So go argue your fine points of ecopolitics if you feel that is going to solve the basic change in our natural world.

Mother Nature has some firm rules about caring for our environment and planet. She cares not a wit about our fine political concerns. Follow her rules or die. No excuses. No second chances. No re-do of things. Follow her very rigid rules on maintaining your environment or perish.

Suggesting Lovelock is leader of Ecofascism goes considerably beyond ridiculous. Lovelock is first and foremost an accomplished scientist and inventor. He is frustrated by the lack of any credible effort by governments to curb global warming which is highly likely to cook us all and in the views of some scientists turn earth into a new Venus. A world dictator is better than death for 5 billion humans, would you agree. Or should we be fighting to keep democracy alive as it leads us to final destruction by global warming.

Worrying about our form of government at this late stage in global warming and CO2 in our atmosphere is truly like arguing about the arrangement of deck chairs on the Titanic. The word on how deadly serious global warming really is just has not gotten out – due mainly to efforts of big oil companies to create confusion and doubt – just like tobacco companies did for fifty years about cancer and smoking.

Sounds like a valid point, Matthew. But let’s take a look from one step further back.

The capitalists are looking for a good return on investment. So their strategy in the game is toward that end. And labor is looking for the same thing: a good return on their investment of time, skills and sweat. What makes the one set of motivations noble and the other vile?

The two sides long ago made a deal so they could continue working together. And labor upheld their end of the deal by continuing to work. You’re saying that capital should be able to renege whenever they feel like they can get away with it?

If a man murders someone and the court finds him not guilty and lets him go free, even though it is abundantly clear he committed the crime, then the court system has failed.
If a corporation commits a contract violation and the courts decide not to force them to fulfill their contractual obligations (or compensate the victim), then the court system has failed.

How you are utterly unable to understand and acknowledge this very simple point is beyond me. But then again, you don’t even understand the broken window fallacy so I probably shouldn’t be too surprised.

You persistently seem to have trouble reading or engaging in productive discourse.

Mises deserves better; kindly shape up or ship out.

I am quite aware of the point that, as a consequence of the existing grant of limited liability, shareholders have little actual control over public companies in which they have shares of stock and thus – along with zero legal liability for corporate torts – very little moral responsibility for corporate behavior. But such observations of the status quo cannot serve to justify the state intervention that has so neatly divorced the supposed “owners” of a business from any such liability.

While the differences between shareholders and customers now may appear to be slight, this is a situation (where there re no human actually owning the business and any downside risks) created artificially by government; I can assure you that the differences between owners and customers is much more stark in partnerships and other forms of business enterprise where the owners are not given a liability shield by government and thus bear personal risk if things go wrong. While this largely as we think it should be, I have never heard a libertarian or legal argument that those who purchase products from an enterprise should have any legal liability for harms that the business causes to others (though it is not uncommon to see moral suasion pressure being put on customers as well as creditors and shareholders when an enterprise engages in harmful or objectionable activities).

Our courageous poo-flinging BS Almighty appears to have studiously missed it, but you might have noted that I have remarked several times that I am NOT arguing FOR a general rule that shareholders SHOULD be liable for corporate torts; rather, I have (1) pointed out that limited liability itself has served to muddle the question of whom, exactly, should be responsible for the very real harms that corporatons frequently cause, (2) noted that the limited-liability corporate form has enabled risk-generation and -shifting on a massive scale, with innocent third parties frequently being stuck holding the bag (not solely when liabilities exceed assets, but more generally since the cycle of escalating government interventions to rein in corporations perversely ends up raising barriers to entry and giving corporations “rights to pollute” that curtail recourse even when sufficient assets are available), (3) argued that libertarians should reconsider the grant of limited liability for torts (as opposed to limited liability as to those who contract with the corporation on a voluntary basis) not simply because it is clearly non-libertarian to begin with, but because it has had profound consequences – consequences at a serious enough level that state-loving libertarians concede simply by troubling themselves to argue against curtailing limited liability, (4) noted that the most efficiacious way to roll back the regulatory state lie in the direction of shifting ultimate responsibility fpr managing risks to enterprise owners (and ending the counterproductive regualtory risk-management experient), and (5) noted that a curtailment of limited liability for torts could be hedge by shareholders via insurance, and could be achieved by state governments and the federal government offering more lenient regulation to busness enterprises that operate as partnerships, unlimited liability corporations, or where shares are not fully paid up so that calls for signifcant additional capital could be made against shareholders if needed to pay claims.

IOW, the insistence by Kinsella and his fellow deep-thinkers that one must “provide a theory of liability that coherently distinguishes shareholders from any other patron of the company” BEFORE one can examine the justifications FOR and the consequences of the state grant of limited liability is both sadly non-libertarian and dangerously blind and shallow.

What about someone who hands his money to some third party to manage and this third party puts his money into BP? Is he more or less liable than someone who does it directly?

Your distinction is not helpful. “offers money for the profits he expects to gain from the company’s business model” – this is just having dividends stuck into your bank account. How is this different in your view from the “services” you mention in the first part?

But the first sentence. BP’s share price crashed, they spend billions of dollars fixing the spill, they’re on the hook for billions more, and their market standing in the US got smashed. They had and continue to have enormous incentives to put in place appropriate governance procedures. How many people lost their jobs at BP? Quite a head count I would guess, considering what 15 people? also died. Corporations are staffed by people who are concerned about their jobs, their careers, their reputations. None of that is impacted by limited liability (“oh what the hell we can afford to pay out $20b before the company’s existence is at risk, just do whatever the hell you like I’m off to lunch” – (apologies for the dramatics)). What evidence do you have that it was a failure of internal governance that led to the spill?

Your posts have made and are making me reflect on the implications of my positions, I’ve acknowledged this a couple of times now and expressed gratitude. I’m not sure whether I’m enjoying a similar success, but if I’m the only beneficiary that’s good enough haha. Now I do need to state again (I’ve also said this a few times): I do absolutely acknowledge that the interaction of limited liability with tortious behaviour damaging third party property rights creates a problem where the limited liability vehicle is inadequately capitalised and leaves the third party without full compensation (according to law). This is clear. Your solution, well I’m still a long way off it, but that’s not important: the exchange of ideas is.

Can you help me on a slightly different part of this problem? I still can’t see the ipso facto connection you draw between corporatism and limited liability. Whenever a state with sufficient coercive power arises, its cronies will always seek to leverage that power for their own benefit. Supporting limited liability as a concept is not the same as supporting corporate welfare. Please can you set out why these two …err.. concepts (for want of a better word) are so intrinsically related? Your penultimate paragraph above doesn’t set out your reasoning so I can’t get on board yet.

The pursuit of profit at the expense of others is a source of great evil in the world.

Another one of vague and deceptive formulations. What is “profit at the expense of others”? It’s a phrase devoid of meaning. “Expense” is a subjective concept. Any action whatsoever has effects that some dislike, you cannot avoid it. That is why there is another concept, that of property: it allows to distinguish which actions are considered legitimate and which are not, and separates “expense” into property violations and contract violations on one hand (which are considered illegitimate), and negative externalities (which are considered legitimate, although outside of Austrian school this phrase is used inconsistently also for some property violations).

The beauty of a system with private property and free trade is that only those activities for greed satisfaction are legitimate which do not violate property of others. Not only that, but the ability to satisfy greed is directly proportional to the ability to satisfy the needs of others.

That’s a basic function of government.

However, you also said yourself that a government has no capabilities distinct from other people, so there is no reason why it should be able to perform such a function better than anyone else. So this is another pointless, deceptive phrase, a non-sequitur, paradoxically one that you yourself acknowledge.

I don’t expect a reasonable reaction from you, I have become accustomed to you not being capable of it. I just want to provide a complement to your confused babbling and illogic, so that readers can compare the arguments and make a decision for themselves.

You can be pleased to illustrate the enduring importance at the Mises blog of not being earnest.

I, on the other hand, can be thankful that you provide an opportunity for me to help others examine the growing rot set off by the very non-libertarian grant of limited liability to shareholders regarding injury to involuntary third parties:

http://mises.org/Community/blogs/tokyotom/archive/2009/02/26/the-curse-of-limited-liability-wsj-com-executives-traders-of-big-financial-corporations-generate-risky-businesss-while-smaller-partnerships-are-much-more-risk-averse.aspx

http://mises.org/Community/blogs/tokyotom/archive/2010/06/29/limited-liability-financial-crisis-and-bp-someone-else-sees-the-obvious-quot-black-swan-quot-of-executive-trader-moral-hazard-after-investment-banks-went-corporate.aspx

http://mises.org/Community/blogs/tokyotom/archive/2010/04/22/finally-an-lvmi-commentator-points-out-the-elephant-in-the-room-effective-reform-to-rein-in-rampant-moral-hazard-at-banks-means-removing-limited-liability.aspx

http://mises.org/Community/blogs/tokyotom/archive/2010/08/18/in-a-shocking-moment-of-honesty-conocophillips-ceo-says-offshore-oil-isn-t-economical-without-government-gifts-of-limited-liability.aspx

Thanks so much for coming out to play, Lord Beefcake!

TT

PS: I’m very happy to hear you like forests and trees; looks like we got us a growing little group of “watermelons” around here.

Hi Peter. Someone’s in a very bad mood today..

Here’s Jay: “If companies regularly get away with committing major contract violations, then it is the legal system that is to blame. And who runs the legal system? The government.”

Sounds pretty plain to me. He’s saying that it’s the cop’s fault if the crook gets away with something. In fact if we didn’t have a government of laws to protect us and prevent mob rule our only recourse would be to shoot people if they tried to renege on a contract. You wouldn’t find that world to be optimal either.

Laws and enforcement, in our system, are the purview of the state. We don’t get to write our own laws… unless we bribe the lawmakers. I’m afraid you’ll either have to live with the system we have or lump it. It’s not about to change, just because you’re unhappy with it.

I was not. I was questioning the validity of the promise being made IN THE FIRST PLACE. This was clarified by the fact I said these promises are made in accordance with union demands, and it’s very unlikely they would be made without collective bargaining.

“Also, anyone who’d ever been employed would know that the typical salary or wage doesn’t include enough money to pay for ongoing expenses and fully fund one’s own retirement. Before the adoption of Social Security and employer-contribution pension funds, hardly any American could afford to live after he couldn’t work any longer, except in a state of extreme poverty.”
So now you are assuming I’ve never been employed… Do you really expect me to take you seriously when you jump from one conclusion to another? It’s also incredibly silly of you to claim that employers have all this extra money to pay for pensions that they mysteriously won’t give in extra wages such that employees can contribute to retirement.

Whether retirement is realistic is a function of whether or not it’s desirable enough for people to forego current consumption to the necessary extent to allow for it. Personally, I have no plans to ever really retire. I’ll gladly drop dead after years of working. If I do retire it’ll be well after any government provided age, or I’ll have plenty saved for it and still work on the side.

“I note that during the period when pension funds were not being maintained, the employee portion of the total contribution was still being deducted from his wage… just not the employer-funded portion.”
I don’t think this part of your statement has anything to do with what I was saying, but I can’t figure it out from the context of the post you made prior to it either.