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

" Not really. The act of incorporation is a specific legal term that refers to the creation of a corporation." Exactly my point. Translated again: The only thing required to create a corporation- is to create a corporation. See the problem? " They are necessary for the creation of a corporation. Just like you need a mother to be born. After your birth, your mother could die. This will, however, not mean that you are dead." I have an existence separate from my mother's. A provable, concrete existence. Demonstrated by the fact that I am typing to you. " No, it's there to illustrate that law can exist even where there is no legal structure, no government, where previous law has been replaced by a new regime. War-crimes were found as law subsequent to their commission. However, they did exist during their commission. This is part of that "natural justice" concept, the jurisprudential idea that laws can exist without a government." What this amounts to is an ex post facto law, if what you claim is true abou ttheir being "Found" after commission (which is probably not true, because the country that eventually invaded declared these a crime beforehand, it just took some time to enforce the matter). And no, laws do not exist in nature (not laws of that sort). Laws of physics do, but those are a different story. The jurisprudential idea you refer to is unprovable. " Hence a homeless person is a dead person? I would argue that some actually do survive the experience. " They live under a bridge- or in a park- or in a car- etc. They always live SOMEWHERE, it's just not very high quality and they frequently change it. " The debate is about legal entities." Legal entities, as such, are fictional. They cannot exist as such. "You have been trying to muddle up the waters by pretending that you are confusing a bunch of truckies with the corporation they work for." No, I am stating that there is no other referent of a corporation than it's workers, shareholders, officers, and physical assets. I am not pretending to confuse them, I am stating that they are fundamentally one and the same, and the alternative view leads us to the conclusion that a "corporation" does not exist- the law simply pretends it does. " Incorrect. Read the first post again. "A legal person will continue to exist"… I refuse to believe that you were under the impression that this was about a physical existence." There is no variety of existence that is not physical or derived from the physical. "It could not be as legal entities do not have a physical existence. That is what makes this a legal debate. You cannot ever show me a physical corporation. There aren't any. You can show me a McDonald's store. But that is not the corporation. It's merely one of the assets it owns/leases." It is a referent- a concrete from which, with other concretes, the concept "Corporation" is formed. " Correct. My understanding is (correct me if I'm wrong) that the South never had any legal power under the Constitution to declare secession. Hence, any "confederate law" was never good law and never needed to be revoked in the first place. " The Constitution never had any legal power under the Articles of Confederation. The Articles of Confederation never had any legal power under the Magna Carta to declare secession. Etc. " Again you are resorting to arguing semantics. " No, actually, I'm arguing metaphysics- not just that x word does not mean y, but x word cannot mean y because y has no rational meaning. There is a difference :D. "And again I will indulge you by rephrasing: a tree in the amazon can and does in fact exist even if no human has ever laid his/her eyes on it." That is not a valid comparison. A corporation is not a tree in the amazon, it is a concept rather than a concrete, and thus it's existence is dependent on concretes (and in this case it does matter whether humans have seen them, because humans working together is part of it, and humans lay their eyes on it in the course of indulging). Furthermore, if the planet is destroyed, the tree indeed no longer exists. " "A corporation is a legal entity created through the laws of its state of incorporation, treating a corporation as a legal "person" that has standing to sue and be sued, distinct from its stockholders. (…) Until formally dissolved, a corporation has perpetual life;" http://definitions.uslegal.com...... (NOTE IN PARTICULAR THE LAST SENTENCE OF THE ABOVE DEFINITION AS I ASSERT THAT IT DIRECTLY SUPPORTS THE VERY GIST OF MY ARGUMENT)" The problem there is that definition is not coherent for any purposes other than legal ones. Something has to have a particular, defined existence in objective reality- not just in law- in order to qualify as an entity. This is, again, not semantics- it is metaphysics. " You disagree with the very existence of the concept "legal entity"? I understand that this is the very crunch of the argument. Main Entry: legal entity Function: noun : an entity (as a corporation or labor union) having under the law rights and responsibilities and esp. the capacity to sue and be sued (dictionary.com)" That is, indeed, an invalid concept. Corporations or labor unions cannot be entities as such, except perhaps derived entities- derived from constituent parts. They are incapable of being independently entities. "I must say that I am somewhat surprised that we have come this far before you actually admitted that you do not understand the meaning of the VERY FIRST WORD in the subject matter of the debate :)" I understand what it means in a rational legal system. In our own irrational legal system the thing you put forward as "Meaning" is logically incoherent, by definition not understandable :D. " Human laws cannot create a physical entity. But they certainly can create a legal entity" Again, that is not a valid concept. "Legal entities" as you describe them do not and cannot exist, are not and cannot be created. Because they are nonentities, just floating bits of legislative imagination.