Only myself and others have stated that this isn’t the case, so perhaps you should stop posting strawmen and try some intellectual honesty. I hope I’m not asking to much.
Red herring. And who could be effected by the contract and not agree to it? (And furthermore distinguish between the contract and any other in the sense that they effect 3rd parties).
Once again, strawman.
You’ve got some reading to do, I see. In any case, it is you that begs the question as to how these people are responsible. Moreover who says you can ask for restitution? You need to fit your arguments to reality, as opposed to your leftist utopia.
No true scotsman, perhaps?
Guilt by assocation and a strawman? Kinsella adressed this, if you’d bothered to do your reading you would have known that.
No, they’re not. By the way, there’s other reasons that the social contract is invalid besides this one, I wonder why you don’t mention those. Is it perhaps, because they’re inconsistant with the bullshit you spew your argument?
I suggest you stop ingesting so many mushrooms, you’re clearly imagining things, this is the first in depth post I’ve written about this. (Either that, of you’re lying through your teeth, neither suprises me).
The only problem of corporations is the means in which they are executed, not the basic reasons why the concept of a corporation is held as necessary (i.e. as a distribution tool, a medium of doing buisness, etc.).
I think most of the objections are over semantics, & sometimes I feel like the arguments for & against easily ignore the fact that corporations obviously emerged as a tool of some sort in society.
It is not unreasonable to think, then, that the corporation (the concept, not actual corporations) might go through a revision & a name change under a stateless society. Hell, this has already occurred, mostly under people’s noses, with The Internet, and pretty soon, brick & mortar buildings will be rather out-dated in favor of warehouses & a site on The Internet.
I apologize for jumping in a bit, I should be reading the rest of the thread instead, lol.
That’s because you like to obfuscate your posts with bullshit. Try being concise, it’ll save both of us time.
I’ve been civil to others? Actually there’s quite a few people who haven’t been civil to you, I suggest you figure out the lower common denominator? Perhaps if you stopped posting replies that are replete with strawmen and ad homs you might be entitled to a little civility.
The truck example is pretty cut-and-dry. The slip-and-fall is a bit different. Someone is responsible for it, after all, the store didn’t make its own floors wet. I’ll agree that it is likely not the fault of any shareholder.
But, most corporations cover employees (e.g.,) with some umbrella protection, so Joe the Mopper doesn’t get slammed with a lawsuit because he was on his break when a cleanup was needed in Aisle Seven. Currently, the corporation/LLC would be sued for the damages, which by proxy affects all of the shareholders proportionately to their ownership stakes.
One could examine my argument and say that it is imprudent to lend your money (as a bank, etc.) if you haven’t taken reasonable precautions to know how that money will be spent. In this case, it is the failure to do due diligence that would be negligent behavior: I can’t just give my money to someone and say “I don’t care what you do or how you do it, as long as you pay me back +20% next year.” That’s asking for trouble, no?
I think many of us would agree only because I haven’t seen many instances (if any) where people have disagreed.
This is a popular left-libertarian strawman however. That our collective vulgarity (those who don’t identify LL) is that we can’t imagine utopia and seem to be rooted in the established order.
Oh, so you’re rejecting the libertarian case against social contract theory? In that case, the state is legitimate by your line of reasoning.
We’re effected by state laws without agreeing to them all the time. People can easily be effected by a contract without agree with it - by the people who made the contract enforcing it onto unwilling 3rd parties, which is what my point is about.
You like to simply throw out claims of logical fallacies without explaining why or making an actual argument. “Straw man”. “Red herring”. It’s weak. What’s ironic is that I’m making reductio ad absurdums, not straw men.
Are you going to actually respond to the content, or just be evasive and repeat the words “straw man” over and over?
How are these people responsible? Let me use an example. Suppose your corporation dumps toxic waste on my property, and I never signed any contract with it. They OBVIOUSLY are responsible, and according to a libertarian theory of justice, I OBVIOUSLY need restitution. To argue otherwise is simply to argue that corporations have no responsibility, a blanket attempt to remove responsibility. A claim of limited liability in this case is just plain hogwash. Merely dismissing the matter out of hand with anti-leftist rhetoric doesn’t do well for you.
No, he has not adequately addressed this, all he does is repeat the conflating assumption that the legal status of currently existing corporations are all somehow the result of a purely contractually limited liability, when the obvious reality of the matter is a matter of state law, not simply private contracts. It is foolish to pretend that the currently existing context of state law isn’t there. It is.
You’re not specifying, just looking for a way out.
Well, that’s sort of the point. You can sue the corporation, which most people actually tend to do. Since, as somebody mentioned “they have bigger pockets”. But if the corporation goes bankrupt I fail to see what gives you the right to go through the pockets of the shareholders. Who may not even have given money to the corporation.
Yes you can, since there’s no proof of causation. I don’t mean to sound condescending, but have you read Kinsella’s paper on this?
I find it ironic that you repeatedly claim that you’ve been strawmanned, and yet use this to make a straw man of your own (such as claims of utopianism). You are being disingenous.
To be honest my grip with the Alliance of Libertarian Left is not in the ideas, which I find correct, but the allies it tries to side with…
The (mainstream or radical) left of today is either Fabian or Bolshevik respectively, which means an enemy to liberty. While presenting the libertarian ideas in a leftish package may be a trick to take left-wingers with libertarian tendencies to our side (because, let’s face it, we’re not enemies and since we both oppose aggression, no-one will enforce their system to another). In fact if they’re not targeting Hillary-style “liberals” (I’m from Greece so I refuse to accept Fabianism as liberalism of any kind) it might work! Since trying to market libertarian ideas to the right, led to Republicans being more Social Democrats than Lyndon Johnson, simply with free-market rhetoric, we should reconsider our strategy (NOT our ideas).
First of all, you just lumped two different things together which conflict by definition: the mainstream left and the radical left. Mainstream and radical obviously are not synanimous. Second of all, you are engaging in a misrepresentation by implying that left-libertarians favor allying with fabians or bolsheviks. None of the people I associate with are fabians or bolsheviks.
I think the problem, as most LL’s see it, is that a shareholder is accepting the possibility of essentially unlimited profit, while risking only a fixed amount of money, and no more. The position, that one can at the same time stand to benefit ad infinitum while limiting his losses to an exposure he himself deems sufficient, is kind of perplexing, for me at least.
I’ve been working on some essays/drafts on the topic of The Corporate Form, but haven’t published anything yet. Needless to say, while I may be “defending” the LL position here, it’s not a position on which I’m completely sold. I think there are strong arguments both ways, and the truth is likely somewhere in the middle. In any event, I do use the contributions here as I brainstorm, so thanks everyone.
But when you come on my property then you conform to my rules, so actually provided we are both allowed to purchase property we are both equal. You being “superior” does not stem from any right I do not have myself, I have the same right to set my rules on my property so actually we are equals.
Would it be exceedingly vulgar from me if I were to exclaim “No shit Sherlock!”?
And how do you propose everyone becomes a slave? If we are all slaves who is it that owns us? We can not be all slaves, there has to be at least one slave master who will own the rest of us. So any form of slavery is anathema to equality.
Equality in liberty is actually only possible in complete liberty and when working for complete liberty you are also working for complete equality wether you realise it or not. It also means anyone proclaiming to be an egalitarian but working against liberty is no such thing.
I’d like to challenge the idea that by virtue of the fact that you have property, you suddenly can be authoritarian (I.E. that you can do whatever you want to other people because its your property). No, just because someone is on your property does NOT give you 100% absolute decision-making power. You can force them off of your property and establish conditions for them being on your property, but your right to property is not above other people’s right to life and liberty. Life and liberty comes first. Just because someone is on your land or in your home does not make them your defacto slave. It does not give one license to be as violent and controlling as one pleases. While it is generally true that you can do as you please with your own property, this is limited by the liberty of others, I.E. it doesn’t mean that you can do as you please with regaurd to other people, who are not property.
I know, I didn’t mean to come across rude. Rather I was stating my opinion on the term you brought up.
You seem to be assuming that limited liability is a creation of the state, which it isn’t. And as for the state solving the calculation problem, it hasn’t. Things will change there is no doubt about that. Whether, on the other hand, the form firms take will change is a different question and doesn’t necessarily have anything to do with the calculation problem.
Of course firms will go out of buisness and of course the way in which they operate will change, this isn’t to say that big buisness will die altogether, that involves quite a bit of imagination.
Or, scientific proof, that has not been provided.
And I was merely remarking that they’re not sustainable. Long seems to think that they are, Spangler indeed challenges Kinsella to prove that in regards to unions labour is any different to any other means of production. Indeed, it seems to be the other way around. Spangler needs to prove that in order to justify his belief that a labour cartel is sustainable.
Wal - Mart is not a parasite, it’s a buisness that has provided many, many people with cheaper goods despite a hampered economy. LLs and anti capitalists seem to ignore the fact that it started off as a small buisness. Thus, assuming away the entrepreneurial effort.
The fact that you view them as both evil/ parasitic or whatever. This is guilt by association.
Not necessarily, economies of scale for instance mean that a big firm will deal with costs better than smaller ones. Your argument misses the mark, big buisnesses that deal with costs better compete with other big buisnesses that don’t do that so well. Not small buisness.
That’s exactly what we’re suggesting though, only that you don’t need to sign it explicitely but rahter you agree to it the moment you make a deal with the corporation.
This is completely missing the mark.
No it’s not, if liability exists it should be easy to prove it. The problem you encounter is not a problem with the organization, rather it is a problem wth your assumption that shareholders are liable.
