corporate vs. state

[R. A. Hettinga]

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First off, yes, corporations are creatures of the state. So, what
else is new?

They are an easy way to achieve limited liability. In the UK after
the South Sea Bubble popped (and in France, after the same thing
happened to the Mississippi Company did the same, see "Millionaire",
the story of John Law and the first central bank in France), they
banned joint stock companies and had to jump through many hoops to
get the same effect involving limited liability partnerships (trusts)
of various kinds.

After the US started to kick everyone's butt, the LSE and the Paris
Bourse woke up and changed the law.

Limited liability, fungible equity shares and efficient secondary
markets are still necessary if you want to raise lots of money to do
things with.

So far.

:-).

Cypherpunks are about using cryptography and code to replace law and
force-monopoly.

The way to do limited liability with financial cryptography is, of
course, fairly trivial in theory, and maybe we'll get to practice it
someday.

You do a Shamir secret-spilt of a key with m-of-n copies, and set n
to be a majority of m. Vote that key with a board, and you have a
board vote. Vote one or several keys to elect the board using
something like a zero-knowledge proof of knowledge with your
blind-signature bearer certificates to claim your key-pieces
according to the amount of shares you have.

Boom. An anonymously-voted limited liability business entity.

Look, ma. No state.

Kewl.

Cheers,
RAH

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-- 
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R. A. Hettinga <mailto: rah at ibuc.com>
The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation <http://www.ibuc.com/>
44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA
"... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity,
[predicting the end of the world] has not been found agreeable to
experience." -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire'