| As someone else says, partnership structures. These have a very limited ability to raise external capital. I'm slightly surprised to have to argue on a site built on providing venture capital as equity to startups that also issue equity to employees that exposing all those investors to the risk of losing their homes as a result of action by those they have only a very limited control over is a bad idea. > what do you think happens in countries that don't have limited liability companies? There is an excellent book on this, The Other Path by the economist Hernando de Soto, on extra-legal systems in Peru. And in Third World countries where you don't have good formal legal systems, the environmentally destructive exploitation projects still happen, with the complicity of the political structure - and often substantial amounts of extra-legal violence. At least in the US you can sue Cloud Peak Energy without getting your legs broken. It's also worth looking at what happened to the Lloyds "Names", who were supposed to be unlimited-liability reinsurers. None of this is to say that coal companies should be allowed to commit environmental damage and get away with it, but it does mean that the system needs to be better in preventing this in the first place. |