<story><title>Self-owning corporations are legally possible</title><url>https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2954173</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>will_brown</author><text>The article seems confused...the title references &lt;i&gt;ownership&lt;/i&gt; and the abstract is not about ownership at all but about control of LLC’s and in a legal context ownership is distinct from control.&lt;p&gt;Otherwise the article is based on a false premises:&lt;p&gt;&amp;gt;Third, governments — particularly in the United States — lack the ability to determine who controls entities they charter&lt;p&gt;Take Florida.  Florida’s Limited Liability Company Act regulates who can be a manager (i.e. who controls the LLC).  In fact the act creates 2 types of LLCs as most states do, member managed and manager managed.  In one non-members can not be managers (control) the LLC.&lt;p&gt;Outside of the LLC, almost every statute regulates who can &lt;i&gt;control&lt;/i&gt; and who can &lt;i&gt;own&lt;/i&gt; a business entity.  For example, a non-profit corporation has no &lt;i&gt;owners&lt;/i&gt;.  Although states do differ, generally by statute, a non licensed person cannot be the owner of a professional service corporation, professional association, or professional limited liability company.  Though generally those professional entities can have non-licensed directors, officers, or managers.  State laws also generally include restriction on minors being directors, officers or managers, but they can usually be owners, although it gets tricky where they are the sole owner because legally they can’t even sign contracts&amp;#x2F;formation documentation (though still legally possible).&lt;p&gt;Point is Governments are well equipped to regulate who can own or who can control any type of business entity.&lt;p&gt;What is possible, and I have written legal articles about, is to have autonomous trusts, or what I call the &lt;i&gt;trusteeless trust&lt;/i&gt; but my examples and use cases are limited to the trust being funded solely with cryptocurrencies&amp;#x2F;tokens.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>will_brown</author><text>I can no longer edit my comment, but I have now read all 75 Pages, and the Article does in fact mention some of these issues, such as member-managed vs manager-managed LLCs and then in the &amp;quot;detection problem&amp;quot; section they discuss incorporators, directors, officers of corporations.&lt;p&gt;Still the premises of the Article is flawed, and found in Section 1(b), &lt;i&gt;Initiating Algorithmic Entities&lt;/i&gt;, on page 13, in part:&lt;p&gt;&amp;gt;Bayern specifies this chain of events as capable of establishing the link:
(1) [A]n individual member creates a member-managed LLC,
filing the appropriate paperwork with the state; (2) the individual(along, possibly, with the LLC, which is controlled by the sole member) enters into an operating agreement governing the conduct of the LLC; (3) the operating agreement specifies that the LLC will take actions as determined by an autonomous system, specifying terms or conditions as appropriate to achieve the autonomous system’s legal goals; (4) the sole member
withdraws from the LLC, leaving the LLC without any members.  The result is potentially a perpetual LLC—a new legal person—that requires no ongoing intervention from any preexisting legal person in order to maintain its status.&lt;p&gt;The premises is the last member (owner) withdrawing from the LLC leaving an AI to run the perpetual LLC, which is a legal impossibility. Every State has a law requiring an LLC have at least one member, and upon the withdraw of the last member of an LLC the LLC immediately becomes administratively dissolved (no longer in good standing with the State) under the State&amp;#x27;s law. Its not novel, similar laws govern situations when the sole member of an LLC dies, either the LLC automatically dissolves or ownership gets distributed to the member&amp;#x27;s heirs, pursuant to the specific State&amp;#x27;s laws, but the managers and&amp;#x2F;or employees don&amp;#x27;t go on running the member-less LLC whether they are human or an AI.</text></comment>
<story><title>Self-owning corporations are legally possible</title><url>https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2954173</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>will_brown</author><text>The article seems confused...the title references &lt;i&gt;ownership&lt;/i&gt; and the abstract is not about ownership at all but about control of LLC’s and in a legal context ownership is distinct from control.&lt;p&gt;Otherwise the article is based on a false premises:&lt;p&gt;&amp;gt;Third, governments — particularly in the United States — lack the ability to determine who controls entities they charter&lt;p&gt;Take Florida.  Florida’s Limited Liability Company Act regulates who can be a manager (i.e. who controls the LLC).  In fact the act creates 2 types of LLCs as most states do, member managed and manager managed.  In one non-members can not be managers (control) the LLC.&lt;p&gt;Outside of the LLC, almost every statute regulates who can &lt;i&gt;control&lt;/i&gt; and who can &lt;i&gt;own&lt;/i&gt; a business entity.  For example, a non-profit corporation has no &lt;i&gt;owners&lt;/i&gt;.  Although states do differ, generally by statute, a non licensed person cannot be the owner of a professional service corporation, professional association, or professional limited liability company.  Though generally those professional entities can have non-licensed directors, officers, or managers.  State laws also generally include restriction on minors being directors, officers or managers, but they can usually be owners, although it gets tricky where they are the sole owner because legally they can’t even sign contracts&amp;#x2F;formation documentation (though still legally possible).&lt;p&gt;Point is Governments are well equipped to regulate who can own or who can control any type of business entity.&lt;p&gt;What is possible, and I have written legal articles about, is to have autonomous trusts, or what I call the &lt;i&gt;trusteeless trust&lt;/i&gt; but my examples and use cases are limited to the trust being funded solely with cryptocurrencies&amp;#x2F;tokens.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>slimsag</author><text>I would also like to read your articles. Would you be able to link me to them or edit your post and include links to them?</text></comment>