Saturday Audience Participation
The mainstream Right largely ignores the harmful consequences of completely free corporate and financial entities. They believe in WalMart and Wall Street and those that say otherwise get branded socialist liberals. But amongst the reactionary "radicals", such a view finds slightly less favor. Reactionaries understand that corporate and financial interests often oppose those of native Americans, leading to a begrudgingly, qualified acceptance of a leftist ideal - restriction on the free market. Or if not championing a deliberate restriction, then perhaps they don't express the impassioned worship of "value transference" popular in the beltway.
Today's question: What is your view of large corporations? Are they ultimately good or bad for native Americans? Is corporate and financial power an unfortunate trade-off inherent to a free nation? Is there one particular corporation or set of corporations that you feel is more harmful or beneficial than others? Is there a happy medium between government or corporate hegemony? Is there another topic where far-left liberals and reactionaries agree, though for extremely different reasons?
[FWIW: My view of corporations became far more negative after I discovered the paleo diet and its dispelling of many nutrition and health myths perpetrated by Big Pharma (i.e. high total cholesterol is a made-up health problem designed to support the 20 billion dollar statin industry).
41 comments:
I suppose it depends of which particular corporation one is talking about, but in general I'd say they are at best completely indifferent to the interests of the American nation and its people, and more often hostile to them. Agribusiness gains from the cheap, easily exploited labor of illegal Latin American immigrants, so it bribes legislators to pass amnesty laws, etc., in effect engaging in wholesale demographic replacement. We're all familiar with what the large financial corporations have done recently. (The U.S. government now looks to be little more than a wholly-owned subsidiary of Goldman-Sachs.) So, yeah, by and large I think large corporations today are essentially anti-American.
As to whether there's any other overlap between paleocon and far left: Well, both essentially agree on the stupidity of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, although for different reasons. Occasionally there's some overlap on conservation issues. But again, the two sides dislike each other so much that they don't often work together. (I once tried to get some Save the Wetlands group to pool their resources with Ducks Unlimited, a hunters' lobby, but the lefties couldn't bring themselves to work with those mean old animal-killers. C'est la vie.)
One of your bolded questions was:
Is there a happy medium between government or corporate hegemony?
I think that this represents a sort of a false dichotomy (or in some ways trichotomy). In many ways, the corporate interests and governmental functions converge. As large organized bodies that work toward certain interests, corporations hold great power in society and are well-positioned to exploit the levers of government. The first amendment gives everyone the right to lobby the government, but it is the best organized, most knowledgeable, and most directed players that have the most influence in that regard, which gives corporations some of the greatest leverage over government activities.
So, in some ways, I think that we do have a "medium" between government and corporate hegemony in the form of a co-hegemony. The government is not antagonistic to corporations
Do I see corporations as good or bad? Neither. I think that they play an integral part in our economic system and it's hard to imagine a world without them, but as concentrations of power, they each have potential to cause great harm and I think that the government is often complicit in abetting them.
Ultimately, corporations are large organized bodies that seek out a set of aims, often but not always economic in nature (non profits, for instance are a kind of corporation) and I see them as an organizational strategy that's proven largely successful. Beyond that, whether they do good or harm depends upon the specific circumstance and the particular nature of the corporation under discussion. Categorical condemnation by the Left is silly and naïve, but so also is the response of some on the Right, as they are wont to do, to reflexively defend them. Ultimately, they must be dealt with on a case-by-case basis.
Corporations over a certain size informally merge with government. Many of the things that people criticize corporations for are things they couldn't do without the power of the state backing them up. I'm thinking particularly of the "too big to fail" banks here.
Take away some of the special treatment and access to lawmakers and regulators that large corporations have and many of the worst aspects of modern corporate America (and the world) disappear.
As a very high level example and something that's not likely to happen this side of a complete economic collapse; take away the legal status of limited liability company. This separates the ownership of the company from the control and allows them to run up huge debts with no risk to the shareholders. With this status gone ownership, risk and control of a business are related once more. It would reduce the size of enterprises but also ensure that they are run within reasonable levels of risk (provided one assume the shareholders are risk averse).
We are all economic units, consumers. Multi-nationals don't care whether their customers have a Pakastani background or an Anglo background, just so long as you buy their junk. They are a bigger enemy than the government.
Free market capitalism is itself good, but many entrenched CEOs of multinational corporations use the government to insulate themselves from true competition.
Capitalism itself is great because it is based on voluntary free choice, and capitalism has exponentially improved the world's standard of living. Capitalism brought us the assembly line, vehicles, lifesaving medications, better food, disease resistant crops, and flounders in an environment where even poor people have the freedom to drive across the country.
While workers in Vietnam and China deserve better working conditions they still have it better than their peasant farmer forebears.
The government also imposes its will onto businesses, and an example of this is affirmative action legislation and the criminalization of "redlining". The government even went so far as to force school integration at gunpoint many decades ago in the Midwest. It is interesting to note that segregation was natural and unconscious while desegregation was inorganic and forced.
In summery I will state that things could be far better (e.g., small businesses not being disadvantaged by legislation), but will mention that the entrenched elite aren't these wonderful people who would happily give up the power they feel is "owed" to them.
"We are all economic units, consumers. Multi-nationals don't care whether their customers have a Pakastani background or an Anglo background, just so long as you buy their junk. They are a bigger enemy than the government."
As a consumer I don't usually care where a product is made. If a North Korean car company made a water powered car that has an excellent MPG I'd buy it.
Bad. Big corporations are a sign of statism in the market carving out cartels. Small business protecting itself through corporate status, no biggie. Millions do that, but things like Big Oil, Big Wheat as you mentioned and other cartels (not evil boogymen like the left thinks it is, just people with self-interest like the rest of us) are dependent on the state forcing us to consume or closing markets to competition.
Large corporations provide benefit to all of us because of economies of scale. Our standard of living is much higher because of cost savings by Wal-mart. Bullshit. Corporations have no loyalty to any nation or culture. They can only truly care about the next quarter's earnings statement. Corporations are not the evil giants that leftists make them out to be, but corporate leadership cannot ignore the demands of the profit motive for long. Capitalism is the only economic system that makes sense. A fact taught in every basic economics class is that competition will erode excessive profit. Excessive profit is defined as that level of profit above what it takes to barely stay in business. Most successful corporations make an excessive profit because they are part of a cartel or oligopoly that does not face true free market pressures. I just wrote about the lies of the prosperity gospel btw.
Without corporations, there still would be large businesses, they would just be organized as partnerships.
The difference with a corporation is that you have limited liability. i.e. if you invest in a corporation in good faith, your liability is limited to your initial investment.
Without limited liability, nobody would ever invest in a complex venture like a railroad or a bridge or a fertilizer factory.
So either complex ventures would be done by the state like they were in Soviet Russia or they wouldn't happen at all like in much of the Third World.
@Sabril,
You're partly right, corporations were created by the state for just the reasons you mention, e.g. development of railways in New York State.
I'm less convinced that such projects wouldn't be developed in the absence of corporations. They would proceed more slowly based on clear profitability.
Economies of scale are good but would not operate the way they do no were it not for vast subsidies from the state, in transport infrastructure, suppressing the price of fuel and electricity etc.
There's a reason why, in the past, only precious goods were imported from distant lands; importing mundane products wasn't worth it. Walmart, or Agribusiness, is able to do what they do as a result of a complex network of state subsidies.
If you make it illegal to have rent seeking, lobbyists and never bail out any companies, then corporations can get as big as they want and will benefit society.
Wal-Mart has done more to help the poor through increasing purchasing power than the government ever has with all of its social programs. Such economies to scale can only be achieved thourgh "large" corporations.
I think it depends on the size and power. Nobody with sense can deny that Walmart, Monsanto, ConAgra, Tyson, Bayer, Microsoft, the MAFIAA, and others that either have an unhealthy link to their regulators or a monopoly with legions of lawyers to sue competition out of existence are a bad thing.
That's not to say I'm against all corporations, but there is a certain point where things just get too big to not be evil.
The problem is that people only talk about boycotting but never do.
I buy local food from local growers, shop at local stores for locally made items whenever possible, use nutrition and herbal medicine rather than traditional western medicine whenever possible, and won't buy music or movies if they're on RIAA or MPAA labels/studios.
Unfortunately, while most people seem to agree with this, people seldom take any action on it.
Just keep an eye open for evil in the corporate world, and when you see it begin a personal boycott and encourage others to do so as well. At least whenever possible.
I'm going back to school in a few months and will be required to use Windows. I'm going to make every effort to avoid them by suggesting alternatives like the MS Office plugin that will allow my teacher to read my open document files on their computer, but it may be impossible for me to avoid one of the companies on my list.
There are still others like Monsanto that are practically ninjas, try finding out if their poisons are in your food, it will take considerable time and research to avoid one of the nastiest monopolies in the world and even then you're still likely to miss something fairly often if you shop at a regular grocery store.
If democratic politics is the impetus behind demographic replacement, and banking/finance is its control-center, and the education-media complex is its mouthpiece, then big corporation are the engine powering the whole criminal endeavor.
People who say they favor the free market ought to have a more jaundiced view of corporations. In a truly free market there wouldn't be the limited liability that is offered by the corporate form.
The stated rationale for limited liability is that it is better for society since it encourages risk-taking and thus economic expansion. Whether this actually benefits common people or just the shareholders is an open question though.
I agree with Campion above who said that without the corporate form, we'd still have things like railroads, they'd just develop more slowly.
We are all economic units, consumers. Multi-nationals don't care whether their customers have a Pakastani background or an Anglo background, just so long as you buy their junk.
Worse than that. They certainly do care rather you are Pakastani or Anglo if those groups emnity gets in the way of them being interchangeable units as consumers or laborers. If Anglos and Pakistanis can't get along then no one may be either.
Bad. But the remedy for corporate misconduct is not, as is usually claimed, more government regulation.
What is so often lost in the outcry against corporate misdeeds is that corporations are CHARTERED BY THE GOVERNMENT in the first place. Not only that, but the main purpose of their charters is to limit the owners' responsibility for legal infractions that happen on their watch! So it is absurd to expect the government, after essentially undercutting the entire legal system for the benefit of a few business owners, to then rein in their misconduct by "regulating" them. Witness the endless reams of existing regulations, which require armies of highly-paid lawyers and bureaucrats to administer them, yet fail to ensure either safety or fairness.
A large corporation is an organization that is 90% political, 10% business. It is essentially a lobbying organization with a veneer of business activity to make it look like a "free market" entity. Anyone who has ever worked in a large corporation, or ever read a Dilbert cartoon, can attest to the phenomenal waste and pure stupidity of management decisions. And any benefits from corporate economies of scale are more than outweighed by the economic and social costs of this waste.
The only real remedy for this situation? Anon @ 6:11am hits the bullseye:
"take away the legal status of limited liability company. This separates the ownership of the company from the control and allows them to run up huge debts with no risk to the shareholders. With this status gone ownership, risk and control of a business are related once more. It would reduce the size of enterprises but also ensure that they are run within reasonable levels of risk"
I would add that corporations should also be prohibited from owning property or being parties to lawsuits.
Whittaker
In a truly free market there wouldn't be the limited liability that is offered by the corporate form
I a truly free market one could contract for limited liability. Besides, the actual actors in the corporation (management) don't have limited liability, only shareholders do. Management is always personally liable for their tortious acts. Would you buy microsoft stock if you were personally liable for every billion dollar lawsuit that they get served with? Corporate lawsuits would become de facto class actions by proxy. Eliminating limited liability will only encourage the plaintiff's bar to be even more aggressive. They could bankrupt a hundred thousand people in a single day with one lawsuit. Is that really a good thing?
Anonymous, I fully agree with you that "big business" is mostly a problem insofar as it cozies up to the government. Hear, hear.
But your suggestion to eliminate limited liability is not well-thought-out. Who would be a shareholder, who would invest in anything at all, if his personal assets were at risk with every investment he made?
Limited liability is a perfectly good way to manage risk by staking only part of your fortune on a given bet. Who, exactly, is harmed?
I didn't have any problem with corporations until I began to realize, somewhere around the late '90's, that they have a strong preference for women over men. And, as others have pointed out, that preference also ends up forcing men to exchange their masculine values in workplace demeanor for feminine ones. Since I've always been paleo, I can't blame big biz for misleading me on diet. If I was made Emperor I would eliminate all H.R. jobs.
I didn't have any problem with corporations until I began to realize, somewhere around the late '90's, that they have a strong preference for women over men. And, as others have pointed out, that preference also ends up forcing men to exchange their masculine values in workplace demeanor for feminine ones. Since I've always been paleo, I can't blame big biz for misleading me on diet. If I was made Emperor I would eliminate all H.R. jobs.
Some corporations must be big because of the scale of their operations. Exxon-Mobil, the (IIRC) highest market value corporation in America, has massive need for capital and operations, being a fully integrated oil company that does exploration, drilling, refining, and retail. They make money, they claim, by being more efficient at each step of the process than non-integrated competitors, arguing vertical integration and access to capital allows them to say, invest in refining operations knowing they'll get their own oil to it.
Other examples are Wal-Mart (scale advantages in purchasing, and also IT investments in controlling inventory costs), Amazon, and Ford. Making cars is a very expensive and massive business.
Big corporations don't take many risks, don't embrace generally transformative technology, and suffer the bigness effect (entrenched ways of doing things because of so many people) that big nations often acquire. But, sometimes they are needed.
It is the duty of the people to realize this, and guard against the negatives of corporations (marrying-capturing the government, entrenched ways of doing things) while obtaining the good things.
Safer cars require for example, considerable scale in testing, design, and sourcing components. This means a lot of capital AND a lot of experienced engineers and product safety people. And even then systems are so complex that bad things often happen.
@randian:
Eliminating limited liability will only encourage the plaintiff's bar to be even more aggressive. They could bankrupt a hundred thousand people in a single day with one lawsuit. Is that really a good thing?
If you're worried about the plaintiff's bar being aggressive, the answer should be tort reform that applies to everyone, not special exceptions for corporate bigwigs.
Whittaker
@The Outsider:
Who would be a shareholder, who would invest in anything at all, if his personal assets were at risk with every investment he made?
There are about 27 million small businesses in the US, according to sba.gov. Throughout most of the 19th century, there were hardly any large corporations. Does that answer your question?
Whittaker
One STDV,
the real issue is, assume that big corporations are bad. Assume you restrain their power. Who steps in to fill the power vacum>
If paleo conservative institutions step in then of course it is good to restrain the big companies. If liberal frankfurt school types are instead going to step in you are better with the corporations.
Let's compare Los Angeles (controlled by the frankfurt school types) vs Indianapolis (controlled by big corporations)
Los Angeles is no longer a good place for young white males whose IQ is not at the far right side of the bell curve
I mean, if you look at white males who happen to be born with IQ over 140 and a great work ethic - they can afford to raise a family in a truly desirable place like the Manhattan Beach Hills Section, or perhaps if their IQ is only 130 they can afford a still pretty nice place that is a little less expensive like La Canada or Hidden Hills.
but for the whites without IQ at 130 or above it is damn hard to afford a house in a nice part of LA with great public schools
(note that Manhattan Beach and La Canada and Hidden Hills offer public high schools with almost no NAMs and thus that all high schools would be acceptable to almost all residents of the HBD blog universe. This is important, those people born with high IQ and high work ethic can still today in 2011 send their kids all the way through 12th grade in nearly all white high schools. Many people in the HBD blog o sphere don't know that )
for the young men born without the 130 IQ needed to get in to a desirable LA neighborhood I have long advocated that they move to Indianapolis.
(of course some here will object that it is sometimes possible to make a lot of money without a 130 IQ and that is true, but generally speaking IQ correlates quite well with ability to afford a house in Los Angeles)
My understanding is that you can buy a nice 4 bedroom house on a quarter acre in a nice part of Indianapolis for only $300 thousand dollars.
That same house would cost you about $4 million in Manhattan Beach, $3 million in Pacific Palisades, $2 million in La Canada.
So for the young man who lacks the IQ to buy it in LA, Indianapolis is a good choice.
So yes Indianapolis is controlled by corporations. But it seems to offer a much better deal to whites with IQ under 130 than Los Angeles.
Putting it another way, if you are born with super super high IQ perhaps you want to live in a place like Los Angeles where the Corporations are not in control, but if your IQ is lower I think you do better in a place like Indy where the Corporations run the show
If you're worried about the plaintiff's bar being aggressive, the answer should be tort reform that applies to everyone, not special exceptions for corporate bigwigs.
You obviously weren't paying attention in business school (or to my previous post). "Corporate bigwigs" aka management don't have, and have never had, limited liability.
As for "special exceptions", if you're so hot for the idea I'd love to see your retirement accounts wiped out because shareholders didn't have limited liability.
You obviously weren't paying attention in business school (or to my previous post). "Corporate bigwigs" aka management don't have, and have never had, limited liability.
Maybe you should post some links before making condescending comments. Because you're the one who needs to go back to business school.
www dcbabrief org/vol210109art1.html
citing
Fontana v. TLD Builders, Inc., 362 Ill.App.3d 491, 500, 840 N.E.2d 767, 776 (2d Dist. 2005) (“A corporation is a legal entity that exists separately and distinctly from its shareholders, officers, and directors, who generally are not liable for the corporation’s debts.”).
As for "special exceptions", if you're so hot for the idea I'd love to see your retirement accounts wiped out because shareholders didn't have limited liability.
I don't invest in stocks, so you'll have to look for your schadenfreude elsewhere.
Whittaker
A corporation is a legal entity that exists separately and distinctly from its shareholders, officers, and directors, who generally are not liable for the corporation’s debts
Not being liable for the corporation's debts is a big "so what". Nobody cares about that, and personal liability can always be contracted away. It's done all the time, because finance companies know that a personal guarantee for millions of dollars in debt isn't worth the paper it's written on. At best you'd have the satisfaction of pushing the guarantor into bankruptcy, you wouldn't recover any of your money. It's liability for the corporation's torts that people care about, and management is always personally liable for torts so long as they had some involvement in them.
"Is there one particular corporation or set of corporations that you feel is more harmful or beneficial than others?"
Non-profits and 501c corporations. Abolish them.
Seeing as how corporations are government-defined entities, and do not exist in reality (by which I mean corporations only exist as a legal concept), I would theorize that they are, on the whole, a negative thing. I think that corporations face less moral hazard than would naturally be the case in a free market. I also think that, by their nature, they receive a form of corporate welfare, as it were. In sum, corporations, in the aggregate, are bad, but not necessarily horrible.
Many of the commenters above have it exactly right. It is not the size of the corporations per se, it is the influence large corporations are able to direct toward government laws and regulations. If corporations weren't able to use the power of govt to limit competition and bolster their own bottom lines then size would not be as much of a concern.
Crony capitalism is not capitalism.
If corporations weren't able to use the power of govt to limit competition and bolster their own bottom lines then size would not be as much of a concern.
That's not a reason to get rid of big corporations, that a reason to get rid of big government.
Anonymous, I'm not sure about your history, but neither here nor there.
I own a small business, so I am fully aware of the advantages and limitations of that particular model. It's not easy to aggregate large capital investments using the small business model. It doesn't scale. So anything that requires a lot of cash - say, drilling for oil - is going to be more expensive if you don't allow investors to protect their personal assets.
In other words, the return would have to be higher to justify putting my wife's car at risk.
If I'm going to build a billion-dollar platform and drill for oil in the Gulf, I have to use somebody's money besides my own. Your idea seems to be to round up a thousand partners with a million dollars each, have them pledge their personal assets, and proceed. Can you honestly picture that happening? In fact, you might be worse off because you'd create a bias for debt over equity. Or do you propose to make lenders liable for their debtors, too?
Again, who, exactly, is harmed by limited liability?
Many of the large corporations were on the verge of extinction during the early 90's recession. The restructuring during that recession favored small to medium sized businesses. Had that restructuring been allowed to complete itself, the economy would be much less dominated by large corporations than it is today.
The problem was Alan Greenspan. He flooded the economy with money with below-market interest rates starting in 1993. He also convinced the BLM to redefine the CPI several times to "lower" the reported inflation rate, also starting in 1993.
It was the Greenspan-caused bubbles fed by below-market interest rates that allowed the large corporations continued existence. Below-market interest rates favored large corporations over everyone else because they, along with the big banks, have preferential access to that capital. They pay near the federal funds rate for their capital. Everyone else pays the prime rate or something above the prime rate for their capital. This allowed the giant corporations, which should have died in the mid-90's to buy up everything else with their inflated capitalization.
For the most part, large corporation are rent-seeking parasitical entities. They are not as bad as big government. But they are close.
@Randian:
Not being liable for the corporation's debts is a big "so what". ... It's liability for the corporation's torts that people care about, and management is always personally liable for torts so long as they had some involvement in them.
The link I posted above also says that "A corporate officer is not liable for the corporation’s torts simply by virtue of his office." It does go on to say that "an officer may be individually liable for torts of the corporation in which the officer actively participates"-- but this simply means that if an officer makes sure to be removed enough from his subordinates' doings, he's off the hook. How is this sound public policy?
And of course all of this refutes your original claim that '"Corporate bigwigs" aka management don't have, and have never had, limited liability.'
@The Outsider:
(I'm not sure if you're talking to me, but I'll answer anyway)
Yes, I understand that raising capital for large projects would be harder without corporate law. It's possible that some such projects wouldn't happen at all-- but that more, smaller, and more socially useful ones would be undertaken instead. But I would also wager that amazing things can be built by networks of small businesses, making their own agreements without all the formalities of board meetings and SEC filings.
who, exactly, is harmed by limited liability?
Anyone trying to collect full value on a contract or tort claim. And anyone without limited liability, trying to compete in the capital markets for investor funds.
Whittaker
Anonymous, yep, I'm talking to you.
You're correct to bring up the unseen costs of regulation or law. That's almost always where the real damage is done. So I'm fully on board with you there. I'm also a Schumpeter-Hayek fan, so I'm optimistic about the possible benefit from devolving action down to lower levels. Again, I think we're on the same page.
Let's tackle this from a laissez-faire perspective. Why shouldn't I be able to contract such that my creditors and partners agree that only my equity - and not my other assets - are at stake? They'll know that if things go bad they'll have less to go after, and they'll adjust their expectations accordingly. So what? Those people CANNOT be harmed by limited liability, since they went in with their eyes open.
And so maybe you can see where I'm going. You have it backwards when it comes to capital markets. A limited liability company is at a disadvantage relative to partnerships or non-corporations, all things being equal. Think of it this way. If you had a thousand dollars to invest, would you be more likely to give it to the guy who pledged his Mercedes or the guy who said you could only go after the printer/copier combo in his shared office space?
(I also think you wildly underestimate the benefit from the easy consolidation of capital, but that's not as interesting to talk about, so I'll leave it for now.)
I think Pat Buchanan has done a good job describing the corporate elites.
Corporate elites and the shareholding class are apparently no longer loyal to the United States (except when they need our military to do some dirty work). They have erected feudal kingdoms where the monied elite live and school their children in miniature edens surrounding leading cities not only in this country, but in leading cities around the world.
These are loyal to the market and their portfolios more than anything else. Whatever loyalty they felt to the United States obviously took a place behind loyalty to their class at least a decade (or two) ago.
That's not a reason to get rid of big corporations, that a reason to get rid of big government.
I concur. There was a tacit point in my comment that corporatism, not corporations, are the problem. Corporatism would not exist without big government.
@TheOutsider:
I have nothing against people contracting for limited liability. I have a lot against the government dictating this, and making exceptions from TORT liability for shareholders and corporate managers.
I forgot to add another class of people harmed by limited liability: those who are running unincorporated businesses, trying to compete with corps that can take more risks because of the government-granted exemption.
If your view of corporate limited liability is that it's no big deal and doesn't affect anything, then you should ask yourself: why are thousands of pages of corporation law necessary, and why are there legions of $400/hr corporate lawyers to interpret and administer something that's "no big deal"?
Whittaker
@TheOutsider:
You have it backwards when it comes to capital markets. A limited liability company is at a disadvantage relative to partnerships or non-corporations, all things being equal. Think of it this way. If you had a thousand dollars to invest, would you be more likely to give it to the guy who pledged his Mercedes or the guy who said you could only go after the printer/copier combo in his shared office space?
Well, I might be favorably impressed if the principal is willing to risk all his assets, but I might be even more mindful of my OWN assets being at risk in an unlimited liability investment. This is the big advantage corporations have in the capital markets.
Whittaker
Whitaker (yes?)
Your first comment is that the rules governing limited liability are imperfect. I agree. I'm not here to defend every detail of limited liability as it exists. But you said we should do away with it all together, which I do disagree with.
Maybe I'm missing something in your second comment. My point was that limited liability companies are at a disadvantage to partnerships in terms of attracting capital, all things being equal. The reason I gave is that lenders and investors know their ability to collect if things go bad is, um, limited. You seem to agree with my premise but disagree with my conclusion.
The fact is, I know of which I speak here. In order to get a line of credit for my limited liability company, I had to explicitly agree that my personal assets were at risk. The bank is not stupid.
Let's try another tack. What about simple reasonability. If I own 100 shares of Boeing, that I inherited from my grandfather, I am an owner. Should my personal assets be at risk if Boeing is found liable for some misdeed or other? If they go bankrupt should Boeing's creditors be able to take away my flatscreen TV?
Big business survives entirely at the mercy of its customers. In an actual free market a business that doesnt tend to its customers desires dies a relatively quick and painless (To the customer) death. Under the current definition of free market, where the government regulates and defines everything that a business does, says, and produces, they become "too big to fail" because thier best, sometimes ONLY customer is government, and so they must be saved, preserved and maintained, causing ME great pain in tax expenses, whether im a customer or not.
We havent seen a free market in north america in over 80 years. To think the market you currently operate in is free and then complain about its downsides is just sad.
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