Corporate Ownership.

Corporations are more than groups of people with the same interests - corporations are groups of people which have the rights of a person without making any of the actual people involved responsible for the corporation. Corporations are also sometimes massive entities which, historically, have been able to buy and sell interest in the government. Corporations dominate everything you consume - from the news and books you read, to the food you eat and clothes you wear. Everything. Besides, it's not as if you have much of a choice. Imagine trying to live a year without consuming some good or service from a corporation. I do not think you would have the internet access to tell your story.

As for corporations, they do receive a bad name, and these criticisms are valid. I do not feel they apply to corporations in general, rather just the current government insured and subsidized version (can anyone doubt that corporate wealth and power is insured by the government anymore?).

Please remember that abstract personhood is not the defining quality of a corporation. The true nature of a corporation is a group of individuals pooling their capital and creating a private entity with more financial capabilities of their own.

Remember that all financial activity incurs risk, and that all risk carries a cost. Individual owners often times cannot bear the cost of this risk, and incorporation provides an entrance to markets that may not have existed without it.

The principle problem for markets to overcome is deals with transaction costs. Competition and ideas are consistently bottlenecked because one man may come up with a billion dollar idea, but the costs of bringing this idea to light may prohibit it, and the wealth creating mechanisms of the market turn against itself.

To truly see the value of the corporate model, imagine corporations as methods for communities to avoid the costs of financial transactions in creating credit unions. Imagine a group of workers who find self-management and freedom from wage labor by incorporating themselves through a stakeholder form of corporate ownership.

Cooperation is as necessary under a market as competition, and the corporation and other cooperative models of ownership can help provide this.

How could that be denied - it's a fact.

You're right... sort of. Personhood is not the defining quality, but a defining quality of modern corporations. There was a time, however, when corporations had no personhood at all, and when the notion of such a quality would have seemed insane.

You are very right. My problem with this system is that by allowing such entities to exist, entities which are bound by law to place money making ahead of morality, you invent entities which profit from abusing people and which are very difficult to combat.

I have no problem with corporations, only the modern incarnation of the corporation. We need to seriously reevaluate many Supreme Court decisions and bring the corporation back to a responsible entity, an entity which is healthier for the consumer and the economy. It cannot be healthy for an economy when certain corporations are too large to fail.

It is denied implicitly quite often. Every time someone brings up the current corporatist system as an example of a failed market it is denied.

People are piling on the market right now, when it is quite clear that government has long subsidized the companies that are creating the problems.

It wouldn't be so frustrating if the most accepted solution to this situation was more subsidies offered to bad and corrupt businesses, when it is quite plain to anyone that these are bad businesses that wouldn't be where they are at without government intervention.

I disagree. The current system surrounding corporations is a failed market. Or at least a market that has failed for 99.9% of the people involved.

Subsidization isn't even half the problem. Take away the subsidies and the current system surrounding corporations is still a mess.

I agree that more subsidies is not the solution. But taking away the subsidies will not solve all of the problems. Subsidies do not give corporations legal personhood.

I agree that more subsidies is not the solution. But taking away the subsidies will not solve all of the problems. Subsidies do not give corporations legal personhood.

The "market" is a dynamic system that is resistant to explanation, let alone prediction.

If we were to look at the US alone, we are examining a economic system that includes the values, actions, and knowledge of 300 million people, which is constantly intervened upon by a government that accounts for over 40% of the GDP and has liabilities summing a full 60% of the GDP.

Are you going to tell me that you can reformulate the aggregate values of all these economic actors and remodel the market as if that ~5.5 trillion dollars had not been appropriated and spent by government?

I count any government action that gives a business some sort of revenue as a subsidy. I agree with you about legal personhood, but hardly see that as a knock on the market.

If you agree with me about legal personhood you agree with me about a particular problem in the market as corporations are involved in the market.