Keeping the club running. Corporations and other legal "persons" are important, and the importance of continuity is one reason.
It is not something people seem to notice much, if they even think about it at all, but the existence of "legal persons" is behind some of the greatest dilemmas we face today, covering a wide range of topics which define the headlines every day. On the one hand, there are relatively obvious legalistic discussions about this concept. For example, in America, among the various institutional causes of the political malaise there today, at least in more learnèd discussions, one has been the Supreme Court's acceptance of the argument that lobbying corporations have "freedom of speech". Perhaps less obviously connected to such legal discussions, is the widespread concern about the worsening of income distribution in rich countries, and the increasingly obvious ability of the wealthy to avoid paying taxes. At least in a superficial way, this is so widely understood that it has spread all over social media. But what kind of problem is this, if it is not another one wher