Well, my friend Greg Swann disagrees with my assessment of corporations: The essential defining characteristic of a corporation, as against other ways of organizing a business enterprise, is liability limitation, a conspiracy between the proprietors and the state to defraud tort claimants of all they might otherwise obtain in redress for their injuries. It's pure Hamiltonian Social Engineering, Mercantilism at its worst. The idea is to encourage investment by limiting the risk. But by limiting responsibility, investment is distorted away from the individual integrity that is the sine qua non of enlightened self-interest. The limited liability corporation is the rope by which Capitalism hung itself. I agree with Greg that limiting liability is an essential aspect of the corporation. I had left that out when I said: The essential defining characteristic of a corporation is that it is a voluntary association of individuals (stockholders, directors, officers, employees) under a complex hierarchy of agreements, contracts, policies, authority, responsibility, and accountability. It conducts business, voluntarily, with clients of all sorts. Yea, it's a legal construct too. So is marriage, but marriage can hardly be defined as essentially nothing more than a state-recognized contract. The thing is, I'm not convinced that limited liability...