And while I'm all for partnerships and collective legal enterprise structures, can something like the public national health service, or the national transport system (indeed anything that intrinsically has to be nation-wide, or large-scale anyway) be anything other than (ultimately) state-run? The road of excess leads to the palace of wisdom - William Blake
Key is the existence of a legal entity within which we are Members wherein we have no responsibility for our fellow citizens INDIVIDUALLY but do so COLLECTIVELY insofar as we consensually agree.
That's what's new about the "Open" Corporate I bang on about of which the UK LLP is the first example.
What I mean by that is that people in any country COULD (technically) decide to use a UK LLP as their vehicle of choice.
Note here how Germans have been setting up UK Companies at a phenomenal rate to bypass German bureaucracy etc etc (particularly in insolvency/distrsssed situations) - if they knew about UK LLP's they would undoubtedly use them instead.
However, that having been said, these strategems do not play too well locally (politically), even though (for instance) the LLP protocol could provide for local laws to govern practically every aspect.
In fact, the application I had in mind when I first realised the cross-border potential of the LLP was as a "Market Corporation".
ie a neutral legal protocol of global application for a global market place.
As described here, five years ago
http://www.exchange-handbook.co.uk/index.cfm?section=articles&action=detail&id=38754
which I like to think is as valid now as it was then.
Technically Parliament COULD repeal the Act, but since:
(a) they were blackmailed into it in the first place by the Jersey legislation; and
(b) more than half UK solicitors are, or are planning to be LLP's; and
(c) the number of them doubled to 14,000 in the last 2 years;
repeal is unlikely.
And of course, it exists in Qatar, Dubai, Japan, and is pending in India, while a US LLC would do just as well.
ie this genie isn't going back in the bottle....
Although there has been a >£1bn hotel group refinancing using a "Capital Partnership" for a 27 year revenue sharing agreement.
The "Capital Partnership" application of an LLP allows the introduction of a "Non-toxic" form of PFI and PPP.
ie a model linking together "partnerships of partnerships" or "cooperatives of cooperatives" of stakeholders with no place for "rentiers".
Imagine a partnership between an employee cooperative like John Lewis, and a retail/ "customer" cooperative.
Capital would come from the employees (as a pension investment in future revenues, instead of unsecured loans as now) and the customers (an investment offsettable against future purchases maybe): probably secured by "co-ownership" of the business premises (as opposed to a claim/mortgage over it).
The problem isn't that people aren't using LLPs. The problem is that a small group of hooligans think they own the fucking universe and the rest of us exist to keep them in money and luxury goods - plus entertainment when they decide a war is necessary.
I'm not clear how LLPs are supposed to solve that problem. Just because it's possible for an enterprise to become more open and sharing, doesn't mean that sharing and openness become more likely.
Now, if you could arrange a system where cooperative LLPs crowd out toxic corporations for solid market reasons (oh, the irony...), you might be onto something.
But I'm not seeing how, or even if, you're proposing to connect those dots together.
You put your finger on how it will happen. The "Cooperative Advantage" is the freedom from paying returns to rentiers.
Those businesses that do NOT use these tools will be at a disadvantage to those that do. Classic Darwinism.
That's where "Community Partnerships" come in.
I would advocate a couple of forms (and its not either/or) of "rental".
One is a "location benefit levy" based upon the amount of land occupied and the location/desirability of it, as measured by land rental value.
This levy would be pooled and redistributed evenly to members of the "Community Partnership" resulting in a net transfer from those who have exclusive use of more, and more "desirable", land to those who have less.
The second is a levy based upon income (or production of land, for farms) eg x% of income goes into a pot, is pooled and redistributed evenly.
And most people will have a hard time affording either.
The problem is that a small group of hooligans think they own the fucking universe and the rest of us exist to keep them in money and luxury goods - plus entertainment when they decide a war is necessary.
