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Comment by pie420 | Hacker News Reader

that's ridiculous. it's like saying i separate myself the employee from the private individual receiving the salary. the two are the same. Just because the catholic church can get away with separating the same entity into multiple parts doesn't mean anyone can or should

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So if a company goes bankrupt you believe the board & shareholders are now on the hook for that debt?

We would probably live in a better world, if it did.

Perhaps but there would probably be a lot less people starting companies if that was the case. LLCs were created for a reason and are effectively what this commenter [1] described.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39108118

Doesn't that describe many forms of incorporation, not just LLCs?

Yes but LLCs are usually easier/less paperwork if you're starting a new company or doing what the linked commenter described.

I can connect to the sentiment of that, but it's a ridiculous thought in practice. The board, which can come and go, is not a personal guarantor. They have a fiduciary duty, of course, but they're not individually bringing in the billions of dollars of public investment in the public company they serve. And so why should they be personally liable for its debt? And even if they should, how could they be?

If a company goes bankrupt and it owes creditors, say, $10 billion, but together the board members have, say, $5 million in their accounts, creditors are still short $9.99+ billion. What value is there in that, apart from the moralizing?

> We would probably live in a better world, if it did.

The separation of 'natural' person [1] from legal persons[2] dates back to the Middle Ages and perhaps even Ancient Rome.[3]

It is how town/city charters were structured (the town is a legal person made of its inhabitants), as well as Medieval guilds (modern unions), universities,[4] etc.

Breaking down the legal separation could effect all of these legal entities.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_person

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legal_person

[3] https://egrove.olemiss.edu/aah_journal/vol10/iss1/5/

[4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/University#Medieval_Europe

No, it's like saying you the employee are a separate entity from the company you work for. To say that Boeing is increasing profits suggests that they are raising prices, doing more business, and/or cutting costs. The article linked by the person you're replying to posits that airlines are actively weakening their own financial positions to increase leverage for shareholders, which is a different thing.

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