But please notice our title says "Modern corporations," so I think we can dance a different and much better behaved corporation!
I think we can easily have different corporate law in the modern era, and I think certain different approaches would be improvements compared to OTL. My point is more that "no modern corporations" is not something I read as "no
modern corporations" but as "
no modern corporations" (i.e. no corporations at all in the modern era). I read it that way because "modern" corporations as unique concepts don't really exist. Corporations existed in antiquity, and were re-invented. I see the OP as asking "what if that hadn't happened". If the OP had asked "what if corporations in the modern period had by differently regulated/organised in [x] way", then I'd have surely given a vastly different response!
This is going much too far.
I don't think so, and I'll do my best to defend my position. Below I'll quote and reply to some specific points that you raise in your well-argued reaction. I want to stress tht I'm not picking out certain sections to engage in cherry-picking when replying, but to get to the points where I think our insights differ crucially. These crucial differences in insight, I think, lead us to differing conclusions. So it is on these points of difference that I will focus here.
There were plenty of investors that made big, risky bets in the eras before the corporation, legal liability or no; long-distance trade in particular was rather risky for both merchant and investor (if they happened to differ), yet people engaged in it pretty continuously for centuries, even millennia with no real equivalent to the corporation
That last bit is not correct. Equivalents to corporations did exist, and were indeed primarily used for mercantile ventures. Also for colonial ventures, of course, but we must not that in many cases, these
were mercantile ventures. Romans had such mercantile ventures (with legal personality). The Chinese used them to set up trade outposts (much like emporia). They were also used in South India, predictably by the polities engaged in the Indian Ocean trade, who again set up emporia-like trade colonies.
It's absolutely true that long-distance trade is risky, and it's also true that ventures in that field were nonetheless undertaken without corporations. But it's telling that whenever a society became seriously involved in long-distance trade, corporations were invented and used. And for what? To make larger-scale ventures possible. In the relatively modern era, we can look at colonialism. Look at colonial charters and the way the ventures to exploit them were funded, and you'll regurly find a corporate structure underpinning them. And then look at the Dutch East India Company, the British East India Company, the South Sea Company, the Hudson's Bay Company...
Highly profitable economic-colonial ventures on an unprecedented scale were made possible by corporate structures. These ventures, in turn, produced considerable wealth-- which could be used by the beneficiaries. How? Well, they could invest it. Which leads us to...
many of the inventions of the First Industrial Revolution were not invented and manufactured by corporations
...wealth that had flowed into Europe, and which was used to finance the First Industrial Revolution. The excess wealth that made this development at all possible was, to a considerable extent, derived from the financial successes of colonialism. And those successes, as I have argued, would not have been possible (to anything like OTL's extent) without the presence of corporate structures.
Therefore, I continue to stand by my original assessment. No corporations, no industrial revolution. In fact, like I said: you don't really move beyond "1500" without corporations. There's a reason they were invented again and again, thoughout history, all over the world. It's just a
really good idea. I'm not saying corporations are somehow the only cause of successful colonialism and lucrative invesment capitalism, and the emergency of industrialism -- far from it, there are many more underlying factors -- but I
am saying that their existence is a
conditio sine qua non for all the aforementioned.
In fact, it rather sounds to me like your idea of a world divided into tiny micro-states, only this is a world divided into tiny micro-companies.
I admit, the idea (predictably) appeals to me, but corporations are fundamentally different from countries. Just as I love many tiny countries but certainly see the need for treaties of peace, amity and commerce between them, I also love the idea of more small companies but still see the need for certain big ones to realize ventures that smaller fish just can't tackle. "No corporations" can certainly give us a world without giant companies, but it will also be a world without some fairly fundamental things that giant companies achieved in OTL. First and foremost, what they do very well is rake in obscene amounts of cash. That's easy to sniff at, but as I've argued: you
need obscene amounts of available cash to finance some developments that are essential in the making of the modern world.
Ultimately, if I want a world where the corporate excesses are somewhat tempered and more small fish get a chance to thrive, I'll go with
@GeographyDude and aim for a different legal approach to corporations. "No corporations at all" is a different matter, and in my opinion, very much a case of babies and bathwater.