[extropy-chat] Gay marriage in Spain, a world of change

[Robbie Lindauer]

On Jul 22, 2005, at 5:35 PM, Mike Lorrey wrote:

>

>> Let me make that into a question.
>>
>> If we wish to make marriage into a purely legal and financial affair
>> akin to a partnership, should we simultaneously lower the bar
>> sufficiently to make entering into a limited liability partnership as
>> easy as getting married.
>>
>
> I don't know what you are talking about. I've set up S corps with very
> little paperwork or assets.

You're a smart cookie.  I suggest a tour of south central or east los 
angeles bordelos to give a sense of the kind of people who often just 
get married because they want to.  I suspect you qualify because you:

1)  Can read and write.
2)  Finished high school.
3)  Finished college.
4)  Read books for pleasure and education.
5)  Can tell when you're being conned.
6)  Have more than 100 of disposable money right now.

Many, many, many married people (even happily married people) don't 
qualify under any of these.    Marriage is just something different 
than "entering into a business arrangement".

> Depending on your state, the filing fees
> can be less than $100. I've also set up partnerships, and co-operative
> corporations. It doesn't take business savvy or special training or a
> lot of money.

It takes a certain amount of business savvy and money to enter into a 
corporate agreement and even more (of both) to enforce one and relative 
to the actual bar of education in our new-deal learn-to-work educated 
society it's a bar that's slightly too high - remember we're dealing 
with people who read the McDonald's "healthy choices" brochure and are 
convinced that eating at McDonalds is healthy.  (I'm not claiming this 
is the average american, but it is certainly a large public segment.)

> There are companies you can find online to set up a
> Delaware or Nevada partnership, LLC, Corporation, etc electronically
> with no muss or fuss, you just fill out the simple forms online, no
> blood tests or oaths before a justice of the peace.

Yes, you can if you're a smart cookie.  You're a fool to form such a 
partnership without a good lawyer's advice if you have potentially 
adversarial partners.  For anything more complicated than sharing 
profits on a lemonade stand, this isn't a great idea.  But I suspect 
you know this.  Perhaps you're being facetious?

>> If we did such a thing, wouldn't it make the whole LLP/LLC construct
>> nearly worthless?  Also imagine the legal mess it would create - as
>> if divorce and business litigation weren't complicated enough -
>> imagine if it was grounds for dissolving an LLC that your partner
>> was sleeping with someone else!
>
> Adultery isn't grounds for divorce in a number of states already,
> however from a financial standpoint, a divorce is really not
> significantly different than dissolving a Partnership. If you make
> sexual fidelity to your partner a condition of your partnership
> agreement (not that much different from a monk agreeing to chastity,
> silence, etc to be a partner in the monastic community), then it is
> merely one clause in a contract that must be enforced by the parties
> involved.

Divorce law has a rich tradition of its own separate from partnership 
and corporate law and that the merging of the two would be a 
legislative and judicial nightmare, practically speaking, assuming you 
wanted to keep either.  JUST the taxation and inheritance issues are 
volumes and volumes different.  Why make, for instance, married people 
choose between distributing or retaining profits or annually filing 
separate and corporate tax returns.  Alternatively, would it be 
appropriate for corporations to pay taxes like a married couple, I'm 
sure that would be a tremendous benefit for them.  Have you thought 
this through?  Is there an official Libertarian Party suggestion on 
this matter?  Which tax law would apply to these hybrid 
corporation-marriages?

I say throw the baby out with the bath-water, but if you insist on 
keeping the baby, I'm insisting on keeping the bath-water.  Get rid of 
the corporate law and taxation and social security and you no longer 
have the felt need to legitimize homosexual marriages with official 
government badges and gold stars.

> Secondly, I don't see the need to get tricky looking at liability
> limiting constructs. Liability limitation is another benefit that
> government gives you for the right to incorporate. Don't incorporate,
> partner up. Take responsibility for your actions.

There are LLP's.  Marriages are, in many ways, like LLP's, in other 
ways like LLC's, in other ways like sole proprietorships, in some ways 
like a slavery arrangement sometimes.  The absurd example given before 
by someone else isn't so absurd.  The paperwork that would have to be 
created (and therefore understood to be something other than fraud) by 
the various parties would be so extensive as to make a marriage a near 
impossibility.  If someone could understand the paperwork involved, 
they probably simply wouldn't do it.

Remember that Corporate and Partnership laws are invented for 
potentially adversarial relationships on the assumption that the 
members in the partnership or corporate don't essentially have any 
common interests and will, if given the chance, take whatever advantage 
possible in their arrangement.

In many ways, the assumption in marriage laws are different, but in 
particular the assumption in marriage law is that the parties act 
effectively as a single interest.  Only when things go wrong does the 
adversarial law kick in - and even then the way it kicks in is very 
different.    So again, your official position on whether we should 
throw out the marriage-law stuff or the corporate-law stuff?

Both!!!!

> And I want to thank Harvey for his open mindedness on all this. There
> were a few things beyond Social Security, but they generally all fall
> into the general area of social insurance (medicare/medicaid, etc)
> which I regard as illegitimate government controlled coercive
> monopolies to begin with.

Alongside the federal reserve system, I assume?  The Federal Reserve 
System is the worst illegitimate government controlled coercive 
monopoly next to, of course, the armed forces.  Funny how that works 
out.  The same people control the money and the guns...

> Someone who wants them, IMHO, generally is
> not a pro-freedom person,

Is the official stance of the libertarian party that a 65-year-old 
retiree and disabled veteran who receives their social security and 
veterans disability insurance is not a pro-freedom person.

Boy, I bet that wins you a lot of votes with AARP!  Why not just 
officially align yourself with the Church of Satan and the American 
Nazi Party or something?

>  so I'm not too put out that they are out of
> reach of at least part of the population.

I say the same with regard to the Federal Reserve System.

R