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I sincerely doubt you refer to five guys down the way as a "corporation" unless they have a business license. The other uses you speak of are correct, but are not the most commonly used (nor the most relevant) of the definitions. It's quite clear what we are discussing. If you don't have a rebuttal to what the gentleman has to offer, do yourself the service of not making yourself look petty by attempting to Aestu the conversation off on a tangent with semantics.

Your Pal,
Jubber

AKA "The Gun"
AKA "ROFeraL"

World Renowned Mexican Forklift Artiste

Grimsby attempted to refute Tuhl's point by pointing to a specific definition of the word "corporation". However, that is not the only definition of the word, and semantics aside Tuhl's point still stands. Even if the laws regulating the formation of specific types of legal entities are not available, individuals will still form corporations, in the broad sense, to conduct business.

Laelia Komi Anomalocaris

Very well.

Let us assume then, against both the conventions of our commonly-shared meanings and my own personal intuition, that the aforementioned poster intends fully that the term "corporation" be taken in the overtly broad fashion which you suggest -- specifically that it wholly corresponds in its meaning to any arbitrarily-sized collective of persons united primarily (though not necessarily) for the sake of conducting business. What dangers, if any at all, might the instantiation of such general collectives impose upon your culture, your nation, or your personal well-being such that they ought to be eschewed at a legal or political level? Are you so distrustful of your fellow man that you consider his business associations to be in some way harmful to your own state-of-affairs? While it is perhaps not directly relevant to the public discussion at hand, I must admit, it saddens me deeply to entertain the idea of a culture wherein man's greatest gift -- the seemingly infinite reaches of his freedom and creativity -- is considered poisonous and met only with ressentiment by a spiteful and self-entitled status-quo.

My own concerns aside, I continue to find it most puzzling that any person would associate libertarianism proper with decidedly statist ideals given that the former is, by all reasonable accounts, naturally opposed to the latter. I can only hope that some of you you, like myself, are professional scholars and would be so kind as to point me in the direction of some literature which I may have overlooked -- specifically, literature in which it is demonstrated that one may at once be both a libertarian and a person in favour of granting anti-competitive legal immunities to arbitrarily-sized business entities. As I realize this is quite the daunting task, I would, alternatively, be most pleased to learn of the reasons for which you might consider it beneficial to impose strict limitations on man's voluntary associations (particularly, in cases where the associations in question pose no harm to others) or even the reasons for which we ought to see to it to empower the state so that it may fulfill additional functions beyond protecting its citizens from aggression, theft, breach of contract, and fraud. Try as I may, I have been unable to arrive at such conclusions on my own lest I be willing to actively ignore my own knowledge as it pertains to economics, political philosophy, and the wills of the common man.

Respectfully,
Baron Wilhelm von Grimsby IV
--

Yes. If human nature allowed it, my preferred form of state would operate along roughly Georgist principles with minimal government activity. However, given the way humanity has behaved over the past few thousand years, I doubt any such happy state of affairs would be sustainable. Individuals seeking power would still exist in any libertarian utopia, and idealism aside I haven't seen any reason to think that government protections alone are responsible for the power of modern corporations. A government unwilling or unable to act to regulate this power would find itself irrelevant, and society would be controlled by corporations.

Laelia Komi Anomalocaris

No matter how RP your language you cannot beat laelia in an argument.

Zuckerberg is a f*cking wizard...Facebook will never fall to Google. QUOTE ME BRO, QUOTE ME.

I don't see how you can say that after he's already had to pull the "words don't mean what they obviously mean despite the fact that it's obvious what meaning we're using based on the context alone" card.

Your Pal,
Jubber

AKA "The Gun"
AKA "ROFeraL"

World Renowned Mexican Forklift Artiste

I still don't see how the legal registration of a corporate entity is relevant to the discussion. Are you going to explain it to us, or would you prefer to whine about my rhetorical approach?

Laelia Komi Anomalocaris

Don't talk about whine, or Tuhl's French sense goes off.

And then it's like what happens when the Kool-Aid guy gets excited, except he's got fine bread and cheese instead of yelling "OH YEAH".

Your gloom conclusions are most unfortunate.

I nevertheless fail to see how the "corporation" -- as we know it today -- could arise to such exaggerated level of powers in a truly free market given that the need for efficiency (as demanded by a highly competitive market) would surely squelch any such superfluous growth. Perhaps you would be so kind as to provide some example (or even a proper argument rather than mere conjecture) to convince me that coercive regulation of the market yields positive benefits for the common man. As far as I can tell, the most prominent regulatory bodies installed by your nation's government (for example, the Federal Communications Commission) only serve to bolster corporate interests rather than control them. To me, this alone (though, of course, there are many other reasons) provides great evidence to suggest that the distinction between "business" and "government" has dissolved in your nation -- arguably as a result of your laughable "regulatory" bureaucracies. Indeed, I would be hard-pressed to believe that you are not already under corporate rule!

All things considered, I find it especially puzzling that you would choose support a state which continues to enslave and oppress you despite the fact that it is quite clear that they do not have your best interests in mind.


In short, large corporations thrive in your nation because your government protects them from dying.

W.G.

Dibt fakk down the rabbit hole of RP too far, you might miss the obvious.



pip pip cheerio and such.

Very well then. Let us replace "Federal Communications Commission" with "Canadian Radio-television Telecommunications Commission" only to realize that my point still stands.

W.G.

which point, this one?



or this one?



You're tilting at windmills if you believe the organized crime that has existed in every system won't propagate in your Utopia.

It's relevant because it's what we're discussing. We're not discussing "incorporating" Johny into your card game, we're talking about legally registered business entities. Playing stupid or otherwise being obtuse doesn't change that. What you're doing is the equivalent of saying the conversation is about a weapon designed to shoot arrows when someone tells you they tied a bow.

Your Pal,
Jubber

AKA "The Gun"
AKA "ROFeraL"

World Renowned Mexican Forklift Artiste

Free markets are not as efficient as you seem to think. In the real world, there are market failures - barriers to entry, information asymmetries, externalities, and good old-fashioned irrational behaviour - that pervert outcomes, lead to imperfect competition, and transfer costs from businesses to the rest of society. Recognizing reality doesn't mean I support the current system, I just don't think removing all regulation of business will solve the problems that corporatism poses. There are certainly many harmful or useless regulations and removing such regulations would benefit society, but it is rather simplistic to conclude from this observation that all regulations should be abolished.


Not my government, as Tehra pointed out. Your earlier argument was that corporations couldn't exist in a libertarian state because they wouldn't be able to legally incorporate. You still haven't explained how the ability to legally register as a corporation is necessary to act as one. Take, for example, Golis Telecom of Somalia. Somalia has no functional government and no corporate law, yet it has powerful telecommunication companies which function as corporations in every sense except the legal one.


I wasn't discussing card games either, I was referring to groups of individuals who conduct business as a single entity, yet are not legally registered as a "corporation" in the narrow sense. Nobody has yet explained what the relevance of that legal registration is, in the context we are discussing.

Laelia Komi Anomalocaris