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> Incorporation is special because it creates a separate legal person—corporate personhood—who is the target of legal action against the business enterprise, an
by InitialLastName 8y ago
> Incorporation is special because it creates a separate legal person—corporate personhood—who is the target of legal action against the business enterprise, and for whose liabilities the investors have limited legal accountability.
Part of the issue is that these separate "persons" aren't actually able to be held accountable. When corporations do something illegal by, say, killing people out of neglect, they aren't imprisoned (shut down temporarily) or executed (dissolved).
- billbrown 8y agoThere it is: the corporate death penalty. They are held accountable through lawsuits. Do you seriously contend that when a company kills someone out of neglect, they face no accountability? They are sued individually and through classes to the tune of millions (and billions in some cases).
- s73v3r_ 8y agoI think most people would believe that, in most cases, the amount of liability they receive is disproportionate to the amount of harm they cause. And as more and more companies seek to ban class actions and require binding arbitration, saying that they actually face liability for their actions seems laughable.
- dragonwriter 8y ago> Part of the issue is that these separate "persons" aren't actually able to be held accountable. They are able to be. Government just chooses not to do so. > When corporations do something illegal by, say, killing people out of neglect, they aren't imprisoned (shut down temporarily) or executed (dissolved). They can be, and have been (the latter more often than the former.)