corportations are legal entitities so they have to exist in some legal framework. that being said I suppose some corp could be part of like a micronations laws that does not really exist but I think every corp has to have something to do business in a particular country. like you have sony and then sony usa which is a seperate corp owned by sony.
Corporations can only exist if a state creates & enforces corporate law.
Would they exist without a government?
I mean, not as anything like a corporation. If they have to protect themselves with force, they’re a state or warlord, and will end up solving the same problems the same way.
Meaning no shareholders and no contracts, but on the other hand violent internal coups and endemic corruption (in the narrow sense of taking organisation money for yourself).
Edit: Funny story about this - a lot of big corporate guys don’t seem to get the distinction. They go and buy a bunker in New Zealand and think that will do them, but if you talk to the guards in charge of the bunker, they’ll say their plan when the apocalypse happens is to just kill their boss and move in themselves. Because there’s no state to stop them, and they’re better at violence than Mark Zuckerberg or whatever.
Corporations are construct of law. They can’t exist without a government to enforce corporate law through its monopoly on violence.
A government can create unlimited currency via an act of congress. Can a corporation create unlimited money when it wants to?
Anyone can create their own money. Consider Bitcoin. The hard part is getting people to use it.
Corporations can print corporate shares, though the more shares they print, the less each share is worth. You can’t buy a pack of gum with corporate shares, though, so I wouldn’t call it money or currency.
Private banks can print money, but not an an unlimited amount. They can only print as much as the government allows, and it can only be created as the principal of a loan, and the money is destroyed as the borrower pays down the principal.
Governments can create as much of their own sovereign currency as they want. Governments can levy taxes corporations can’t.
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Yes.
Corporations try to all the time. It’s only through an effective use of law that they don’t. And lately, it hasn’t been very effective.
But also a government can’t print “unlimited currency”. Eventually it would be worthless. They are effectively only permitted to print currency proportional to what their creditors allow.
But also a government can’t print “unlimited currency”. Eventually it would be worthless.
Governments can do it, but you’ve explained why they don’t do it.
They are effectively only permitted to print currency proportional to what their creditors allow.
A government with fiat monetary sovereignty has no need to borrow its own money, because it already can create as much as it pleases. The purpose of government securities is not to fund spending but to give the rich a safe place to park their capital with interest.
Taxes shrink the money supply after the government creates new currency. Taxes help to create a demand for a currency.
Yes. This is covered in one of the YouTube videos I posted in this thread yesterday.
The purpose of government securities is not to fund spending but to give the rich a safe place to park their capital with interest.
You have a source on this? I find it difficult to believe that it is ever a good idea to just take out a loan for the sake of making the interest payments. Especially using public funds, that sounds pretty close to embezzlement.
Rather, a country’s budget should always make use of debt, because its reputation has value and should be invested, not left sitting on the table.
You’re still mistaking a state with monetary sovereignty for a business. It’s nothing like a business or a household or even a province or municipality. Money works completely differently at this level. Previously:
What if I told you that our federal taxes don’t go toward food stamps at all, and in fact pay for nothing?
Drug cartels do all the things any corporation would happily do without laws to restrict them. So I don’t see any distinction and I don’t believe a govt is necessary for a corporation to exist. Just like with any other crime by any other citizen, a govt uses its monopoly on violence to prevent corporations from doing harm.
Money is created by a government. Corporations use government created money to facilitate trade.
Drug cartels aren’t really corporations. There’s no formal structure, shares or board meetings, and sometimes they do just descend into civil war (like in Mexico right now). They’re businesses, but in some ways Rome was as well. The thing that makes them a funny historical edge case is that their primary business is transport rather than theft, and that’s down to the massive US/Canadian demand, the wealth behind it, and the inability of any recognised state to join the drug trade in their place and get away with it.
There’s no formal structure, shares or board meetings
This is an arbitrary list of things and I don’t agree that all corporations have all of these, but I guarantee most cartels have a formal structure, a clear description of ownership, and what qualifies as board of leaders. Most wouldn’t be able to function without it.
sometimes they do just descend into civil war
They compete with rival cartels in all the same ways corporations would if they could (or already do when they can get away with it).
They’re businesses
I’m curious why you’re willing to call them businesses but not corporations.
This is an arbitrary list of things and I don’t agree that all corporations have all of these
I’m curious why you’re willing to call them businesses but not corporations.
It’s definitional, a corporation is a specific legal structure. A single trader is not a corporation, but is a business. Ditto for Rome, which I’ve never heard called a corporation even though it was all about money.
They compete with rival cartels in all the same ways corporations would if they could (or already do when they can get away with it).
Civil war. In case you aren’t following the relevant news, the Sinaloa cartel is fighting with itself. A corporation can never do that - government laws set out very clearly who controls what.
And, that makes a huge impact on what kind of people run a corporation, and how they go about managing their business. Managing the loyalty of underlings is of little concern, while it’s about the only concern for a warlord. If a VP tried to run their own business with company assets, they’d just be jailed for breach of trust.
I admit I am misusing the term “cartel” here, given that it refers to a group of independent interests acting cooperatively, not a single entity. And legally recognized corporations already attempt to form cartels whenever possible, which is the entire purpose of anti-trust law.
And I agree that govt legislations each have their own definitions for what constitutes a “corporation”, but it’s the same for “marriage”. Yet we wouldn’t say marriage only exists if you have a govt.
I don’t think it’s useful or interesting to end the discussion at “a govt defines a corporation, therefore a corporation doesn’t exist without a govt”. Because I maintain that if the US govt disappeared, all the entities you currently consider “US-based corporations” would not disappear. Similarly, corporations currently operate internationally in many different countries with many different legislative requirements and many different definitions of “corporation”. Yet we don’t think of them as existing exclusively in the context of any one of those countries.
A corporation can never do that - government laws set out very clearly who controls what
Corporations do have infighting, and Hostile Takeovers do happen, and we are in agreement that ONLY reason they’re not bloodier is because of governments enforcing their laws. But also, I shouldn’t have made “cartel” analagous to “corporation”, since the analogy for a cartel civil war would be multiple businesses or corporations having a falling out.
But we also already have a sordid history of US “corporations” operating outside the laws of other countries, oftentimes with the help of the US military. So how do we square that circle?
Heh, yeah. Love hypothetically, how would a company like, act, be, without any government influence? I mean there’s definitely like sketchy shit that should be prevented ideally, like bad food or bad drugs? That seems helpful. Prijkt sinds other positives?
But in like a lawless wasteland… Yeah if your service or product is good, people want it, want to work on it for pay (and which rates? Well maybe like a union instead of a government that negotiates?). But what about people just downright stealing? Maybe a market for protection would pop up, and live would become super unethical, because there will prolly always be a dick who wants to steal stuff? Just for his own good.
But by yeah if humans were super empathetic it would just work. Of people idk… Could really position then in others and think a bit honestly about things or something? Tbh its something that happens on small scales guess, like oh friends-weekend things or something.
Do you consider the cartels to be corporations? They operate like corporations but exist without the sanction of governments.
No and yes…
A business entity that is proactively protected from liability could not exist without government charter.
However, a business entity could employ its own paramilitary and/or hire mercenaries and effectively make itself immune to liability, which works out to the same thing pretty much.
And I’m reasonably certain that that’s the future - that corporations will continue to acknowledge and submit to governments only as long as it’s to their advantage to do so, and that when the costs outstrip the benefits, they’ll simply stop, and instead manage their properties as essentially states unto themselves. And at that point, whether or not they have an official declaration of their corporate identity will be irrelevant.
Could the paramilitary unit fund itself without legal tender laws from a state and government created fiat currency?
Sure.
They could even do it today simply by paying in Bitcoin.
I expect though that the future will see private currencies backed by the-entities-formerly-known-as-corporations.
Governments don’t monopolize currencies because nobody else wants to issue one, but because it’s in their interests to monopolize them, and they have sufficient power (for the time being) to enforce their monopolies.
Governments have courts to enforce contracts and settle disputes. Corporations don’t have their own impartial legal system to settle disputes and enforce contracts.
So?
In the first place, a “corporation” could set up a legal system easily - draft some laws, build some facilities and appoint some officials, and done.
But they wouldn’t even need to do that. They likely would, because an impartial system wins voluntary compliance and thus promotes stability, but the only really necessary part of a legal system is sufficient power to enforce its dictates, and with enough armed professionals, that’s relatively easy, at least within secured borders.
It kind of seems like what you’re describing here is just a new government. If they’ve taken on all the powers and responsibilities of a government then what separates them from a government? Isn’t the term Corporation meaningless at that point?
There could be a hypothetical society that has ai ran corporations that have programmable ownership shares. Replace all executives with ai agents and program the earnings to be equally divided with the workers of the company. Everyone would get paid once with a salary and once with a share of the earnings.
Conventional companies would have to compete with a company that pays their workers twice and gives them equal ownership in the business.
That’s part of why I’ve generally been putting quotation marks around the word “corporation.”
It’s not meaningless though, because the underlying structure will likely remain essentially the same as it was when it was merely a corporation. And the relationship between the “government” and its “citizens” will have evolved from a relationship between a business and its customers/clients, and will undoubtedly retain some aspects of that. Most notably, the whole concept of public servants will vanish. Instead, the “government” will offer some specific services to potential citizens-as-customers, who can take them or leave them. Or, additionally or possibly even alternatively, the “government” will demand specific things of citizens-as-employees who will have the “choice” of following their demands or seeking employment-as-citizenship elsewhere.
In either event (or any other - this can’t possibly be an exhaustive list), the basic dynamic between “government” and “citizen” will be notably different from any of the ones we’ve seen before (though likely broadly most similar to feudalism).
In an anarcho-capitalist city-state you could have a fiat cryptocurrency system that has software for electronically programmable sanctions. Everyone is given a basic income from the local treasury organization and pay fees when purchasing products and services. The community programs in fees to pay for basic infrastructure, a legal system, and financing public projects. A percentage of the fee revenue goes back to the local treasury organization.
Who is bankrolling all this?
isnt this your hypothetical?
Whoever wants in on it really.
Primarily I presume it’d be the corporations themselves, but banking is certain to change to accommodate the growing independence of the “corporations,” and I expect that to some notable degree, the two will merge - that the largest “corporations” will have their own banking sibsidiaries and will handle most everything internally.
There’s a broad point underlying all of this - all that’s really necessary is that enough executives/owners at enough institutions have a desire to divest themselves of associations with governments and establish their own “states.” Once the will is there and they possess enough wealth and power to enforce their will, the rest is just details. They have entire staffs who are employed to figure out how to accomplish whatever it is they want to accomplish, and they will figure it out.
Maintaining a large private army would be expensive and time consuming. What stops another corporation with a private army from coming in and robbing them of everything they have?
Where is the corporation getting their funding from? Someone’s got to be paying them. So, they are using a sovereign currency created by a government using a central banking system chartered with the government.
I expect though that the future will see private currencies backed by the-entities-formerly-known-as-corporations.
Snow Crash becomes truer by the year.
Yes.
And specifically one of the things that impressed me about Snow Crash’s predictions was the idea that federal governments didn’t get overthrown or cease to exist - they were simply irrelevant. The “corporations” had amassed enough wealth and power that they could, and did, simply ignore the governments.
