From: Phil Osborn (philosborn2001@yahoo.com)
Date: Sun Oct 06 2002 - 15:00:47 MDT
I was afraid that someone would make that
interpretation. However, the post was actually a copy
of a single page designed to be posted on a physical
bulletin board at Anthony L. Hargis & Co. next to a
printout of the Ayn Rand Institute announcement. I
couldn't fit everything I could have said on that page
by a long shot.
On the other hand, it did potentially start a
discussion; whereas, if I HAD somehow managed to
include every possible qualification, then probably I
would be left wondering if anyone actually read the
post.
Which suggests another possibility: I wonder if there
is an easy way for readers to check off which posts
they have actually read, to be stored at the Extropy
site? This would provide a record of sorts as to
which subjects and posters are of most interest to the
most readers. Eventually, such information could be
collated into a predictive algorythm such as that used
by Amazon. Such an algorythm, standardized or
filtered, could become a universal search system. (I
designed a much more sophisticated version of this
system back in the early '80's BTW, in case anyone is
interested.)
Anyway, in response to Greg's post, I am well aware
that corporations as such have existed for hundreds of
years prior to the "Trust Busting." My understanding
is that they were relatively rare in the U.S. - as
opposed to other forms of business organization -
prior to the organized Progressive jihad on the
trusts.
<Sat Oct 05 2002 - 17:35:35 MDT, Greg Burch
(gregburch@gregburch.net) responded to my post:
<... The author seems to suggest that the legal
institution of the limited liability corporation arose
as a result of the late 19th century "trust busters"
and their attack on the legal tool
of the trust. But the corporation in more or less its
modern form predates that by some time (although there
continues to be fine-tuning through the present day).
In fact the institution of limited liability
legal vehicles for sheltering investment reaches back
very, very far, indeed. In one instance, the legal
personification of the ship and the phenomenon of
"general average" in admiralty law, those roots reach
back to the 16th century at least, and probably
earlier.
...>
I'm not an expert in this area, altho I do know people
who are. My understanding of the position that many
of them have taken is that somehow "Admiralty Law" has
superceded the common law in most of the courts in the
U.S. In some cases whose details I have long
forgotten, I have heard them tell of specifically and
successfully challenging jurisdiction on this basis. I
suspect that this is all related to the issue of the
legitimacy of the corporation as such.
The argument against the corpoation as such, however,
does not rely upon historical data for its validity.
I like to be able to trace every major concept I
introduce to a concrete example or at least a pointer
in that direction, but the abstract argument is
inherently capable of standing on its own.
Liability is a fact, just like the law of gravity.
People can agree to share liability via various
contractual mechanisms such as insurance, etc., but
that doesn't make it go away. People make decisions
based on risk factors. Reducing liability alters the
payoff stats and will result in different decisions on
a statistical basis.
Artificially reducing liability at the point of a gun
means inevitably that people will take chances that
would not be economically justified if they had to
face full liability. Statistically, this means that
losses will occur that would not have in a free
market, and that those responsible for those losses
will be shielded from the effects, while other people
whose choices were curtailed by the market distortions
will end up footing the bill.
That analysis alone should be sufficient to damn the
corporate model. Of course, it gets much worse than
that when you tie in the banking complex, with its
enormous concentrated interest power to influence
state policy, and the military/industrial complex, and
the military/industrial/academic complex. This whole
empire of pull, to borrow a term from Rand, protects
itself from its errors by control over the money
supply, military force and a lock via patents and
copyrights on intellectual property usually financed
at least in part by taxpayer funding of academia.
Given the enormous productive overcapacity that we
humans have in general, multiplied by all the new
technologies, it takes a whole LOT of errors to sink
even so inherently corrupt a system as described
above. It appears that we may have reached that
point, however.
The risks are paying off negatively in terms of things
like destruction of the bio-capacity of the planet, or
the extremely wasteful use of inherently scarce
resources such as oil. The top-down Progressive model
of compulsory state education has steadily declined
over the past century+ in terms of producing educated
people, despite all kinds of advances in
education-related technology. The rewarding of risky
behavior in high finance has reached the point of a
possible general financial implosion. The U.S.
military is incapable of forcing the Chinese and a
host of eager competitors from stealing every piece of
the ill-gotten corporate intellectual property,
hamstringing only responsible U.S. companies. I could
go on, but you get the picture, I hope.
****
Regarding the common law, I know that for most of its
history in Northern Europe, especially Anglo-Saxon
England, it consisted mostly of the application of
local precedent. Originally it literally meant "the
law of the commons," as distinguished from the
contractual relations that people enjoyed relative to
their own private property. Of course, people can
disagree about the interpretation of contracts or
refuse to honor them, at which point their behavior
may invoke the commons law, as such involves everyone
by implication. From local precedent defining what
behavior was permissable on public land to general
legal/ethical principles of property and contract was
doubtless a long and ongoing evolution, but the
general principle was that the jury was soveriegn and
that restitution was the goal.
This is and was incompatible with any system of
conquest or general institutionalized theft as with
the corporate state.
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