John Médaille
The “anonymous societies”—the corporations—can never deliver what they promise; they can never bring us limited government, free markets, or private property. But most especially, they cannot overcome the division between capital and labor; that can come only by sharing in ownership, and by identifying property with responsibility.

The directors of such [joint stock] companies, however, being the managers rather of other people’s money than of their own, it cannot well be expected that they should watch over it with the same anxious vigilance with which the partners in a private copartnery frequently watch over their own…. Negligence and profusion, therefore, must always prevail, more or less, in the management of the affairs of such a company.
— Adam Smith[1]
The Mills of Bazacle
In the year 1370, a group of mill owners on the Garonne River near Toulouse, the Société des Moulins du Bazacle, a “societas” that had existed since 1177, reconstituted themselves as the Société Civile Anonyme du Moulin du Bazacle. This was not a mere shift in the name, but a whole new conception of both “property” and business.
The original “society” was a collection of mill owners, each one owning a share in a physical property, namely, one of the twelve mills along the river.[2] But in the new “anonymous society,” the connection with physical property and ownership was broken. Now, each one owned a claim on the profits of “milling.” This new society had other goals in mind: destroying the competition and monopolizing all the milling in the Garonne River valley. They raised the height of their dam to drown out the mills upstream of them, in a part of Toulouse known as La Daurade. The Moulins de la Daurade—another societas—sued, and since Bazacle was in violation of all law and custom, they easily won. But, through an extravagant use of bribes,  » Read More
https://theimaginativeconservative.org/2024/09/anonymous-society-great-workbench-john-c-medaille.html