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Re:Companies Shouldn’t Be Accountable Only to Shareholders by dragonwriter on Wednesday August 15, 2018 @01:33PM (#17767955)
The corporate form is a special, ongoing, government granted privilege. You paid the issuer of that share, or a prior owner, for their interest, but part of the deal—the expectation you should have had—that it came with is that the associated privileges that go with the (essentially last place) claim on corporate assets at dissolution are subject to change by government.

Changes over time have made shareholders and management less accountable to the public interest generally as charter revocation for gross abuses has fallen into disuse, and have also shifted the balance between shareholders and management (who are, after all, employees.) Shifting the balance between shareholders and employees in a way which applies to the mass of employees rather than management as such is novel, perhaps (though labor law changes, while not specific to the corporate form of business, tend to do that, too), but isn't really different in any fundamental way from the kinds of changes to corporate power relations that have happened through legislative and judicial action throughout the whole period of existence of the corporate form.

Now, if you want to argue the specifics of this proposal, great, but arguing for an expectation-based entitlement for immutability of the privileges and power relations associated with corporate shareholding is, well, indefensible as a reasonable expectation.

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