Actually existing hindrance: corporate law

Manny K busts one out, here:

A constitution allowing the greatest possible human freedom in accordance with laws by which the freedom of each is made to be consistent with that of all others -- I do not speak of the greatest happiness, for this will follow of itself -- is at any rate a necessary idea, which must be taken as fundamental not only in first projecting a constitution but in all its laws. For at the start we are required to abstract from the actually existing hindrances, which, it may be, do not arise unavoidably out of human nature, but rather are due to a quite remediable cause, the neglect of the pure ideas in the making of the laws.

Yeah. Ideas like not pretending that corporations are citizens and real people. Ideas like, the air, water, and open urban spaces belong to the public. Ideas like "the public." Ideas like loyalty to error compounds error.

For what the highest degree may be at which mankind may have to come to a stand, and how great a gulf may still have to be left between the idea and its realisation, are questions which no one can, or ought to, answer.

Which splendid trajectory is, mas o meno, the unquestionable distance between the world we want and the one we have.

Read the entire post on Dem Wahren, Schönen, Guten - with an able assist from van Worden.