[ExI] Banking, corporations, and rights (Re: Serfdom and libertarian critiques)

[J. Stanton]

Kelly Anderson wrote:
 > The first baby step would be to get rid of the Federal Reserve. That I
 > would be behind today, immediately. I think that is a fairly common
 > stand amongst Libertarians, but I could be wrong.

Absolutely.  But as I state above, the fundamental problem remains: a 
special class of people ("banks") with the special privilege of creating 
money from thin air.

 > I have considered eliminating banks, but my question would be what
 > would you replace them with? There is a necessity for capital
 > investment, and economies of scale in managing capital are important.

The problem isn't banks: it's fractional reserve banking.  The function 
of a "bank" is to keep your money safe, for which you would likely be 
charged a small fee.  If you didn't want to pay that fee, or you wanted 
to offset it, you would likely permit the bank to invest some fraction 
of your money for you on your behalf.

In other words, your "banking" account would look just like your 
brokerage account currently does.  Stocks, bonds, and money market funds 
are very liquid, but they're not "same as cash".  You can't write checks 
or use your ATM card against investments...only against your cash balance.

This would be far superior to our current system, in which you have no 
choice where your money is invested.  As I mentioned before, all of your 
money in a "checking account" is forced into shares of a hedge fund 
making 30:1 leveraged investments in mortgage-backed securities, and 
which you are forced by "legal tender" laws to accept as if it were real 
money.

 > As for business, do you think the CEO of a business should be
 > PERSONALLY responsible for the actions of each of his employees?

Absolutely.  All people should be equal under the law.

Allowing the creation of a virtual person ("corporation") onto which 
liability can be deflected gives officers of the "corporation" special 
legal privileges which the rest of us do not enjoy.  *** The very 
concept of the "corporation" violates the most basic tenet of human 
rights: equality under the law. ***

Consider: We've created a race of virtual beings which are immortal, 
cannot be physically punished, have the money and resources of tens of 
thousands, and which can dissociate and reorganize their own component 
parts whenever and wherever it's convenient.  And then we're surprised 
that these "corporations" run everything...?

JS
http://www.gnolls.org