| | TM:"Corporations, rationally conceived and implemented, cannot be coercive since ... just as in the USSR all sports were state established and maintained. None of this makes music or soccer or track and field coercive endeavors."
Yes, but athletes and musicians are responsible for their own actions. The corporation is an eternal, artificial entity, regarded as such by the state and even protected by the state against exploitation by its managers and employees.
Corporations were really invented in Rome, but never amounted to much - except for universities - until the modern era.
The advantage to the corporation over the partnership is expressly its independent existence. Partnerships are limited metaphysically because if one partner dies, the firm must reorganize: you cannot make new, independent decisions for a dead man. (Trusts and estates are an aside.) Being an eternal entity, the corporation outlives its founders.
While we do have limited liability partnerships now those are a recent invention. Perhaps they are more "libertarian" than corporations.
I would like to see a theoretical justification for corporations that is completely independent of the state. I know of none. Perhaps it is just as well. Perhaps it is a proper function of the government - never realized before - to grant individuality to artificial entities.
After corporations will come robots and other artificial intelligences. Capitalism can adapt to this. I am not sure how socialism could. Perhaps it could.
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Edit added:
I believe that for most libertarians who oppose corporations as creations of the state, it is the limitation of liability that is the key issue. Speaking of athletes, I remember an incident in which a baseball batter lined one into the stands and hit a fan. He was fined as an individual. It was not the team. Likewise if in the symphony a tuba player hurls his mouthpiece at the conductor and misses and hits a patron, who is responsible? With a corporation, the actions of individual employees are not actionable.
And even more to the point, the corporation cannot be sued for more than its assets, which is not true of a living individual.
And, third, in law, if the police come to your desk and search it without a warrant, it is not your rights that are violated, but the corporation's, again a consequence of living in the shadow of the corporate umbrella.
All of that being as it may, regarding artificial individuals, there is some precedent in common law. An "emanicpated juvenile' is a minor whom the court has declared responsible for their own contracts. The child cannot vote, but the child can rent a home, buy a car, etc. So, there is tradition that would allow a court to declare a robot or computer program legally independent.
(Edited by Michael E. Marotta on 2/14, 10:48am)
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