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Lawyers again...and Adam Smith

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Lawyers are now ethically allowed to turn in clients that are stealing from the company or cooking the books. It’s funny to think of the health of a corporation as being tantamount to the health of another person who might fall victim to harm by misdeeds of a client.

I suppose this goes to show that the much hated “joint stock company” of Adam Smith is, in fact, as important as a human life in this hyper-capitalist society of ours.

I think I’m done writing about lawyers for the moment.

On that much hated:

Smith warned against the joint-stock company as it had the following properties that made it dangerous to the stability of the Wealth of Nations:

  • unlimited life
  • unlimited size
  • ill-restrained power
  • unlimited license

In short, these joint-stock companies, were they to become ubiquitous, represent a threat to the viability of the “invisible hand”. Need I say Enron, Worldcom, Tyco?

It’s instructive that most who praise laissez-faire capitalism see the corporation as their mascot, a more appropriate mascot would be the guy pushing the ice-cream cart with the little bells on it.