A company is generally its own legal entity, intentionally separated from its shareholders to protect them from any fallout should the company ever go bankrupt or get sued into oblivion. You can get into serious trouble if you founded a company and failed to correctly distinguish between your own and the companies property, because as far as the government is concerned you explicitly told it to make this distinction.
It's its own legal entity, that is owned by other people.
And there is very little privilege that incorporation grants corporations that is not entirely contractual. Limited liability for shareholders for tort is the only one I can think of, and that, in my opinion, should be repealed.
Limited liability for debt can be entirely contractual in its basis, and established by shareholders/companies operating outside of the corporate structure too, simply by stipulating that condition in any loan agreememt the business enter into with another party.
Any state control over private citizens can be rationalized in this way. Private property is a private creation, and the use of public resources by the individuals that create it should not be used as an excuse to deny its creators their rights over it, any more than the use of public resources by individuals should not be used to invalidate their right to free speech.
A company is generally its own legal entity, intentionally separated from its shareholders to protect them from any fallout should the company ever go bankrupt or get sued into oblivion. You can get into serious trouble if you founded a company and failed to correctly distinguish between your own and the companies property, because as far as the government is concerned you explicitly told it to make this distinction.