I will gain several priviledges. One is that I will continue to collect the profits made through the use of the asset, and I will be able to maintain a large degree of control over it. Not only that, but because I no longer own the asset, it is the corporation who is responsible for misuse resulting in injury of a victim.
Unfortunately for me, the state is an illegitimate entity. If what ought to be done is done, it will be overthrown, and thus unable to fulfill its part of the bargain. Even more unfortunately, it is not the corporation, but the state with which I made the deal. Therefore, I do not have recourse against the corporation to reclaim my property, but only the state. . . which no longer exists.
The corporation, being a part of a legal system which no longer exists, also ceases to exist. The property which I voluntarily gave up my rights to now can be claimed by the ones currently using it, most likely the laborers the corporation once employed.
And instead of blindly following Rothbard about everything, I have the independance to say that Konkin was correct in that particular debate (Konkin was argueing against political participation, Rothbard was defending it). Konkin had the correct position. Rothbard was wrong. What a concept! Rothbard wasn’t perfect!
Furthermore, Rothbard later came around and left the LP.
It just doesn’t follow that the state owns the assets of the corporations.
I believe JCFolsom’s position is that the assets become unowned, because people yield them to a non-existent entity or something.
I had to stop trying to follow it last night because I was too tired to think straight.
Nonsense. Since the state does not produce all state property must be expropriated. To claim that state property is “up for grabs” is to claim that state theft actually causes the original owner to lose title to their property.
If there were a problem with “yielding assets to non existent entities” (which a corporation is not anyway), then the contract would be void and the original owners would keep control of their assets.