Hope 2026 is a great one for you.

From that same link:

"These modern biologists, however, did not produce any evidence contradicting Fratscher's results since they did not test such slow water-heating as in Fratscher's experiments."

Sounds undetermined whether they croak or not...

You're absolutely right!

> If you were a cynical person you could imagine this is actually politicians wanting to bring in an ID law

Sounds like a good theory, apart from the minor flaw that France already has ID cards: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Identity_card_(France)

Gaming platforms are already doing it.

The first half of the advance was to be paid after the first third was approved.

They never got to that point.

Yes, once you have the 5 minute summary you can then extend it to however long your Uber is going to take to arrive!

Quibi was ahead of the curve!

People not perceiving in the same way (the original point) is exactly the same as "notable perception issues".

That's misunderstanding what the original argument is about.

You really think that people have been debating for thousands of years if colour blind people exist, with no conclusion in sight?

The country that chose the one person?

I'm willing to be convinced different, but I think it would be better if companies had to be owned by a person or people ie that companies can't own companies.

It seems a layer of indirection that is more harmful than useful.

As somebody who really appreciates being able to own a ton of different companies in small amounts in my retirement account, I'm not sure if this is the right way to solve the problem.

Requiring full disclosure of all ownership stakes, traceable back to individuals, is probably a better route for this.

And it seems that there's a trend towards that, last company I registered had a new process for listing beneficial ownership of all significant amounts. Just need to push that legislation further.

I'm not sure what you see as a difficulty here. You own a bit of those companies. You're a person.

What do you see as the problem?

I want a third party to manage the buying and selling of shares as I incrementally put in small amounts of money every week into the fund.

Technically I own the fund, and the fund owns the companies. As I understand your comment, this would be disallowed.

You can do this but you should also relinquish all voting rights of said companies. When companies like Blackrock, State Street, Fidelity, Vanguard, etc all sit on the same boards, you're going to get decisions being forced that may not be good for the company, workers, customers, or country. Doubly so when they're sitting on two competing companies boards.

You can allow mutual funds or ETFs or whatever similar instrument, but they should not be allowed to have a vote or say in the company.

You could either make an exception for funds, or simply make them owned directly. Probably impossible before computerisation but fairly straightforward now.

These don't seem difficult problems to me.

The difficult problem is how you distinguish a fund for consumers versus the types of funds you want to disallow. Start trying to codify that in law and it will quickly bring people finding the edges for their own purposes.

Full public disclosure of all beneficial ownership in entities would go a lot further, IMHO.

All funds are for consumers, because companies can't own funds.

I think your full disclosure is actually fundamentally the same as my proposal.

If I am running a business in the US and I want to set up shop in Canada or France, I have to register a second business in that country and have my US headquarters own it. What I want is for ownership of the foreign subsidiary to directly mirror the primary company's, and the most efficient way to do it is to just have the US company own the foreign one.

If companies can't own companies, then instead I have to directly transfer ownership over the subsidiary to the shareholders of the primary company. That means they can sell their shares of the foreign subsidiary independently of the headquarters, and the two companies' ownership will diverge over time. I am effectively forced to IPO the foreign subsidiary at the moment of their creation.

You can't assign ownership to the current CEO or board members, because that creates a conflict of interest. They'd be able to take a US company they manage and turn it into a foreign subsidiary they own.

This would also make joint ventures, mergers, and acquisitions far more difficult and complicated, if not impossible.

> If companies can't own companies, then instead I have to directly transfer ownership over the subsidiary to the shareholders of the primary company.

That sounds fine to me. They're different companies. Why shouldn't I be able to sell my shares in Amazon UK while keeping them in Amazon France?

Or countries could come to some agreement on cross country companies.

Your last paragraph is pretty meaninglessness. In all those circumstances two companies just become one.

banning corporate ownership of other companies would dramatically decrease the value of companies that people own. it would be much more difficult to sell your company. you might have built a successful company over the course of your life, and your children don't want to run it. Other companies in the same business but perhaps not in the same regious are good candidates to buy it. There are far fewer individuals with the assets to purchase a successful company.

should other companies wish to buy your company, they could still buy all the assets of your company, but not the company itself.

Honestly as a corporate lawyer I have never heard this view expressed, but it’s super interesting.

What are some obvious objections that would spring to your mind?

Edit: sorry, that was very abrupt! Nice to have your input. I would be interested to hear what you think would be problematic about the Idea.

It's inefficient in the case of a wholly-owned subsidiary to require company A's shareholders to hire lawyers, setup bank accounts, books, etc. for a separate company B which ultimately provides the same limited liability vis-a-vis third parties. Joint-ventures become tricky between corporations. Corporations can't hold potentially toxic assets. There are quite a few good ones. Interesting nonetheless.

Also as with all corporate law questions, <other jurisdiction> allows it, so we'll just go there instead.

I'm not sure I understand your first point. If a company can't own another company there's no such thing as a "wholly-owned subsidiary". If you buy a company they become the same company.

I'll try to stick to one thought at a time.

Also super unlikely, and only worth discussing except as a theoretical exercise. We just aren't undoing centuries of law. Same reason trusts are here to stay.

It’s harmful until you are the one getting personally sued by random grifters.

We limit liability for risky ventures for a reason.

> We limit liability for risky ventures for a reason.

Because the investor class had the political powers to get that protection written into law for themselves, so as to externalize risks while privatizing rewards.

The alternative has been the government controlling which ventures are funded, at which point the government assumes the risk.

Would you rather the only entity with a monopoly on violence be liable for all risky ventures? What happens when the government has a very different ideology and goals than what you support?

Again, there is a reason the status quo of private capital doing risky business with limited liability tends to work better.

You don’t have to like it.

Limited liability is the government interfering.

Otherwise the liability wouldn't be limited. You'd have to pay all your debts.

> Limited liability is the government interfering

I agree. That was not the point I was making.

The government interferes here for good reason, as no one would start a business if they would be personally responsible for random things. The LL in LLC is Limited Liability. Most governments want to make it easy to start a business.

This is the status quo because it has been consistently better than the government doing everything and being liable for everything. With private companies, you have various branches of the government with some ability to correct or regulate matters when a private entity is liable or responsible for something.

In the alternative scenario, when something goes wrong and the government is liable, good luck getting the government to find itself liable.

> The government interferes here for good reason, as no one would start a business if they would be personally responsible for random things.

People started businesses for a very long time before limited liability existed. Heck, people continue to start businesses as general partnerships and sole proprietorships to this day, despite the fact that those forms do not feature limited liabiity, centuries after limited liability was first applied to some business forms. So, “no one would start a business if they would be personally responsible” is very clearly false.

> The alternative has been the government controlling which ventures are funded, at which point the government assumes the risk.

No, that's not even remotely true; private investment in business ventures with risk long predates limited liability being attached to the corporate form. (In fact, it was the success the capitalist class achieved without that protection that enabled them to acquire the political power to get limited liability attached to the corporate form.)

> private investment in business ventures with risk long predates limited liability being attached to the corporate form

Here you go - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bottomry

It's only a risk for anyone loaning to the company, and they're choosing to make those loans despite the risk.

Having an LLC doesn't get you much special protection. You could make equivalent contracts with some assets securing the loan and other assets not securing the loan. The main purpose of the LLC framework is to standardize the whole thing.

> It's only a risk for anyone loaning to the company

No, voluntary lending is not the only way that corporations acquire liabilities, either now or at the time of limited liability was attached to the form. For instance, tort liability is a thing.