[lupusreal]

That's not really true; in places without government, or adaquate aligned government, businesses have been known to form their own police forces and quasi-governments, even navies. Profit is a powerful motivator, if something business needs doesn't exist already they'll create it.

[sdf4j]

So, they create a government because it’s necessary for the businesses.

[lupusreal]

It's misleading to claim that companies own their existence to governments, to imply some innate subservience of companies to governments, when companies can and have created governments whenever the need arises.

[Supermancho]

> It's misleading to claim that companies own their existence to governments

It's misleading to point to exceptions as the rule.

> companies can and have created governments

If you are referring to a company as "a group of individuals" (vis a vis the dictionary definition), that's outside of this conversation.

>> They give our licenses to establish companies.

The original discussion is about corporations (and smaller business companies) as they exist in the US.

[lupusreal]

I'm talking about companies as commercial enterprises seeking to profit from doing business. No funny business with esoteric definitions.

You say companies creating governments are the exception because usually governments which are compatible with doing business already exist. And this is in no small part because companies modify their environment to create that set of circumstance in the first place. Sometimes they create governments outright where none previously existed. Most often they do it by lobbying or bribing a government to adopt rules better for doing business. Sometimes they hire private armies to destroy and replace governments which cannot be brought into alignment with the companies.

The colonial trading companies are the most famous examples because of how extreme they were, but there are countless examples throughout history and around the world. Companies forming governments outright, complete with new currencies, was common in the undeveloped American west. Companies hiring mercenary armies to destroy unaligned governments has happened several times in South and Central America.

Companies needing governments are like beavers needing ponds. If none suitable exists, they make one.

[xapata]

> esoteric

The legal concept doesn't feel esoteric to me. In contrast, "companies" creating governments is quite rare in my mind. The historical concept you're referring to was even more of a legal concept. Those companies were individually chartered by their host governments. They might have inflicted something else on their victims, but ... Let's take the East India Company as an example. It might have appeared sovereign at times, but was trivially dissolved by the British Empire.

[bitpush]

You're getting the cause and effect wrong. For a company to exist, there needs to be stable structures in place. Foundational things like money, infrastructure, laws, people - "Capital".

[lupusreal]

There are many examples of companies causing those stable conditions to exist. They even create currencies whenever one doesn't already exist. It doesn't work in only one direction, that's my point.

[xapata]

When it goes the other way, would it be more appropriate to call those gangs, not companies?