Libertarianism. Again.

[Former Lord of Winterfell]

I'm not trying to bash it. I am trying to understand where the moral foundation stops and the results based evalation begins.

Well, again, that all depends on how you define the "results" in the first place. The "result" that libertarianism gives is more freedom from government coercion. The "results" of that will vary between individuals.

But will that happen? Before corporate enties did those that had the money and caused harm really lose everything? Is that really a threat? Is there evidence that such "wiping out" has occured in instances without liabilty protection? Could Bill Gates have been cleaned out? Is that more of a threat to the medium sized fish?

There's a bunch of questions in there, but to answer the first one, limited liability only has relevance when you have a well-developed legal system that recognizes both tort and contract claims. But I'm quite sure there are plenty of instances where people who are not corporations have lost everything they had. I'm just not going to take the time the research something that seems obvious to me.

Bill Gates could have been cleaned out, but only after Microsoft was cleaned out. The best examples you'd get, really, is by loooking at corporate bankruptcies. If you eliminated limited liability, then corporate bankruptcies wouldn't exist until every shareholder was bankrupt as well.

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

14d,

I don't deny that. All I'm saying is that without that possibility the potential personal liability (of more than the capital invested) isn't evaluated at all.

[Arlingzen Bill]

I FUCKING HATE THIS SENTENCE.

IT IS BLOODY STUPID.

You are confusing the FORM of a government (republic, kingdom, etc.) with it's content (Democratic, oligarchic, monarchic) The US is a democracy (give or take...) and has always been one (give or take...) it's also a republic. The two are not mutually exclusive and they don't even mean anything different.

A democracy simply means "a state ruled by the people" (in whatever form) a republic is a state that is ruled by elected officials (who may or may not be elected democratically) Venice was a republic, but not democratic. The US is a democratic republic, Denmark is democratic but not a republic.

So stop with the idiocy. Stop conflating words and make the world a better place. Please.

I disagree. You are confusing "democratic", a process, with "democracy", a FORM of government practiced, sort of in ancient Greece and small town New England.

[Tormund Ukrainesbane]

Why not? As long as it spells out the conditions of limited liability and the fact that you're dealing with the organization rather than the individuals behind it in every contract it ever agrees to, it will have both the things you describe (if we assume that contracts are somehow enforced, but libertarians always do that anyway).

While this is true, it would only hold with the first purchaser. If Dow chemicals makes poisonous paint and sells it to Home Depot (though your limited liability contract), who then sells it to me, I have no obligation to the contract between Dow and Home Depot.

In addition, I would imagine that any company who required a limited-liability contract as a condition of sale would not find themselves with a leg up on their competitors.

So?

I mean, how does this effect their ability to wield significant political power?

And that's assuming they don't just use that power to shield themselves from that liability.

It doesn't. It protects against corporate malfeasance. Their ability to wield political power is curtailed by the fact that the government simply doesn't have the authority to pass laws that favor them.

[Galactus]

I disagree. You are confusing "democratic", a process, with "democracy", a FORM of government practiced, sort of in ancient Greece and small town New England.

That would be a "direct democracy", which you note, is a two-word sentence.

[Galactus]

It doesn't. It protects against corporate malfeasance. Their ability to wield political power is curtailed by the fact that the government simply doesn't have the authority to pass laws that favor them.

Economic power is political power. Get the money and you can pay the guns.

[RWHamel]

It doesn't. It protects against corporate malfeasance. Their ability to wield political power is curtailed by the fact that the government simply doesn't have the authority to pass laws that favor them.

I don't see how you could do this so that the government didn't have the authority to hinder them either. Which would mean they could do pretty much what the wanted. Or is your idea of Libertarianism that the government can't interfere with anything that you do, but must protect you, by interfering with everyone else?

[TerraPrime]

Now we get to the nitty-gritty of just how libertarian you want this government to be. I don't believe that a state is required for liability to be laid on business X if it can be shown that they included a known poison in their paint and failed to disclose this to their customers (fraud by omission). We can therefore lay charges of negligence and fraud (I doubt that malice aforethought could be proven). I don't believe any assessment agency would be required for this, merely to have the paint tested for lead, and check the ingredients on the can.

So we are presuming that there is some level of state function whence contractual laws are drafted, ratified, executed, and enforced?

And let's look at the testing. The company and the plaintiffs each hire their own testing agency. The one hired by X, unsurprisingly, fails to find any lead. The company hired by the plaintiffs, on the other hand finds a good level of lead in the paint. Now there's a dispute. What next?

The tricky part is in the administration of justice. Many libertarians believe that such things can be accomplished without the state. I believe that it could be done, but I believe that the VAST majority of people would not allow us to try, so a state court would likely be unavoidable.

This is rather obscure. How could justice be maintained without a government? And why wouldn't most people let you try it?

[RWHamel]

So we are presuming that there is some level of state function whence contractual laws are drafted, ratified, executed, and enforced?

And let's look at the testing. The company and the plaintiffs each hire their own testing agency. The one hired by X, unsurprisingly, fails to find any lead. The company hired by the plaintiffs, on the other hand finds a good level of lead in the paint. Now there's a dispute. What next?

This is rather obscure. How could justice be maintained without a government? And why wouldn't most people let you try it?

It sounds like a reboot to me. We turn the clock back 7,000 years, and reinvent the same thing. Plus all the killings that go with it.

[Hereward]

Corporations are creations of the state. Libertarians oppose them. Under a libertarian system of government the rich could not use the government to further their own ends because the government would lack to authority to do anything for them.

Money is a power in itself. Under a libertarian government it could not translate into political power. You couldn't get a regulation to stifle your competition because the government would not be empowered to make such regulations. You couldn't get a "bail out" or government loan because the government would have no funds for such things and no authority to disburse them even if it did.

Shryke,

But it is what grants "corporations" power. Take away limited liability and you've castrated every corporation. That doesn't cure all ills nor have I claimed it does.

Their ability to wield political power is curtailed by the fact that the government simply doesn't have the authority to pass laws that favor them.

Politics and government is the process by which those who don't own everything get a say. Eliminating this negates the neeed for the rich to engage in buying voters and politicians, and the need to set up protections such as corporations, because it gives them everything they could possibly want and destroys the ability of the have-somethings and the have-nots to do a damned thing about it. They'll draw the ladder up after them and game over.

[RWHamel]

Politics and government is the process by which those who don't own everything get a say. Eliminating this negates the neeed for the rich to engage in buying voters and politicians, and the need to set up protections such as corporations, because it gives them everything they could possibly want and destroys the ability of the have-somethings and the have-nots to do a damned thing about it. They'll draw the ladder up after them and game over.

I think under the situation, the Corporations would become the government, because no one could stop them. Then they would deport all the trouble makers to a penal-colony, say Australia.

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

As a trouble maker, I'd prefer New Zealand. But that's just me.

[RWHamel]

As a trouble maker, I'd prefer New Zealand. But that's just me.

Do you really think they will let the slaves get a vote? :P

[Hereward]

As a trouble maker, I'd prefer New Zealand. But that's just me.

No dice, you're too short and/or thin to play rugby. :smoking:

[Dharma]

Libertarianism is the retarded bastard child of anarchism.

It is basically individualist capitalist anarchism, which is no true form of anarchism at all. It is a form which porports to provide maximum individual liberty to all members of society, but while maintaining private property and a monetary system, which cannot be done. With these two elements involved there can be no equality, and therefore there can be no real freedom.

The problems of libertarianism being discussed in this thread all stem from the fact that that within this system private property and money would remain.If there was no money, there would be no reason to sue or be given recompensation for a faulty or deadly product, nor would there been any profit motives which would cause 'companies' to be slack with the safety of their products.

[Ormond]

I just wonder how the modern economy could possibly work without corporations and limited liability, because of the vast scale and integration of the modern world.

I assume that legally the "owners" of any corporation are its stockholders. Though people who own a lot of stock are probably "wealthy", in the modern West a whole lot of everyday middle class people own stock. And I suspect that the total number of stockholders for any large corporation would be thousands or even millions of individuals.

This is particularly true because in the modern economy a lot of "stockholders" are themselves other corporations and organizations. As a college professor, my retirement funds are invested with TIAA/CREF. The CREF part of that is a stock fund. CREF owns stock in hundreds of different corporations and is always buying and selling, like most pension funds. Personally, if I thought that I had liability for everything any of those companies did I would be a lot more terrified than the "wealthy" stockholders are. At the present time I don't even pay attention to what the companies are that CREF holds stock in. In the modern economy, the existence of corporations with limited liability seems to allow for both spreading of risk and wealth to an extent that it gives "little guys" like myself a sense of security. Without that, we'd just hide our money in mattresses and it would never get used in investments that help the economy as a whole. It would seem to me that would cause a collapse of the modern economy, and the little bit of wealth that would be left over would get concentrated in the hands of a few powerful warlords, like the Mexican drug cartels mentioned earlier in the thread.

[Former Lord of Winterfell]

14D,

Right now Shareholders don't have to evaluate potential direct liability at all.

If you got rid of limited liability, the idea of being a passive investor period likely would take a huge hit. Mutual funds, etc., would become much less attractive than they are now.

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

FLOW,

It might encourage entrepinurship. Why not try your own business where you have direct control over quality and risk?

[TrackerNeil]

Holy cow...I just realized I got credit for opening the thread.

I win the board.

[Former Lord of Winterfell]

FLOW,

It might encourage entrepinurship. Why not try your own business where you have direct control over quality and risk?

Because not everyone who wants to invest wants to quit their job and become a full-time entrepeneur. Furthermore, as a practical matter, getting enough capital together to start your business may be an insurmountable problem in an era when passive investment is disfavored. And even so, putting your entire future at risk in an unlimited liability environment, while likely quitting the job you currently have to make a go of it as an entrepeneur, may seem like a much less attractive option than just sticking some money in a 401(k).

Sure, some people will take the plunge. But the vast majority will play it safe rather than risk everything they've earned and everything they own.