My only guess, not really knowing any of the discourse here, is that for markets to be efficient, there need to economic actors comprising them, and that firms play a sort of higher order role to individuals, as economic actors, and can also just protect individual actors from unlimited personal liability. So maybe that liability reason is what is propping up firms (edit: in a market that would otherwise be more efficient without firms), in ways that wouldn't be necessary if such liability wasn't a concern?an interesting question re DAOs is what are firms and why do they exist? from the POV of a certain sort of market fundamentalism, firms make no sense. they are massive islands of command economy which exist within the "free market". probably, they cover the majority of all activity within the economy, with market based activity occurring only at the boundaries. but why should this be so if market based exchange is so much more efficient?
that seems at least plausible. unfortunately the mainstream approach focuses almost entirely on their motivations rather than on more "ontological" questions about why they exist with a particular, non-market, structure.My only guess, not really knowing any of the discourse here, is that for markets to be efficient, there need to economic actors comprising them, and that firms play a sort of higher order role to individuals, as economic actors, and can also just protect individual actors from unlimited personal liability. So maybe that liability reason is what is propping up firms (edit: in a market that would otherwise be more efficient without firms), in ways that wouldn't be necessary if such liability wasn't a concern?