But not separate from it’s shareholders. I am unaware of any corporation that has outlived ownership and became it’s own independent entity.

Actually, there is some confusion here. The key attributes of corporate form all depend, directly or indirectly, on the legal identity of corporations as distinct persons apart from their shareholders and directors (and State corporation statutes presently establish this identity). For this reason (and part of what makes a corporation different from other forms of business organization) is that it is not subject to automatic dissolution and distribution and thus can exist beyond and apart from the composition of its shareholders. It will continue to exist even after the death of the last shareholder, unless it is dissolved by legal force, which under the State, can be due to simply not fulfilling filing and meeting requirements.

I’m back.

DixieFlatline,

You write, “If we knew the results of a free market, we could skip competition and go direct to outcomes. Why even bother with a market then? We just need to find the best planner, and let him tell us how things should be ordered based on the moral code.”

I can’t help but to suspect that this is a straw-man.

You continue, “If Carson confidently expects anything, he’s a kook/planner/ideologue.”

I think it’s a jump to say that. I confidently expect that a stateless society will be more productive than one hampered by a state. Does that make me a kook or a planner?

I confidently expect that people will organise private, voluntary institutions to replace the functions of the state–institutions such as private protection agencies, insurance providers, private arbitration firms, and the like–all without them being forced to create such institutions. I confidently expect this because it would be in their self-interest to do so. Even if it turns out that I’m wrong, even if it turns out that society (i.e. the market) comes up with something a million times better, something that no libertarian theorist has yet even imagined, something that works far more efficiently and cheaply than the alternative institutions I’ve just listed, I still don’t think it’d make me a kook or a planner to have had some level of confidence on the matter.

None of us can “know” how a free society (i.e. the free market) will handle anything, but we all have guesses. We wouldn’t be libertarians if we didn’t; we’d be centrists with no actual views about anything. Can you truly say that you have no opinion at all as to the likely structures of the free society, that you have zero expectations, let alone any confident expectations?

In response to my statement about Rothbard advocating that mercantilist businesses be handed over to their workers, you write, “Rothbard was terrible on this. His notion of what was a legitimate transfer of property titles to reflect justice is outrageous in my opinion.”

What is “terrible” about it? If your business is an arm of the state, as Halliburton is, then it cannot be described as private, and the executives thereof can only be said to be in collusion with criminals (i.e. the state). If you base your profits off of criminal activity, then you are a criminal, and have no rights to the property you acquire through criminal means.

My only problem with Rothbard is that he’s adopting the Blockian perspective of two-teeth-for-a-tooth, which I have recently come to reject. I would say that if a given firm makes 50% of its profits from the state, then only 50% of its assets should be surrendered to its workers.

As for his view on title transfers, he adopts Williamson M. Evers’s title transfer theory of contracts (see chapter 19 of his The Ethics of Liberty). I find his arguments quite convincing on this front.

You write, “But then most of these guys, Long, Rothbard, Carson have/had limited experience in the commercial sphere as a wage earner, or a capital investing proprietor. And it shows.”

That’s not a reason to reject someone’s system of ethics. That’s like a state communist suggesting that all capital-based property be surrendered to the state because “these guys, Peak, Flatline, etc. have/had limited experience as wage-slaves.” A rational system of ethics is not made more or less rational by its creator’s direct experiences.

Former Agorist,

In response to the question, “Isn’t the mutualist solution the libertarian solution?,” you write, “Not from what I have read. Otherwise they would simply call themselves ‘libertarians.’”

Lots of people call themselves other things in addition to “libertarian.” This argument seems to me just as shallow (again, no offense) as the argument put forward by social anarchists who say, when rejecting anarcho-capitalism, that “if anarcho-capitalists really held anarchistic views, they would simply call themselves ‘anarchists.’”

You write, “Preventing consenting adults from forming joint stock companies is different than ending state intervention into the market.”

Have mutualists proposed preventing the formation of joint stock companies?

You write, “50% seems like a political compromise, as where else could he have pulled this number from?”

I’m convinced he got the number from Block.

According to chapter thirteen of his The Ethics of Liberty, he writes,

“It should be evident that our theory of proportional punishment—that people may be punished by losing their rights to the extent that they have invaded the rights of others—is frankly a retributive theory of punishment, a ‘tooth (or two teeth) for a tooth’ theory. Retribution is in bad repute among philosophers, who generally dismiss the concept quickly as ‘primitive’ or ‘barbaric’ and then race on to a discussion of the two other major theories of punishment: deterrence and rehabilitation. But simply to dismiss a concept as ‘barbaric’ can hardly suffice; after all, it is possible that in this case, the ‘barbarians’ hit on a concept that was superior to the more modern creeds.”

A little before this, in the same chapter, he writes,

“But restitution, while the first consideration in punishment, can hardly serve as the complete and sufficient criterion. For one thing, if one man assaults another, and there is no theft of property, there is obviously no way for the criminal to make restitution. In ancient forms of law, there were often set schedules for monetary recompense that the criminal would have to pay the victim: so much money for an assault, so much more for mutilation, etc. But such schedules are clearly wholly arbitrary, and bear no relation to the nature of the crime itself. We must therefore fall back upon the view that the criterion must be: loss of rights by the criminal to the same extent as he has taken away.

“But how are we to gauge the nature of the extent? Let us return to the theft of the $15,000. Even here, simple restitution of the $15,000 is scarcely sufficient to cover the crime (even if we add damages, costs, interest, etc.). For one thing, mere loss of the money stolen obviously fails to function in any sense as a deterrent to future such crime (although we will see below that deterrence itself is a faulty criterion for gauging punishment). If, then, we are to say that the criminal loses rights to the extent that he deprives the victim, then we must say that the criminal should not only have to return the $15,000, but that he must be forced to pay the victim another $15,000, so that he, in turn, loses those rights (to $15,000 worth of property) which he had taken from the victim. In the case of theft, then, we may say that the criminal must pay double the extent of theft: once, for restitution of the amount stolen, and once again for loss of what he had deprived another.”

To this he gives the following footnote: “This principle of libertarian double punishment has been pithily described by Professor Walter Block as the principle of ‘two teeth for a tooth.’”

I asked Dr. Block in person if it was he or Rothbard that came up with two-teeth-for-a-tooth, and Block responded by saying it’s hard to remember precisely who came up with it, but he did think that it was he himself (i.e. Walter Block) that came up with it.

It would thus seem to me that if Rothbard were to be asked how much of a firm should be surrendered to the workers if only 33% of said firm’s profits came from state intervention, he would likely say 66%. I, however, has ceased believing Block’s two-teeth axiom to be representative of justice, so I personally would respond to such a question by saying, “33%.”

Mr. Dawson,

You write, “@Former Agorist: the left-libertarian argument involving road subsidies isn’t a moral one, it’s an economic one. Everyone is forced to use the state’s roads, obviously, and no one (except the real nuts) have any problem with that. The left-libertarian argument is that Wal-Mart’s business model is subsidized by the socialization of roads in a way that wouldn’t exist in a free market.”

I consider myself a left-libertarian. (I consider all libertarians, in fact, left-libertarians. I consider the term “right-libertarian” to be an oxymoron.)

But I cannot find myself agreeing with anyone who says that socialisation of the roads benefits Wal-Mart any more highly than it benefits anyone else in society. Wal-Mart, at the end of the day, is nothing more than a bunch of individuals working in corporation with one another. These individuals, from workers to executives, all use the same roads as the workers and executives from any other corner of society.

Further, since these roads cannot be legitimately owned by the state, these individuals who use the roads are its legitimate owners, including those who work for Wal-Mart.

As long as Wal-Mart is not advocating the existence of socialised roads, it cannot be said that it is doing anything wrong in allowing its employees to use this unowned (or popularly-owned) resource.

Now, if Wal-Mart were openly supporting socialisation of roads, requesting the government to grant additional funding to roads, that would be another story altogether.

Mr. Gardner,

You write, “But preventing consenting people from forming a joint stock company is a) not the same as preventing people from forming a corporation, since a joint stock company need not be a corporation, and b) not something any of these people have advocated.”

This is probably a dumb question, but I’m still unclear as to what exactly a corporation is. I think I asked this question earlier and didn’t receive an answer. If you could share one, I’d certainly appreciate it.

You also write, “Of course, no libertarian is really just proposing free markets, are they? Ensuring, to some degree, that property holdings are just, is also part of the picture, too, since no libertarian would, for instance, be happy with a free market in slaves. They would be perfectly happy with slaves looting slave holders of themselves, and probably taking the plantation, too.”

I think this is an important point, one that must be stressed. Thanks for making it.

Back to Former Agorist,

You write, “And this seems to be main sticking point, as I have seen comments from ‘left-libertarians’ and the like talking about ‘stolen capital’ and such, as well as advocating the smashing of windows of department stores as ‘restitution.’”

Let’s discuss the breaking of the Macy’s window, then, the most recent example of a window broken in protest of which I’m aware. The brick was thrown by a self-described market anarchist.

I asked the gentleman (via the Internet) why he had thrown the brick, but I never received a satisfactory answer. It can only be theoretically just to throw the brick if the property is unowned (which it could be possibly argued it was IF Macy’s had derived excessive profits from state intervention). But the gentleman provided me with no actual example of Macy’s requesting or voluntarily accepting statist intervention, so as far as I could ascertain, Macy’s was simply a victim in this case.

Now I find it strange that you’re quick to indict left-libertarians here. As Prof. Long had pointed out on his blog, even if it could be concluded that Macy’s had employed for its own profit statist intervention, that doesn’t make the property that had been broken “unowned.” By means of the homesteading principle, the window would have been owned by the workers, and thus either way, the brick would have been breaking property that has a just owner.

I honestly believe, although I admit I could be wrong in this regard, that the self-described market anarchist who threw this brick was simply trying to suck up to the so-called “left”-anarchists who appear to monopolise the anarchist movement, as if to say, “See? We market anarchists are not lap-dogs of Big Business after all.” I do believe this is a point we need to stress (i.e. that we are not apologists for big business), but I’m inclined to say that the method employed by this self-described market anarchist was highly flawed and most likely patently unethical.

In any event, I think there’s a lesson to be learned in this for all of us. Although I have no objection to teaming up with anarchists of other stripes, whether in marches or via other avenues of activism, we should never get so cozy that we’re willing to adopt tactics we know or at least have reason to believe are unethical.

As far as I’m concerned, Prof. Long’s position on the matter was the most rational one. If Macy’s had been cozy with the state, as the kid claimed, then the window was the property of the workers, and what the kid did was commit theft and aggression. If Macy’s had not been cozy with the state, then what the kid did was still theft and aggression. Either way, what the kid did was both theft and aggression.

Further, since I believe one is innocent until proven guilty, I’ll have to assume that Macy’s is not cozy with the state until some evidence is provided to the contrary. Perhaps some evidence exists and I’ve merely not yet come across it, and if anybody here wishes to present such evidence to me, I’ll happily consider it.

Mr. Spangler writes, “The libertarian only differs from the Marxist on this matter IN ONLY ONE WAY — the amount of wealth held is itself not the issue, but rather its means of acquisition is. The results of that differing analysis do not justify some sort of mirror image anti-Marxist pro-elite class loyalties where the richer someone is the more virtuous they are — because a great deal of privately held wealth in today’s society is crony capitalist stolen loot.”

I have to agree with this entirely. In fact, I recently got finished reading Hamilton’s Curse by Thomas J. DiLorenzo, where he devoted an entire chapter (chapter five) to what he called “crony capitalism.” (I’m currently “live”-blogging the book over at LastFreeVoice.com.)

Even conservative writer Jonah Goldberg, in a recent National Review, wrote an article about this phenomenon, quoting Gabriel Kolko and Prof. Roderick Long. Goldberg got a few things wrong, naturally, but it was overall a good piece. (He also quotes Kolko in his book Liberal Fascism which I have yet to read.)

Just acquisition is what it’s all about. The famous “Philosophy of Liberty” flash page clearly uses the phrase “justly-acquired property” instead of simply “property,” and it seems to me that any serious libertarian must admit the central role that acquisition plays.

DNA,

You write, “Very well said. That’s the problem with the left-libertarians: they think they invented the stuff Rothbard, Hoppe, and others have already talked about, when all they’ve really done is to take some of those insights and then over-generalize about certain organizational structures under state capitalist conditions.”

First, I wish to re-stress that all libertarians are leftists, as Rothbard correctly points out. Mao, by contrast, was a rightist.

Second, I don’t think any modern left-libertarian (sorry for being redundant here) claims to have invented such things as libertarian class theory. In fact, pre-Marxist classical liberals were the first to come up with class theory. Franz Oppenheimer also came up with a libertarian class theory, considering the divide as being between the political class that exploits and the economic class that produces.

I admit that I haven’t yet read Agorist Class Theory, but I suspect that it follows a similar conception.

DixieFlatline again,

You write, “Rafael, good luck finding many (or any) partyarchs here.”

I’m still an LP supporter. I haven’t given up hope for them just yet, despite their 2008 nomination of a non-libertarian for the office of president, and their 2006 platform slashing.

Mr. Lawrence,

First, many thanks for answering my question.

You write, “A corporation is an enduring entity with a life of its own, separate from the people who work for it and so on. Very few naturally occurring instutions have this of their own nature (I mentioned monasteries with their own internal dynamic). The rest get it from state structures. Further, they often have legal privileges like limited liability against all, not just against those they deal with where they could negotiate it (it has been asserted – though this begs the question of the thumb on the scale they get even with these). These privileges are also provided through state machinery. Quite simply, none of this would be available without the state, though possibly a corporation that was previously set up might persist for a while even without it. I would expect that managers would become partners in short order, taking over their corporations’ assets and resources, while outsiders and workers would be more reluctant to deal with a claimed corporation than with competing individuals and partnerships etc. who they could connect with physically if they had to follow things up. Like trying to hold sand, things would dribble away.”

The term “an enduring entity with a life of its own, separate from the people who work for it and so on” seems a bit vague. I certainly don’t see businesses as possessing an independent “life.” Businesses, it would seem to me, are nothing more than conglomerations of free individuals (at least under the best conditions) working together for a common goal (viz. profit), possessing no more or less rights than the voluntary individuals that comprise them. In other words, if every individual in a given firm has free speech, then the firm does as well, being a voluntary organisation rather than a compulsory one.

As for limited liability, I believe (as Rothbard did) that a private, free-market firm could potentially contractually agree to have liability of stock holders (or workers, etc.) be limited, but I believe you bring up an important point that I had not considered previously: the limited liability could only, at most, apply (in the free society) to those who have contracted with the firm. Thus, if the firm pollutes my stream and I have no contract with the firm, I see no reason why liability should be limited in that scenario. If the state artificially limits liability even in such scenarios, then that is a legitimate problem.

Do I understand you correctly that corporations are (or may be) entities that, as a firm, owns property independently of its employees/executives/share-holders? I presume such an organisation could be formed on the free market, since I don’t see it as a violation of the nonaggression axiom. (Would they survive easily in a truly free market? I don’t know, nor do I much care, so long as there are no aggressions permitted.)

Thus, it seems the main objection here is that the state grants to firms a limit on liability even when dealing with persons with whom they have made no contractual arrangements. Do I read this correctly?

If this characteristic is what defines a “corporation” as being different from voluntary free-market firms, then I, too, can reject “corporations” on this ground. But if the term “corporation” can be applied to firms that could be formed on the free market without this characteristic, to firms that do not violate the nonaggression axiom (regardless of whether such firms long survive), then I would find much difficulty in rejecting “corporations” per se, finding it instead much easier to reject what we would otherwise call “statist corporations.”

You write, “A corporation can always get more support from people it directs, if it has those features, but if it hasn’t it’s some other kind of institution like a partnership that only keeps going so long as the partners choose to keep using it.”

Is this to say that, even if everyone decided to quit Target, including its execs, an empty, employeeless entity known as “Target” would continue to exist under our current state of statism?

I can’t even grasp what the point of such a state regulation would be, how it would benefit (or harm, or even affect) anyone. It would seem more pointless than banning the bringing of elephants to grocery stores on Sundays. Hence, I suspect I’m misunderstanding you. Yet I can see no other way to interpret what you’ve just said.

You write, “However, it isn’t a matter of preventing, it’s a matter of not enabling. Without state enabling, the furthest they could go in that direction would be a partnership that issued shares and that they called a joint stock company. It would be that, but it wouldn’t be either limited liability or a corporation. But Richard Garner already told you a lot of this.”

Are you merely arguing that contractual limited-liability firms that form on the free market (and thus have limited liability for only those individuals that have contracted with it, and for no one else) would be likely unsuccessful competing against full-liability firms, and thus would go out of business; or are you arguing, as it appears you are, that such businesses wouldn’t even be able to form in the first place; and, if you are arguing the latter, then why wouldn’t they be able to form in the first place.

(I hope you don’t mind all these questions.)

You write, “Well, on this thread, it was the pro-corporation types who pulled [Wal-Mart] out as an example.”

I believe I was the first to bring up Wal-Mart. But if we’re dealing with the first person to bring up Wal-Mart’s relation to the socialised roads we all use, that was brought up by Mr. Matthew Dawson.

Back to DixieFlatline,

In response to Mr. Lawrence, who wrote, “It’s plain not true that an institution to voluntarily arrange limited liabilty, say, with people who have not negotiated that with it,” you respond, “This is a strawman. We’re talking about voluntary consent from all sides, as has been clearly laid out by several parties, including myself.”

I believe, if Mr. Lawrence defined a corporation as an entity that necessarily has universal limited liability (as opposed to merely a limited liability with those with whom they’ve contracted), then by definition all libertarians (including you) would be opposed to that entity Mr. Lawrence is defining as a “corporation.”

If, however, a corporation, to actually constitute a “corporation,” needs not have universal limited liability (as you seem to be defining the corporation as not needing), then all libertarians (including Mr. Lawrence) would hold no opposition to that entity you define as a “corporation.”

In other words, I think we’re getting tangled up on the definition of the term. Perhaps, in fact, you and Mr. Lawrence are supporting substantially the same thing. Or, perhaps I’m misreading one or both of you. I admit that’s certainly possible.

And back to Former Agorist,

You write, “Owners are somehow responsible for ‘resources causing harm’?”

If I own a dog, and this dog jumps the fence and bites your daughter, severly hurting her, I should be required to pay for all resulting medical bills, no? The reason I should is because it was my property that caused the damage. Had I placed a leash on my property, or kept it inside, or trained it to respect humans better, I could have avoided the repercussions.

If, however, I had the dog tied up and someone comes onto my property and releases him, then the trespasser should be the one held responsible.

If I stand atop a tall building and start randomly throwing the bricks I own off said building, and one should land on your head providing you a concussion, surely I should be held responsible.

If, however, someone steals my bricks and does the same, it is then the thief should be held responsible.

If I sell a radioactive product, and ten years later it turns out that this product has caused thousands to contract cancer, then I should be held responsible.

If, however, I inform the customers in advance of the risk of contracting cancer, then they make that purchase at their own risk and should take responsibility for their own purchasing choices.

Does this seem rational to everyone?

Finally, Neverfox writes, “For this reason (and part of what makes a corporation different from other forms of business organization) is that it is not subject to automatic dissolution and distribution and thus can exist beyond and apart from the composition of its shareholders. It will continue to exist even after the death of the last shareholder, unless it is dissolved by legal force, which under the State, can be due to simply not fulfilling filing and meeting requirements.”

I’m still confused by this. Are we saying the empty shell that is left exists with all property intact? Are we saying that this property can be homesteaded by anyone who comes along?

I have to think that, in a truly free market, if all employees, execs, and share-holders of a specific firm happen to die (let’s assume we’re dealing death by with natural causes, and that the shares have not been left to anyone in their wills), someone can homestead the property, appropriate it from the state of nature, and can even run the firm under the same name under which it was previously ran. Any disagreement here?

So I still fail to see what possible reason the state could have for this regulation. What benefit (or harm, or affect) does it have?

Sincerely,
Alex Peak

neverfox says:
“However, in practice, the corporate charter can contain instructions to dissolve the corporation voluntarily in the event of it being orphaned or the State will step in and do it (sometimes acquiring the property for itself).”

i can’t even see how a company could be orphaned, given the state’s requirements regarding directors’ duties, regular filing of accounts and so forth; deregistration swiftly follows non-compliance.

Not sure where I “shifted the burden of proof,” as DixieFLatline asserts, but perhaps I wasn’t clear in what I was trying to say. Let’s use her amusement park example to illustrate what I mean:

Let’s imagine an amusement park owned by Happy Joy-Joy Inc., a company with several hundred stockholders. The park is situated on a major road outside a major city and abuts an apple orchard.

HJ-J Park derives its power from an on-site power plant fueled by liquid propane brought in by truck. One sad day, the propane storage tank ignites, causing a horrendous fire which destroys most of the park, along with one of the propane delivery trucks owned by the propane company, and kills a dozen park visitors. The fire quickly spreads outside the park boundaries and consumes several hundred acres of apple orchard before it is finally extinguished by fire-fighters.

The fire is investigated and the cause is determined to be from squirrels having recently chewed through some critical wiring located near a propane feed line. A magistrate rules that HJ-J Inc. is liable for the fire, although in this situation no particular individual employee, manager or contractor can be reasonably held to account. Damages are awarded to the families of the deceased guests, the propane company, and the owner of the apple orchard, in a total amount which exceeds the remaining assets of the corporation and its insurance coverage.

Now, imagine firstly that HJ-J Inc. is a state-chartered corporation of the common form today. What are the limits of its workers’, managers’, directors’, and shareholders’ liabilities for that fire?

Unless some worker can be shown to have been negligent in causing the fire, the most any HJ-J worker should lose is his job.

Ditto for the corporation’s managers.

Claimants might attempt to go after the directors and executives but they would have to prove that defendants could be reasonably expected to have anticipated and taken action to prevent the squirrel-chewing which resulted in the catastrophic fire.

This leaves the shareholders. In our present system, they would be exempt from liability beyond the money paid for their shares.

But suppose now that all this happens in a state-less environment?

HJ-J Joint-Stock-Company could contract with the propane company, and with its paying guests, to shield itself from any tort arising from the normal operation of the amusement park. So as far as those claimants go, nothing changes.

But the apple-orchard owner is another matter. She has never contracted with HJ-J JSC with regard to any liability issue. And so under the principle that if your property damages my property, you must pay, the orchard owner could go after the joint-stockholders, and a reasonable court would grant her awards from each shareholder proportionate to the amount of the company owned.

Joint-stockholders could, of course, purchase insurance against such an eventuality. But they would have to bear the cost of that insurance and hope it is sufficient to cover a worst-case-scenario should it occur.

I believe this arrangement would strongly discourage the kind of detached attitude most owners of public corporation stocks presently have towards their investments. Fewer people would be willing to make this sort of investment, and those who do would take a much more active interest in the companies they own. It would, I believe, fundamentally change the character of “corporate” culture and stock trading. They might still be called “corporations,” but they would look and behave differently — I think and would hope, more responsibly — than the publicly-held corporations we know.

Rothbard, in drawing an analogy between accepting a beneficial interest in the state’s activities (using a government street, etc.) and voting, misses a crucial point. From the standpoint of a libertarian legal code, selecting someone to act on your behalf (however marginal your vote may in fact be) means that the winner of the election is your agent, and thus you assume liability for winner’s subsequent misdeeds. Voting for a losing (though more principled) candidate doesn’t let you off the hook; the point being that mere participation in the election (assuming it is voluntary) ratifies the winner’s role as your agent.

A further difficulty of voting is that one is implicitly endorsing a supercession of individual rights by the majority. From a libertarian point of view, the majority of the electorate has no authority whatsoever, as the democratic state is a not a voluntary association. Why should one then act otherwise? Once we reject the fallacy of assuming that the individual voter actually controls the election outcome, we are obliged to acknowledge the anti-libertarian basis for any exercise of democratic authority. Practically speaking, the choice one faces is not between voting for or against liberty; the real choice is between participating in or scorning a state-legitimization ritual.

None of this, by the way, implies that Konkin offers a realistic alternative for liberation. It may well be the case that nothing is going to bring about a libertarian transformation of society, in which case the individual is better off making the best of a bad situation by how one manages one’s relationships, etc. The optimal strategy may be to practice personal virtue, not engage in political action.

DixieFlatline asserts of my “A corporation is an enduring entity with a life of its own, separate from the people who work for it and so on”, “But not separate from it’s shareholders. I am unaware of any corporation that has outlived ownership and became it’s own independent entity.”

Yes, separate from its shareholders. The original ones are necessary for its founding, but not for its continuing thereafter. They could all die or be replaced by corporate shareholders or whatever, or the shares could be anonymous bearer shares that got mislaid – and the corporation would persist, awaiting owners. And from this, all corporations are their own independent entities, even though all commercial ones have least notional owners (but some oddities aren’t commercial and don’t have any). That is, they keep going as independent entities regardless of their owners.

“Re: burden of proof, Scott made an assertion and shifted the burden of proof, demanding a contrasting example. This is poor form in debate and a fallacious tactic.”

No to the first sentence (he didn’t demand a contrasting example). Yes to the second – but that’s what you did with “If capital holders can organize voluntarily, and set up a firm with limited liability stipulations made clear to clients and suppliers up front, and all transactions with them are voluntary, and thus totally reasonable and permissible in a free market society. You’ve failed to prove otherwise.” You provided a whole load of “ifs” and demanded that he refute them. But it’s a red herring; a firm like that isn’t a corporation but a partnership.

Of my “It’s plain not true that an institution to voluntarily arrange limited liabilty, say, with people who have not negotiated that with it”, DixieFlatline claims that “This is a strawman. We’re talking about voluntary consent from all sides, as has been clearly laid out by several parties, including myself.”

No, it’s not a straw man, it’s an attempt to avoid a bait and switch. Precisely because that sort of thing is not a corporation, and this whole thread is about corporations, which are like that, I was pulling the focus back to the subject area.

Of my “It’s plain not true that it can endure on its own without continued support from its people unless it has its own internal dynamic to summon that up or it has state machinery to do so”, DixieFlatline supposes that “This is an assertion. Upon what does this assertion rest?”

It’s no assertion, it’s an argument that is trivially true. Where there is an internal dynamic, the entity will persist. Where there isn’t any, it will vanish when its supporters do, just as in a partnership – unless something outside supplies the dynamic. But something outside, enforcing things, is what a state is.

“Will post-state unions operate like post-state corporations? They will have to if they don’t want to be deemed illegit.”

The first sentence begs the whole point at issue, that “post-state corporations” could even exist. The second ignores or supposes illegitimate other forms of association like clubs, partnerships, etc.

“The difference is only in the nature of the capital being protected, not the ends” – again, no, because the most serious issues are with the means employed, what with their side effects and all.

Former Agorist applies a faulty analogy to “They have said that corporations are not contractual associations, but creations of the state”, asserting ‘Then they are incorrect. Look, the fact the State gives me a marriage certificate and registers the contract does NOT make my marriage “a creation of the state.”‘

The analogy only applies to the rare corporations like monasteries that have their own internal dynamic (as a marriage also has) and can exist free standing. Those, like marriages, the state co-opts as much as it can. The others simply don’t have an identity distinct from the people involved, so by definition they are not corporations but things in the partnership spectrum.

Former Agorist also asks ‘Wait…who caused the harm or wrong again? “Resources” caused harm? Owners are somehow responsible for “resources causing harm”?’

He has not picked up on what was written: “They have said that such creations of the state are bad because they allow owners of resources to avoid liability for wrongs or harms committed with those resources” [emphasis added]. The fuller original, omitted from this quotation, made it clear what was being referred to: “They have said that corporations are not contractual associations, but creations of the state”.

Alexander S. Peak is unclear about some of what I wrote:-

- ‘The term “an enduring entity with a life of its own, separate from the people who work for it and so on” seems a bit vague. I certainly don’t see businesses as possessing an independent “life.”‘ But – contrary to DixieFlatline’s no doubt inadvertent bait and switch – this isn’t about “businesses”, it’s about entities that have been set up with the corporate form (some of those aren’t even businesses). It shouldn’t be vague, once you’ve seen some examples like monasteries or the Dutch East India Company, and some examples of businesses like Boulton & Watt that weren’t corporate. Or you can follow up the literature.

- “I believe you bring up an important point that I had not considered previously: the limited liability could only, at most, apply (in the free society) to those who have contracted with the firm. Thus, if the firm pollutes my stream and I have no contract with the firm, I see no reason why liability should be limited in that scenario. If the state artificially limits liability even in such scenarios, then that is a legitimate problem.” As I have made clear elsewhere, it’s possible to arrange a certain kind of complete limited liability even with the partnership form. Some partners can be anonymous, with unregistered bearer shares. These partners can always lie low and get away from claims – but not all partners could be like that, or the partnership wouldn’t work. Effectively, the active partners would be indemnifying the others, and outside claimants would always have someone to chase. The risk premium for active partners – a sort of insurance premium – would soon make most well enough off to meet most claims.

- “Do I understand you correctly that corporations are (or may be) entities that, as a firm, owns property independently of its employees/executives/share-holders? I presume such an organisation could be formed on the free market, since I don’t see it as a violation of the nonaggression axiom.” Not only do they own property that way, but they conduct all sorts of operations that have impacts on others. But in general they can’t be formed on the free market (I mentioned the exception category), not in the sense that “Libertarians can’t endorse them” but in the sense that “there is no outside mechanism, i.e. state machinery, to cause them to endure independently, so anything that can be formed isn’t corporate”. It’s a logical impossibility. But they do actually cause harm to others, by crowding out the opportunities that natural persons would have had – and used to have, when corporations didn’t roam the Earth. Andy Carnegie got his enterprises together using a partnership structure – and sold out to a corporate one, kicking the ladder away without realising it.

- ‘But if the term “corporation” can be applied to firms that could be formed on the free market without this characteristic, to firms that do not violate the nonaggression axiom (regardless of whether such firms long survive), then I would find much difficulty in rejecting “corporations” per se, finding it instead much easier to reject what we would otherwise call “statist corporations.”‘ That’s the bait and switch. See the article that started this thread, and the earlier discussions it follows from. “Corporation” is not another word for firm, and the discussion is using normal received technical definitions of corporation.

- ‘Is this to say that, even if everyone decided to quit Target, including its execs, an empty, employeeless entity known as “Target” would continue to exist under our current state of statism?’ Yes. Those are called “shell corporations”. Like an empty balloon, they can be reinflated – and often are. With Target, they would be fixed up by new people buying up shares from old owners or their estates, or from states that seized them for taxes. Then old title claims might be rvived, loans floated, employees hired – and there they are again, like zombies that won’t die.

- ‘Are you merely arguing that contractual limited-liability firms that form on the free market (and thus have limited liability for only those individuals that have contracted with it, and for no one else) would be likely unsuccessful competing against full-liability firms, and thus would go out of business; or are you arguing, as it appears you are, that such businesses wouldn’t even be able to form in the first place; and, if you are arguing the latter, then why wouldn’t they be able to form in the first place.’ I’m not arguing either, though I suspect from historical precedent that they wouldn’t be worth the effort (even now, some managers and directors of corporations waive their personal limited liability by guaranteeing loans to their corporations). No, I’m saying that a firm of this sort wouldn’t be a corporation, by definition.

In response to DixieFlatline, Alexander S. Peak muses ‘If, however, a corporation, to actually constitute a “corporation,” needs not have universal limited liability (as you seem to be defining the corporation as not needing), then all libertarians (including Mr. Lawrence) would hold no opposition to that entity you define as a “corporation.”‘

There are some things to clear up. It’s not the limited liability that makes a corporation. That’s a legal privilege at other people’s expense, and to be deplored for that reason if no other. But some things have that and are not corporations – like limited liability partnerships, where the state gives that privilege to all partners – and some corporations, historically, have not had that privilege but still been harmful as a side effect of their enduring character and ability to crowd out others (because they can keep on getting resources indefinitely, since they never die). Back in the Middle Ages abbeys did this, so when King Edward I of England found it got in his way too he passed laws like the Statutes of Mortmain to curtail it. So, even corporations that aren’t state creations/emanations can have this down side.

The following is Konkin’s reply:

http://www.anthonyflood.com/konkinreplytorothbard.htm

You know, the reason some of us love Konkin is because we also love Rothbard.