legal precedence and limited liability companies

[sweetheart]

Appearantly, there was a parliment companies act of 1862 that created the concept that an artificial person of limited liability, that itself transformed family business and corporate risk architecture. The crown would "charter" a monopoly through a cumbersome process with an agency... hence why many companies of the day had "chartered" in their moniker. America copied this structure and has embellished upon it that we have the corporo-facism failure of today.... so clearly that part of the "experiment" went astray.

"Many victorian progressives stuck to Adam Smith's view that limited liability was an unwanted subsidy."

My view today is that it was a good idea, but that it was never intended to supercede or to overgovern a soeverign state, rather to the component state per the resource allocation of the balance sheet. Clearly corporate governance has gotten out of hand, as it is beholden to the state and to its stakeholders beyond the shareholder-value maxim. This failure to accomodate the true exogenous communities in corporate governance, democratically, has been a tragic oversight in the architecture of the companies act itself... and all subsequent thinking.

An article in the London times inspired this line of inquiry. If you have any thoughts. Please i am curious how we tame "corporatocracy" that we do not toss the baby out with the bathwater.

[arendt]

1. If you haven't read "Unequal Protections" by Thom Hartmann, start there

Hi, sweetheart-

Hartmann lays out the entire weasely history of corporate
personhood.

arendt

[sweetheart]

2. and how should it be?

Per your understanding of this chap? I only start with the history to pinpoint how a "legal technology" has completely corrupted the constitution... once unleashed. I'll order up said book, i hope it is as forward looking as backward, as i have enough backward looking material on corporatism..

Yet nothing at all except a rather visionary work called "moneyspace". In that work, the professors conclude that no matter what the network paradigm, wealth correlates to geography. Meethinks the real problem has been the abstraction of corporate personhood beyond its relation to geography.

[rogerashton]

3. The problem is to make corporations democratic

and that means responsible to the employees. Personhood -- in the sense that they can own property and enter into a contract -- and limited liability are probably functional necessities.