aphor's Journal: The Corporation

It is time to open discussion on the topic of reforming the US legal definition of a corporation. Lets pick up the questions, consider them heavily, and decide what should be done.

Why bother? I suggest that the status quo makes this line of inquiry interesting. To discover our questions, lets ponder the situation at-hand.

The situation at hand is ambigous because it has many factors that operate in different levels of abstraction of the world we share. For example, there is the American rationalist ideals of rights to life, liberty, and property taken from John Locke and the part it played in the Constitution of the United States. At odds with this is the brass-tacks level of State law which governs the way in which a State charters (legally recognises) corporations. On one hand, the supreme law of the US depends upon a kind of social contract (as explained by Locke), and on the other hand State corporate charters are treated as exemptions from that social contract. The fictional corporation is subject to the property rights of the shareholders, but the State has a conflict of interest between its corporate tax base and the social contract with the general public. It must enforce the corporate charter's explicit bias against the general public in the favor of the shareholders of corporations. It must not violate its constitutional social contract in the course.

Can a state grant powers in excess of the limited powers granted to the state? The powers (liberties and rights) of individuals are limited only by the rights of other individuals. Can a State manufacture individuals which are not bound by governmental limitations on power? What does the power of taxation do to the distinction between a governmental and nongovernmental charter?