X-Message-Number: 32729 From: "John de Rivaz" <> Subject: Prometheus Award for The Unincorporated Man Date: Thu, 22 Jul 2010 18:10:40 +0100 The Unincorporated Man has a poor review on Amazon.co.uk on http://www.amazon.co.uk/Unincorporated-Earbuds-Playaway-Adult-Fiction/dp/161545716X which is the audio edition with player. This same review appeared on the book edition http://www.amazon.co.uk/Unincorporated-Man-Sci-Essential-Books/dp/0765318997 I have marked this review as unhelpful. Someone else commented that the review looked as though it had been written by someone who has not read the book, and I marked this comment as helpful. I have not yet read the book, but it looks to be an interesting idea. Fortunately the reveiws on Amazon.com are much better. I had thought myself that the concept of a "Limited Liability Individual" may have some merit against insecurity experienced by individuals due to ever increasing and complicated legislation. In exchange for declaring his property, an individual could have limited liability except where specifically contracted (eg for loans) or in the event of criminal activity (eg theft). Although the concept appeared for corporations a few hundred years ago, it is now being whittled away by legislation making members of boards more and more personally liable, even for events over which they had no direct control. Some people try to achieve limited liability by putting their property into a trust, but this produces so many complications and makes life so much more difficult that it is not for everyone. In any case a motivated lawyer could probably break most trusts. I do think it is important to realise that capitalism isn't a panacea. It has been excellent for manufacturing, but has had disasterous results when applied to service providing industries and professions. [An easily understood example is that a telephone call center makes more money by keeping paying callers waiting than it does by answering calls efficiently.] -- Sincerely, John de Rivaz: http://John.deRivaz.com for websites including Cryonics Europe, Longevity Report, The Venturists, Porthtowan, Alec Harley Reeves - inventor, Arthur Bowker - potter, de Rivaz genealogy, Nomad .. and more Content-Type: text/html; [ AUTOMATICALLY SKIPPING HTML ENCODING! ] Rate This Message: http://www.cryonet.org/cgi-bin/rate.cgi?msg=32729