> OTOH, to all intents and purposes these people are behaving like a corporation. How can it be that corporations are denied those rights, but groups of people that behave exactly like corporations -- that are corporations, in all but name -- are entitled to them?

A collection of individuals operating in principle like they’re an LLC, but not contained within an LLC, don’t get the protections that an LLC get. They get individual personal unlimited liability.

For the same reasons that me operating as an individual gets taxed as an individual, but me operating through a LLC wrapper gets taxed as an LLC.

We’ve made up these arbitrary rules whereby LLCs (sometimes) get a different set of rules to real people.