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>can't be overlooked when people start saying things like "corporations were created to help society." Uhm, who says that? Corporations were always created by

>can't be overlooked when people start saying things like "corporations were created to help society." Uhm, who says that? Corporations were always created by people who wanted to cooperate to pursue their common interests.

thr0wawayf00 5y ago
It is literally a direct quote from the post I originally responded to.
eropple 5y ago
That's not correct. Corporations, particularly in the limited-liability sense of the term, are created by society, not people. The laws of a jurisdiction provide a carve-out for a fictional entity that gets special rules to protect the people who act as its brain. But that's different from those people creating it. And to this end, the only reason to create a corporation is to make society better. If they're not, we have the ability to revoke their charters, and we should use that more.
- thr0wawayf00 5y ago
  > And to this end, the only reason to create a corporation is to make society better I'm sorry but this is patently false, the reason to create a corporation is to capture profit. Want to make society better? There are numerous non-profit and government organizations that broadly aim for this goal which do not turn a profit. The goal of a corporation is to sell goods or services, and hopefully those goods or services do in fact better society. However, this is far too often not the case to make the argument that corporations exist to improve society. Look at how much control corporations have over our society today, they're practically invincible and indemnifiable in our current culture because they're so much more insulated legally than individuals.
  - eropple 5y ago
    Perhaps I was unclear, but you get that you're lecturing me about what I just said, right? What you are describing is the goal for a person to apply to have a corporation created for them to manage. That's not the reason that society allows corporate charters to exist. Society need not allow a corporate charter to be established that does not benefit that society, and can revoke them should they not be achieving the goals of the society that grants them.
- jazzyjackson 5y ago
  What is the average person’s interest in creating laws aroubd i corporation? Doesn’t it stand to reason that it’s the people creating businesses that would be the ones suggesting the laws that protect themselves from liability? The fact that corporate charters are never revoked points to the laws being in the corporations favor, not the citizens’
  - eropple 5y ago
    You're right. They absolutely are. They don't have to be. From where I stand, corporations should be afraid of the societies that grant them their charters.
  - parineum 5y ago
    We allow those protections to allow people to take business risks without taking significant personal risk. This encourages entrepreneurship. I don't think you'd see as many people trying to build widgets if they had to put their family's home on the line. In exchange for those protections, we get widgets.
    - jazzyjackson 5y ago
      Sorry, I didn't mean to imply that LLC / incorporation has no benefit to society, it plainly does. I was responding to the conjecture that it's society at large that writes the rules. I figure the stakeholders writing the laws are the people who have the most to gain.

thr0wawayf00 5y ago

It is literally a direct quote from the post I originally responded to.

eropple 5y ago

That's not correct. Corporations, particularly in the limited-liability sense of the term, are created by society, not people. The laws of a jurisdiction provide a carve-out for a fictional entity that gets special rules to protect the people who act as its brain. But that's different from those people creating it. And to this end, the only reason to create a corporation is to make society better. If they're not, we have the ability to revoke their charters, and we should use that more.

thr0wawayf00 5y ago
> And to this end, the only reason to create a corporation is to make society better I'm sorry but this is patently false, the reason to create a corporation is to capture profit. Want to make society better? There are numerous non-profit and government organizations that broadly aim for this goal which do not turn a profit. The goal of a corporation is to sell goods or services, and hopefully those goods or services do in fact better society. However, this is far too often not the case to make the argument that corporations exist to improve society. Look at how much control corporations have over our society today, they're practically invincible and indemnifiable in our current culture because they're so much more insulated legally than individuals.
- eropple 5y ago
  Perhaps I was unclear, but you get that you're lecturing me about what I just said, right? What you are describing is the goal for a person to apply to have a corporation created for them to manage. That's not the reason that society allows corporate charters to exist. Society need not allow a corporate charter to be established that does not benefit that society, and can revoke them should they not be achieving the goals of the society that grants them.
jazzyjackson 5y ago
What is the average person’s interest in creating laws aroubd i corporation? Doesn’t it stand to reason that it’s the people creating businesses that would be the ones suggesting the laws that protect themselves from liability? The fact that corporate charters are never revoked points to the laws being in the corporations favor, not the citizens’
- eropple 5y ago
  You're right. They absolutely are. They don't have to be. From where I stand, corporations should be afraid of the societies that grant them their charters.
- parineum 5y ago
  We allow those protections to allow people to take business risks without taking significant personal risk. This encourages entrepreneurship. I don't think you'd see as many people trying to build widgets if they had to put their family's home on the line. In exchange for those protections, we get widgets.
  - jazzyjackson 5y ago
    Sorry, I didn't mean to imply that LLC / incorporation has no benefit to society, it plainly does. I was responding to the conjecture that it's society at large that writes the rules. I figure the stakeholders writing the laws are the people who have the most to gain.