Whose justice? And who’s going to enforce the verdict–a bunch of angry philosophy majors?
And what do you mean you can live wherever you want? In an anarchist society, you can only live where people agree to your presence. Furthermore, all movement off your property must be with the permission of adjoining property owners.
Do you claim ownership of the bank? Ownership implies control. Whether you cede that control to someone else or not is your choice and your risk. It is and ought to be a risk, though. As for your CD, that is a loan to the bank, for which they owe you interest. You don’t own the money, you own the debt. You’ve sold current money to them for more money in the future. A purchase of stock is different. You haven’t bought a debt, that would be a bond. You’ve bought a part of the business itself (fictionally, but I’ll leave that out for now), and it is your fault if you invest in a company that will do things that expose you to victims seeking damages.
Investing in a company with umpteen billion shares over which you’ll have no control will thus be a bad idea. Sorry, but the economies of scale, the monopolies, that result might not be so possible. Businesses might have to be smaller, more personal and local in scale. So sad. Boo-hoo! Family farms, artisans and small shops, what a horror!
They won’t. But for the pre-State institutions of Tribe or Faith, they will fight to the death. This is another reason anarchy will be largely feudal. Fortunately, there’ll be a lot of fees to choose from, and if you don’t like your fee you’ll be able to purchase membership in a different fee. The fees may even be detachable from geography, which is what will distinguish this new form of feudalism from that of the Medieval period.
If your a shareholder you are owed the profit from the company much the same as interest from the bank or various other laws that are akin to rental property. The idea of ownership of the company means you have ownership in it’s profits much like I have ownership in some of the profits of the bank but it does not mean I run the company or the bank, merely that I suppy the capital. Dont get lost in the semantics of the legal terms, they pretty much are the same thing. Plus I have already mentioned shareholders can be held liable under certain circumstances.
Not all shares earn dividends. Corporate shares to not imply, therefore, a portion of the profits. The difference is not a mere matter of semantics.
By dividend do you mean cash? The reason I ask is because many dividends are not cash but might be some other form of payment not in cash.
Also in a society without large stock diffusion there would still be large units of economic concentration just less wealth diffusion.
By dividend I mean some portion of the corporate profits, in whatever form, payed directly to the shareholder.
But if it is in any form than it would not always come out of the company’s profits. For instance it might be more stock.
If they offer it, it is your option to take it. But they need not do so. Most stocks on the market today offer no dividends of any kind, and their value is merely in the expectation that their value will increase and can be resold.
What is the matter with that? The same thing happens on any securities market. Just because stock is not the same as some general loan or asset does not mean anything since there are many different features of securities as well as many diverse types of loans that have different natures to them. Not to mention the multitude of rental agreements and liabilities.
But as far as limited liability goes how is that wrong. If you and I made a contract that named me as the manager of the business and as the prinicipal person dealing with the responsibilty of the company and made you liable to the amount of money you put into the company as long as you did not do much more than that.
For instance If I without your discrestion diverted company operations to destroy someones property and then the company was sued. You contractually are not responsible for that since you ceded the operation and general responsibilities to me and you would only be responsible so far as what you invested into the company but if it was found that you were cooperating with me on the wanton property destruction you would be held liable and the “veil” would be lifted.
Despite what people think limited liability is not limitless under the common law.
Well, I could still be sued, because our contract does not effect the injured party unless he is a signatory to it. However, you would be obligated to pay me so that the effect on me is the same. It would basically be like homeowners insurance. If I leave a bear trap lying around and someone gets caught in it and sues me, they sue me, not my insurance company, and then I collect from my insurance company the damages minus probably some deductible. In this case the difference in the end effects is negligible, but the difference in definitions is significant in other circumstances.
I’m not a big “common law” guy, see. All that is is a consensus of dead people from a different age. Inasmuch as common law supports illogical and unjust institutions, I am against it.
Yeah, a lot of that stuff would go away without government intervention (whether you call it that or not). It is tragic, I know, but people in a just and truly free society would actually have to produce something to prosper. Wierd, huh?
Again, illogical structures will persist only in the presence of force. People will usually interact with each other in a reasonable fashion of their own accord. It takes force to make them do otherwise. Corporations are composed of a series of fictions, and we act as if they are anything more than the fantasies they area only because we are forced to. You may see benefits of corporate structures in terms of overall productivity (though, I’ve worked in and with corporations, and I am not certain that is the case), but I am not primarily interested in what produces the most wealth.
I would agree with that statement but Common law is a system not a code and is therefore flexible for change.
People are capable of being sued under any situation. But it might not stand up in court since the weighing of responsibilty as made explicit with the contract you have made clearly shows who is the prime defendant. Of course that can change depending on information or evidence that shows otherwise.
Why imply that anyone has a problem with this? If you are mocking investment as a means to prosperity, then we’re set back significantly in the discussion.
You don’t like corporations. We get it.
That said, I would have agreed with your position a week ago, but I now see that it is badly flawed, and thus have corrected my stance.
People have the right to collaborate under any business model they wish, as long as it does not infringe upon the NAP. Yes or no?
If yes, then corporations should be allowed to dictate their own level of liability to consumers and investors, and enforce that contract commensurately. If the level of liability is not sufficient or desirable, the corporation will flounder or fail.
But to imply that there is some higher law that prevents corporations from doing this, to me, does not seem to be supported under the common tenets of the major sects of libertarianism.
I see you are trying to paint me as a utilitarian in my arguments. Anyway I am just trying to point out that there is nothing anti libertarian about a voluntary corporate structure. As far as attacking the securities market I find that interesting. What about it is so evil and governmental when you take out government bonds or the federal reserve?
I wont lie, I find it funny that you are attacking something in the common law which holds shareholders liable. Something I assume you would agree with but instead you just critique common law as something silly.
Well, laugh it up. I am against the “shareholders” bit altogether, so I don’t even get to the liability part.
What do you think of the “ficitional” account of business partnerships and the various laws (contractual that is) that arise amongst them. For instance I could argue that it is awful that one partner is held liable for the specific actions of the other even if they had nothing to do with them.
This will be my last post on this topic, because in the course of this conversation larger points of logic and philosophy have been called into consideration which I must ponder.
A partnership, inasmuch as it is characterized by some shared ownership of assets and rights to profits as established in a contract between individuals is not a fiction. If I am sued because of what my partner did, and our contract contains such a clause, I can turn around and demand or even sue him for the damages which were collected from me. It would be wise to include such a clause in any contract of shared ownership. That being said, it would come into effect only after the fact and should have no effect whatsoever on how the contracturally unbound suer proceeds with his case.