> For example to make sure that a company can be held responsible when it breaks the law.

In general this has nothing to do with incorporation documents.

If a company unintentionally causes a large amount of damages, the company is going to get wiped out, but then you're just having the judge order the bank to transfer the company's assets to the victims. The owners of the company aren't particularly relevant except insofar as they now own a company whose value has been zeroed out, and they might be the ones to show up in court to argue against that being what should happen.

If the people at a company intentionally cause a large amount of damages, the corporation is irrelevant. If your "corporation" is in the business of stealing catalytic converters and the police come to arrest you, the person with the sawzall in their hands is going to jail, and if that person was hired to do it they're going to be offered a deal to testify against the person who hired them etc. Pointing to your articles of incorporation at that point isn't going to save you. That isn't what LLCs do, actual criminal enterprises will frequently have not listed the true principals on the documents anyway, and the government is going to try to prosecute the perpetrators rather than the patsies on the documents.

There is no real point in making this a burden for honest people. If they're honest then it doesn't matter. If they're not honest then you'd be a fool to trust what they wrote on a form anyway.

> For example to make sure that a company can be held responsible when it breaks the law.

This is the reason Germany hates small companies. Germany wants you to be a sole trader with no liability shield.

Some people hack the system by registering a company in another EU state such as Lithuania.

There is a huge spectrum between "require impossible documentation" and "require none". Germany and EU are heading towards the former.

> In Germany, the government recently decided that some minor applications to local governments must be answered within X days or else are automatically approved.

I believe it was just a crazy idea that was submitted recently.

The closest real thing is 75 VwGO which requires a decision in 3 months. The immigration office has been failing to meet that requirement for years with few consequences, because enforcing that right is expensive and takes even longer.

In most (all?) US states, you can just start a company. You file a form, usually online, with the state, and you ask the IRS, online, for an ID number called an EIN. Technically you have a valid company after just step 1, but good luck getting any sort of bank account without doing step 2.

If you want to employ people, you need to file gratuitously obnoxious paperwork, but it’s still automatic.

What’s the actual problem? Why should it be harder?

Some states like California dislike small businesses in that they charge $800/year. But that’s pretty much it.