Corporations and other legal entities will continue to exist even after the world ends

I will start by saying that this is a very good challenge to a very difficult concept. I will now address your rebuttal piece by piece, much in the same fashion as you have addressed mine. "It does if in so doing it destroys every other referent of the concept "corporation", from the assets to the government that protected it (there is no such thing as a legal system if there is no government)." The first point (assets): Assets are NOT a referent of the concept "company". A company can go through its entire life without holding a single asset. The only thing a company requires to come into life is incorporation. Once that has taken place, the company is in existence. Of course, to be incorporated it must have a director, a secretary and a shareholder. That is conceded. However, it does not need to have them to continue its existence. As for the second point (no government to protect it, no legal system)…. Now this goes to a totally separate issue, one that could be argued quite separately and in a separate debate. The question you are addressing is whether law is made or found. That debate is ages old and has been repeatedly argued by the greatest minds in jurisprudence. What about war-crimes trials? Trials for crimes that were often committed by persons who were acting under a certain regime, often within the very legal structure of that regime. Obeying orders that were issued by their superiors in a territory where there was no government to prohibit such actions or to enforce any laws (eg occupied Poland in WW2). Subsequent actions for those crimes relied on the contention that the crimes were still crimes even if there was no legal system to enforce them or, indeed, to define them as crimes. What follows is that the mere fact that there is no government protection or enforceability does not relinquish the existence of law. "Not if they aren't still a person." With all due respect, this is circular. Your aim as Con is to disprove my contention that the company STILL IS A PERSON. You can not use a self serving statement like the one above in order to substantiate itself. "Reality is the ultimate competent authority, above any law. Reality just destroyed all referents of the concept "Corporation." " Again, I refer you to my argument above. The only referent of a company is its incorporation. A company is a separate entity, capable of existing without a director, shareholder, assets or (arguably) government protection. "This is what we know as a "Legal fiction." It's a deliberate falsehood, carried on for convenience of streamlining legal arguments. Ultimately, though, a corporation CANNOT be an entity in itself, cannot exist in it's own right- to exist presumes that it exists as something. What? The contract between the shareholders and the officers- which cannot exist unless shareholders and officers also exist. Any abstraction that cannot be concretized, cannot be said to exist." If you do not accept the (INTERNATIONALLY ACCEPTED) legal principle that a company is a completely separate legal entity then you are not addressing the argument at hand. Whether you agree with it or not, that is the legal position. A company is a legal entity, recognized to be as much a person as you or I. "So, would you hold that 90% of black men in America are still, by law, enslaved? After all, no competent officer of Confederate Law set them free. The trouble is, the Confederacy no longer exists. And in your scenario, no law exists. The law without enforcement- without a government- is no longer law- it is NOTHING, in the most absolute sense- not a thing. A law that does not exist cannot alter anything else." I now refer you to the 13th Amendment to the Constitution of the United States of America. I post it here for your convenience. Section 1. Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime where of the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction. Section 2. Congress shall have the power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation. Once again, the above statement is circular. Your very aim in this debate is to prove that the law no longer exists and therefore neither do the corporations. You cannot use the assertion "a law that does not exist…." as evidence to prove that very assertion. "As "Property" it is indeed no longer in existence. As "House" it is." Very well, another example then. I invent a time machine. I never write down the plans, the design is never documented. I die with that knowledge. The machine I invented would have worked if it had been in fact built. After my death, there is nobody to ever carry on the concept that I have invented. Does that mean the concept does not exist? True, there is no evidence of it. The fact is, however, the concept has come into existence. I have created it. I submit that that fact will forever remain true. An ant that has existed in some remote forest in the Amazon HAS existed irrespective of whether or not it was ever seen by a human being. The fact that there is no one to take ownership of something, that there is no one to attest to the existence of something, that the creator of something has died, does not and never will relinquish the fact of the existence of the object (or concept) in question. "Not quite. It is a CLAIM upon an asset. Assets have to exist in their own right, i.e., an asset has a concrete existence." I understand that you have never heard of Intangible Assets, eg shares, accounts receivable, goodwill, intellectual property and a broad range of things universally (oh that word again) recognized by accountants and lawyers. "Trucking company. A group of people who signed a contract to work together under certain terms to transport goods. Where is the group of people? Where is the transportation of goods? All else is legal fiction." A company is NEVER a group of people. It just is not. A company can hire a group of people but they are never its constituents. A company is a separate legal entity, whether you like that or not. It's in the very definition of a company in every book across the globe. "This debate, though I agree it is not related to practicality, is not whether the law SAYS they will exist, only whether they will actually exist." Very good. Now here's the bottom line: If the law SAYS a legal entity will exist then the legal entity will exist. That is because it is the law and ONLY the law that can define the existence of a legal entity.