Erulastant wrote:

I/R/T your second question, I'd say it happens as soon as a corporation starts doing something beyond producing and distributing goods and services. I would even go so far as to say that if it is distributing G&S other than at fair market value it has become a statelike actor.

I might quibble a little here, because the thing that here-and-now distinguishes corporations from all the other groups of people acting together for a common purpose, along with distinguishing nonprofits and unions and so on and so forth, is that we have this super-complex legal taxonomy established for the purposes of regulation and taxation and suchlike. In an ancap society, that doesn't exist, and so the lines get a little blurry. Especially since there're no rules that prevent the Vacuum Worker's Union from also offering non-profit services even to non-members and selling its otherwise-unemployed members' services on the side, too. So I'm going to argue that what distinguishes a state actor, in general, is special pleading, that it gets to operate by rules that no-one else does (or at least thinks it does). The big two (but hardly the only ones) here-and-now are the state's right to initiate force any time it pleases, and its sovereign immunity from prosecution. Or, to look at it another way, the state is a collective body that has rights and privileges not derived from those of the people who make it up. So I'd say, Steel Accord, that your protag is probably on the safe side as long as they stay within the bounds afforded to everyone else, individual or organization - using force only in defense of self and others, say. It's once you get into the business of deciding that your corporate, state, etc., nature affords you an Omniscient Morality License or other exemption from the rules that you're heading into the ethically dodgy parts of town, and that right fast. -c

Perhaps I should clarify my definition. Firstly, I was saying state-like rather than state for a reason. SA was asking when a corp becomes [i]no better[/i] than a state actor. So I'm attempting to answer that, rather than trying to define a state actor. I think that a corp would be no better than a state actor when it starts acting... -For a power motive rather than a profit motive OR -Using means besides providing G&S at FMP to achieve a profit motive I think this covers most cases. Nonprofits and unions don't have a power or profit motive so they fall outside this definition.