[From my Webnote series]
- KOL418 | Corporations, Limited Liability, and the Title Transfer Theory of Contract, with Jeff Barr: Part II
- KOL414 | Corporations, Limited Liability, and the Title Transfer Theory of Contract, with Jeff Barr: Part I
- Corporate Personhood, Limited Liability, and Double Taxation
- “Classificationism, Legislation, Copyright”
- The Non-Aggression Principle as a Limit on Action, Not on Property Rights, StephanKinsella.com (Jan. 22, 2010)
- IP and Aggression as Limits on Property Rights: How They Differ, StephanKinsella.com (Jan. 22, 2010)
- Legal Foundations of a Free Society (Houston, Texas: Papinian Press, 2023): ch. 15, “Against Intellectual Property After Twenty Years: Looking Back and Looking Forward,” Part IV.H, ch. 2, “What Libertarianism Is,” the section at n.52, “Property as a Right to Exclude”; also ch. 8, “Causation and Aggression,” text at n.3
- Causation and Aggression
- The Libertarian Approach to Negligence, Tort, and Strict Liability: Wergeld and Partial Wergeld
- On “Unowned” State Property, Legal Positivism, Ownership vs. Possession, Immigration, Public Roads, and the Bum in the Library
more later, for now:
I see two mistakes in your reasoning. First, you are accepting the relevance of the state’s arbitrary classifcation scheme–calling someone an “owner” or not, an employee or not.
The state calls people employees or shareholders etc. as part of its excuse to regulate and control. Economically there is no fundamental difference between a contract worker and an employee. They are all just actors exchanging goods and services.
Second, you are assuming ownership has responsibilities; that liability comes from ownership. That it matters whether you “are” or “are not” “an owner” (a “shareholder” or “stock holder”). The bottom line is we are responsible for our actions not for our ownerhship. The libertarian knee-jerk assumptions about strict liability are marred by taking too much for granted. Ownership is a right not a responsibiltiy. To say that with rights come resposibilities is a lazy and cheap slogan and a moral point at best not one that gets to the nature and function and purpose of property rights. One is responsibel for one’s actions not for one’s rights. If you steal my knife and kill someone with it you are responsible for the action, I am not responsible b/c I own the knife. Responsibility has nothing to do with ownership but with action; it has to with possession (since all action employs means that are possessed).
Every “employee” or other agent or actor of the corporation or firm is responsible for his own actions. If a truck driver commits a negligent tort, he is primarily responsible. Whether anyone else is secondarily liable depends on notions of causation and responsibility. Rothbard, Pilon, and Hessen questioned the entire notion of respondeat superior, which is one such theory. But even if you overlook this critique and hold managers and even directors liable vicariously for the torts of employees they direct, this does not mean that this causal nexus would extend to others, such as passive shareholders, bondholders, customers, vendors and suppliers, or co-employees or their unions.
PROVE ME WRONG </Crowder mode>
