Limited Ltd.

My new company.

Limited, Ltd.

I owned and operated a small business, once. The business would have been considered to be manufacturing. But it really doesn't matter what a business does, it has limitations, no matter how large it becomes. The limitations are far greater than the scope of any particular kind of business. It is also limited by the willingness of its administrators to perform or to expand, by its financial prospects, by the expertise and dedication of its employees, by the condition and size of its markets, or its flexibility when faced with a wide variety of supply, production, inventory or marketing issues, to name but a few.

In that sense it seems redundant, at best, to tack the term "limited" onto any business name. I understand that in Canada, the term can mean "limited partnership", which also seems redundant, since they are all, again, limited. "LLC" means "limited liability company" in the U.S., which at least spells out specifically that it intends to separate itself from some of the responsibility for what it sells, or manufactures and sells - but again, all businesses try to do that. Otherwise members of the legal profession would decimate every business for profit, which they will try to do, regardless. That's exactly why the little packets of dessicant that come within packaged items have "do not eat" printed on them. It's why there's a warning on some child car seats to remove the baby before folding it up for storage. It's one of the biggest reasons you pay so much for your prescription drugs.

I thought it might be kind of cool to set up a fictitious name - which is what they call it - called "Limited, Ltd." It seems its potential would thereby be far less limited. It would not manufacture or sell anything, which means there's no limit at all to what it doesn't do. It also wouldn't make any money, so it wouldn't have to pay any taxes, or meet any payrolls. Therefore its potential to do nothing and pay nothing would also be less limited than even a company that files for bankruptcy. They have to pay attorneys. If someone called my business, Limited Ltd., to ask what it did, I would first read a bogus disclaimer and require a billing address before answering questions. Because I need a place to send the bill after I answer. When you don't have a product or do anything at all, you have to bill for something. I mean, I have expenses, even though my business doesn't. Granted, there would be start-up costs, because the benevolent government, as redundancy shifts to the oxymoronic, never misses a trick when it comes to assessing fees, especially for businesses. They make the assumption that all businesses are profitable, kind of like a fat, but hungry bear that rolls over a beehive, leaving it smashed and lifeless whether there was any honey in it or not. The objective was to get at the honey. To hell with the hive.

During my actual twelve years in business, I learned a lot, but at a high cost. It might have helped to have earned a degree in business administration first. But at about the same cost as an education, I certainly learned the lessons, and they were first-hand lessons, too, coupled with real-time experience. Now that I understand cash and accrual accounting systems, taxes and employees, supply and demand, there is no way in hell I would do it again. Not at my level, I no longer have the stamina.

And yet, all of this came to be written because there are so many things I do not understand.

The fact is, during the course of my life I have come to realize that, among men, more knowledge has been lost by the passing of our predecessors than one man could ever hope to learn in even a thousand lifetimes. The single lifetime we do get, is short at best.

Now that is the true meaning of the word “limited.”

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