4 ms·
Limited liability is as important to the little guy as anyone else. If you want to open your own store, start your own carpentry business, or run your own taxi
by marcoperaza 8y ago
Limited liability is as important to the little guy as anyone else. If you want to open your own store, start your own carpentry business, or run your own taxi, then you should form some kind of business entity with limited liability, such as an LLC. That way, if it turns out that a product you sold is defective and hurts someone, if a staircase you built collapses on someone, or if you get into a car accident, you're only personally on the hook for whatever you invested into the business, not everything you're worth.
- brokenmachine 8y agoI'm just a dumb worker, but I would like business owners to be forced to do their absolute best to avoid making dangerous collapsing staircases. I don't know how it would work, I guess they'd have to pay for more insurance. But it seems that the way it is now, everyone has to pay for their ability to move fast and break things. Just throwing ideas around, my economics knowledge is rudimentary at best.
- marcoperaza 8y agoWe all benefit from innovation and risk-taking. The advances and comforts of modern society would be impossible without the risk imposed by factories, machinery, and so forth. If starting or joining a business venture meant putting everything you're worth on the line in the case that one employee is negligent, then no sane person would do it. When limited liability is abused, such as when a corporations are undercapitalized[1], then courts can "pierce the corporate veil" and hold its owners personally liable for judgments against the company. [1] Undercapitalization is when not enough assets are kept in the business to pay for its debts or reasonably expected liabilities.