Really? I don't think that is a thing, but happy to learn otherwise with a reference to some legal doctrine or legislation that spells this out.

That isn't to say that there can't be additional legislation that regulates an industry beyond the legal infrastructure that enables the formation of a corporation.

I mean, forget stakeholder theory and other minimally responsible theories of operation, because that stuff is kind of new--just look at judicial dissolution. It exists on the books and it's been done in practice. That ability would have no reason to exist if it were to not protect the United States and its citizens from the malfeasance of a corporate entity to which a charter has been granted.

But this argument is wholly backwards. Why should corporate entities be granted any rights at all? We deign to grant them the status of existence. We, the people, not the fictitious ones but those pesky "natural" ones. Why should a corporation exist for any other reason than to better our society? Why should a society empower random individuals to create liability-shielding immortal pseudopeople if that society doesn't think they're supposed to make that society better by existing?

Hell, go even further. Why should a society do anything if it doesn't make the society in aggregate better for the doing?

Because it represents liberty. The freedom for people (natural ones) to assemble and organize and pursue their own interests as they see fit.

Our social contract is that the government protects the rights of individuals not that individuals serve the abstract needs of "society".

Of course that doesn't mean that a corporation (or any other group) is outside the law. I'm just pushing back on your notion that there is some abstract litmus test that says a group (corporate or otherwise) must "better our society". I don't even know what that really means and it sounds to me very much like the tyranny of the majority.

Liberty requires limited liability now, does it? Strikes me as a very feudal idea of liberty--the liberty to do unto others but to escape them doing unto you.

> I don't even know what that really means and it sounds to me very much like the tyranny of the majority.

It means that a corporation is trusted to not be an asshole to the people giving it its literal-not-figurative superpowers and when that corporation breaches that trust its fictional life can and should be forfeit.

What you call "the tyranny of the majority," I call "a community and a polity having the right to not be mooked by the first con man to come down the pike." Because people, actual people, matter more.

What I was pushing back at was your suggestion that a corporation must "benefit society". That particular phrasing is completely open ended in my mind suggesting way too much power to be wielded if you aren't "benefiting society". Perhaps that isn't what you intended but IMHO appeals to "improving society", "helping the children", "the greater good" in the abstract are either power grabs or empty phrases. The specifics mater.

Here's a concrete example of what's actually a power grab: the Dole company literally-not-figuratively knocking over the Hawaiian monarchy and the subsequent creation of the "Republic of Hawaii" as a Dole-owned, Dole-operated state. Why is that not a "power grab" about which you get up in arms? Why is it that it's a "power grab" to say "hey you have a duty to not do that kind of shit"?

What you are categorizing as a "power grab" is a refusal to accept the status quo as legitimate just because it happens to be where we're at right now. Why is it that that advocacy, the use of the state to control its creations, is the "power grab" here--and not the accumulation of that power in the first place?

You keep changing the topic and I keep trying to come back to my observation that requiring a corporation to "benefit society" is not actually a thing in law and would be a bad idea in any case.

If your definition of "benefit society" just means "doesn't break laws". Then I would agree with you but there really isn't any need for such indirection and expansive language about "benefiting society" in that case.

So I gathered that you were suggesting that there is some administrative hoop that a corporation must jump through to convince you that they are "benefiting society". But that language is hopelessly broad and just begging to be abused by anyone in power who doesn't like what a disfavored group is doing (even when they aren't breaking any laws).

I bet there are a lot of people who think that Fox News isn't "benefiting society" and I'll bet there are also a lot of people who think that CNN or MSNBC aren't benefiting society. Are you telling me that the majority opinion should hold here and organizations disfavored by the majority can be legislated out of existence because they don't "benefit society"?