How Do You Convince Americans To Accept LESS From the Govt.?

It's not a semantic distinction. An association of many individuals acting collectively is a different proposition from an institution consisting of many individuals but with its own legal personhood. There is a right to the former, which should not be infringed. There is no right to the latter.

Appeal to convention. Plus the difference between "right to associate" and "right to incorporate" has already been described.

"My way or the highway" is simply a recognition that neither party in the trade is bound to participate in it. It's also "their way or the highway", as they are free not to incorporate.

They're both rights, therefore not subject to "democratic" revision.

Bullshit. You essentially say: "it's how I want it or not at all." You seek to hold all the force and coercion on your side. That isn't an exchange; that's extortion.

And, even if were how you want it to be, I would say that the freedom to associate would STILL allow corporations to exist (just as they did before they were given fictional "personhood") and they would be even less subject to regulation since not formally recognized.

And to pretend that mega-corporations are nothing more than "simple free associations" is disingenuous.

Ah, so you're at least accepting that they aren't the same thing now.

I do not accept that the ability to create fictional legal personhoods at will is a right.

There's no force and coersion. People are free not to incorporate.
However, if we recognise that corporations can be useful engines for generating wealth, then it's in my (or more properly societies) interest to set regulations on them at a level at which they will still want to do so.

Then those are the kinds of corporations that my argument wouldn't apply to.

Why not? Does it cost you anything that was already yours?

And, in particular, they impose upon the rights of third parties against their will. There's really no other way to characterize the concept of limited liability. Limited liability without your consent is clear and absolute violation of your right to fully recover for damages the limited liability collection of people causes you. Corporations, merely by existing, are an imposition on the rights of honest-to-god individuals. That is, in fact, their raison d'être.

Libertarians should hate the concept of the corporation; it's anathema to everything a libertarian claims to value. Of course that presumes that the libertarian in question means it when he talks about economic rights being sacred; if he's perchance lying, then maybe he's really more about protecting the status quo of wealth than he's about protecting economic rights.

Limited liability is certainly justifiable in certain situations IMO, but it's not a natural condition. It's not anything to which anyone has a right; it's a limited privilege that under any sane economic theory requires good behavior of whomever it's bestowed upon. It's a creation of the state that's otherwise at odds with generally accepted--especially among libertarians--concepts of property rights. Anyone claiming that there is some fundamental right to limited liability, to a failure to take economic responsibility for the harms you impose, while also claiming to be a libertarian is, in fact, either extremely confused or a liar.

Yes; if I'm a creditor of the new legal fiction, either by accident or choice. We have been through all this before.

Um, don't buy the product? Sounds like a willful decision to me.

I do. And the law's on my side.

And they're free TO incorporate.

As they are free associations of individuals, the only regulatory constraints that can legitimately be put on them (aside from the laws that EVERYONE has to obey) are requirements that the corporation is managed responsibly vis-a-vis the shareholders.

The state cannot tell the corporation what product/service to provide, or how much, or what to invest in capital, or whom to hire/fire, or whom to sell, or what to charge. There are limits to what "you" (i.e., your all-purpose buddy, the state) can demand of them.

Then you acknowledge a freedom to incorporate independent of state recognition.

Appeal to convention once again. I don't hear you accepting that argument for healthcare mandates.

Anyway, the law does recognise the ability of the state to create regulation and to revoke corporate charters, so it's not quite on your side.

It's the fact that they're free not to that removes any element of coersion, which was your claim.

They are not simply free associations, not matter how many times you ignore the fact.

If you want to redefine "incorporate" to mean "associate freely without acquiring legal personhood, limited liability and the rest of the statist benefits" then yeah, sure.

I remember when an interviewer asked Hitler if he was thinking about running for Chancellor and Eva Braun said, "It's too soon! He hasn't done anything yet!"

Quite the circular logic you have going on there.

*Sigh*

You are not coerced by having to pay for something if you have a choice not to buy it in the first place. That is what I am saying - where's the circular logic?

Because you are effectively advocating that people be coerced into not doing something. Saying they have the freedom to not do it isn't really saying anything at all. It's intellectually dishonest and frankly quite stupid to say.

I am advocating no such thing. To use the analogy again, the existence of a fee for an item I wish to buy is not coersion. I can either buy it, or not.
And I specifically made the point upthread that 'the fee' ought to be reasonable enough so as not to deter people. The fact that such fees already exist in the form of taxation and other regulation make a nonsense of your argument.

The healthcare mandates probably won't survive constitutional scrutiny. Healthcare reform is more likely to be repealed/curtailed than corporate law is to be changed.

A state will never be able to simply revoke a corporate charter. It would have to be for a compelling reason in line with the constraints I mentioned earlier.

And which renders any of your claims on corporations moot. If people are free to incorporate without government recognition, then the case for government regulation is made much weaker.

Who is coerced into participating?

I think corporations could be made to work without the "statist benefits." But I've no reason to change the status quo: it's how I like it.

Yeah you are. You're basically saying that it's either your way or people are "free" not to do it.

A better analogy would be the old saying - "you can have any color Ford you want, as long as you want a black one."

Why charge people freely associating with each other to create business anything? Where is the logic in charging people for producing a good or service that will help to increase your nation's GDP?

No, not really.

It remains an appeal to convention. There are lots of other laws that you don't like that have survived constitutional scrutiny.

Yet they have done so before and courts have insisted that they retain the right. It was just an aside however. Convention is not an argument.

I don't think incorporation is of much use without the government recognition and statist benefits. But I'm not exercised by that either way. If you think that would work, that's fine. The situation as exists in reality is what I'm dealing with.

Creditors are coerced by limited liability laws, and every other market participant is affected by every benefit that they gain from the government by the process. If these adavntages did not exist, nobody would be interested.

Yes, which is not equivalent to coersing them not to incorporate. It's exactly the same as charging a fee for an item which is a priviledge, not a right.

Read the thread. It's not just free association. There are statist benefits. All I'm saying is that these should be subject to regulation and taxes, which is hardly a radical idea.

Yeah it is.

No it's not. For one thing, an item, as in a good, was produced and cost money to be produced. The fee to purchase said good is charged to both compensate those who produced it and to encourage them to make even more goods. This is not the same as charging people a fee to associate with one another.

There really shouldn't be, unless of course it's to encourage an association that would benefit the state. The problem is that such benefits tend to come with strings attached.

Which doesn't make it a good idea.

There are statist benefits to incorporating. I'm not interesting in a hypothetical situation where the rules have changed. As long as limited liability, corporate personhood and the rest of these exists for corporate entities, the state ought to have the right to attach the strings.

The Libertarian in me agrees completely. If you believe in personal responsibility and accountability, the concept of a corporation is gross affront to that. The problem is not that people come together to form an institution to serve their common interests, but that they are excused from most damages to society as if they didn't cause them, even though they, as decision makers, did. Would Wall Street have been as irresponsible over the past decade if its managers were held personally, if collectively, responsible for its losses?

Sure you are, that's like 80% of the type of discussion you have here.

Hence the argument why these things shouldn't exist.

This:

Take away the limited liability aspect of corporations and you can expect to see the complete collapse of every economy in the world.

No one is going to want ownership (in stock) and face the potential that their life savings and everything they own will be wiped out at any time thanks to a lawsuit.

Investment will come to a screeching halt.

Without limited liability the worlds economy wouldn't even be close to where it is today.

If you believe in personal responsibility and accountability, the concept of a Federal Government like the one which we have currently is a gross affront to that. The problem is not that people come together to form an institution to serve their common interests, but that they are excused from most damages to society as if they didn't cause them, even though they, as decision makers, did. Would Congress have been as irresponsible over the past decade if its managers were held personally, if collectively, responsible for its losses?

Adorable. Now, when the people (you know, actual flesh-and-blood individuals) rise up and take away the special privileges corporations enjoy, make sure to post this again.

As usual, when there's a good argument against something, Liet goes and makes a bad one.

It is NOT to creditors that limited liability represents an unnatural state; that could be handled by contract law, something like "in case of liquidation or reorganization of the company, Creditor may only collect from each shareholder the lesser of their equity stake and the amount due the Creditor, subject to possible subordination to other Creditors based on...". It's only in cases of criminal liability against a non-creditor that limited liability might be problematic, and then only if the liability is greater than the company's total equity and projected revenues.

Nicely ignored.

By the way, you just violated one of your own stated tenets here. No. You never mock...