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Ashish's Niti

Niti in Sanskrit means policy/strategy/vision. This blog hosts my political views, along with news and commentary. This blog has moved here.

Tuesday, December 07, 2004

Limited Liability and faceless shareholders

I get this periodic impulses, whereby I simply try to read whatever comes to my mind. Usually there is some trigger involved, say a movie, a documentary or a new word, etc. So this time, I started reading about pre-Independence Indian history. I was intrigued by British East India company. One question that repeatedly came to my mind was, how come we never hear about shareholders of the John Company (it's popular name)? Why do we only hear about various officers of the company, such as Robert Clive, Warren Hastings, etc.?

The company ruled India for approx. 250 years chiefly for the profit of its shareholders. Who were these shareholders? What were their names? What did they feel about the atrocities inflicted on Indians under their name? How come nobody held them accountable for treatment their company meted out to Indians? Same thing goes for the Bhopal Gas tragedy. We are after Union Carbide Chairman Warren Anderson. But what about other major shareholders?

I wonder if East India Company and Union Carbide were not a joint stock companies with limited liability would they have been abled to create such a disaster? I don't hear much from liberatarians against limited liability protection granted to faceless shareholders. Lot of opposition to capitalism is pure non-sense but there is no doubt that atrocities committed by limited liability corporations are one of main reasons why such an opposition is sustained. What solution do liberatarians have for removing limited liability protection? Let's hear from them.

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