what is essentially an online yellow pages
Eh? My old publisher subscribed to D&B for its CRM service for businesses, worth about 10k annually? They also do credit reports on businesses, basically they are the corporate version of credit agency. A little more than 'online yellow pages'.
While the whole "The US is a corporation" seems kooky or whatever, it is based in commonwealth law dating back to the Middle Ages.
A municipal corporation is the legal term for a local governing body, including (but not necessarily limited to) cities, counties, towns, townships, charter townships, villages, and boroughs.
Municipal incorporation occurs when such municipalities become self-governing entities under the laws of the state or province in which they are located. Often, this event is marked by the award or declaration of a municipal charter.
With the notable exceptions of the City of London Corporation and the Laugharne Corporation, the term has fallen out of favour in the United Kingdom, but the concept remains central to local government in the United Kingdom, as well as former British colonies such as India and Canada.
The disconnect happened probably somewhere down the line when most every switched away from a feudal society to the current _________ (whatever) you are currently living in. Usually Constitutional Republics or Democratic Republics, Federations, etc. Almost everything is still based on or founded on the Charters and Laws that were developed during Feudal times but obviously in most of the world we don't have Kings and Queens anymore, and even where there are, they're not really in power like they once were.
I think a few people in this thread put it best when they say, 'the government operates like business a lot of the time' and indeed they do, borrowing, lending, budgets, finance, and everything else. It makes sense for them to operate as a corporation for this purpose but I have absolutely no idea how incorporation of a city, town or country for that matter works exactly, and Im not sure people in charge of those places would have a single clue about it either. That being said, the guy linked, as well as the guy who thinks he's the supreme attorney general and that no judges have powers, (he was popular a decade ago or so), I don't think they have a fucking clue either.