I have the feeling that a few big corporations dominating most markets becomes more and more of a reality, with the pandemic/crises accelerating that process even more.
I mean, we've been warned for the last 150 years that this is exactly what would happen due to the nature of capitalism. The crazy part is that it was known before but we're somehow "rediscovering" it right now and people are surprised. It always happened, the difference is that it's now done in plain sight
> Private capital tends to become concentrated in few hands… The result of these developments is an oligarchy of private capital the enormous power of which cannot be effectively checked even by a democratically organized political society. This is true since the members of legislative bodies are selected by political parties, largely financed or otherwise influenced by private capitalists who, for all practical purposes, separate the electorate from the legislature. The consequence is that the representatives of the people do not in fact sufficiently protect the interests of the underprivileged sections of the population. Moreover, under existing conditions, private capitalists inevitably control, directly or indirectly, the main sources of information (press, radio, education). It is thus extremely difficult, and indeed in most cases quite impossible, for the individual citizen to come to objective conclusions and to make intelligent use of his political rights.
- Albert Einstein, 1949
I might be wrong, but for the most part, is this just an American issue? big Pharma, Big Tobacco, Big Tech, Big Sugar, etc? Europe has less international heavyweight companies, true, but also doesn’t seem to be in the grips of cartels anywhere near as much as the US.
I think it’s more a problem of technology enabling massive economies of scale so the big players can always be the lowest price. And also technology is so complicated that few have the resources to be able to compete. Even Intel struggles with TSMC, and how many different teams of people are there in the world that can make fabs?
Agree, the German car industry is so big that its interests obviously affect German politics. And since Germany is the most influential country in the EU, this makes the German car industry automatically very influential (in a not so positive sense).
We either need a much lower standard for anti-trust breakups or we will reach the day where corporations are more powerful than national governments. Tech gets a lot of the focus on anti-trust concerns, but we have similar threats almost every industry.
I think we do need a more consistent standard. Right now it feels like it's a popularity contest judged almost entirely by which industry the media has decided to hate on.
Isn't that day already here? For instance, isn't the existence of the Double Irish a demonstration that large corporations can basically choose national governments as if from a marketplace and arrange their corporate structure in whatever way exposes them to the most favorable laws, completely independent of where they're actually doing business?
I am not sure if that's a bad thing? In some sense, that is the point of having different countries.
It's nothing conceptually different from the US deciding to tax its citizens on their worldwide income even when they are living abroad. It's "completely independent of where they're actually doing business or living"
US citizens gain benefits from the US government by definition, and they have the ability to give up their citizenship if they don't want that. The reason they're taxed is that they are actually subjecting themselves to US jurisdiction, in addition to the jurisdiction of whatever country they're physically in. (For instance, they can choose to leave the country they're currently in and be allowed visa-free entry to any country that permits visa-free entry to US citizens, and of course they can choose to return to the US.)
The Double Irish involves a company in non-Ireland country A doing business with a customer in non-Ireland country B, and routing that transaction through Ireland. I have no issue with either A or B deciding that they ought to tax this transaction, because both countries are relevant.
> In some sense, that is the point of having different countries.
If large corporations can decide to pick their country of incorporation freely and according to what most benefits them, but people can't (in general) pick their country of citizenship, then something has gone wrong.
And perhaps countries do it because it benefits them that random companies can come and incorporate themselves in their country, but it doesn't benefit them (and often hurts them) when random people can?
After all, there ARE countries where more or less anyone can relatively easily become a citizen, it's just that most people don't want to actually live in those countries.
Some countries give people easy visas on arrival. Others make you jump through several hoops. Why? Perhaps this works out best for both groups of countries. The first group benefits from the tourism dollars, the second group perhaps sees benefits from not having the country flooded by tourists who might or might not leave easily.
That may be why things have gone wrong, but wouldn't that situation mean that corporations are in fact more powerful than governments? They are powerful precisely because governments need things from companies more than companies need things from governments - the companies have the negotiating power here. (And, analogously, individuals don't.)
There is citizenship and residency. Many countries have very low bars for legal residency, and have it as a viable route to citizenship. With a business investment of $30,000 or a monthly income of $600, it is possible to gain residency in Nicaragua. Citizenship can be applied for after five years providing the person has lived in Nicaragua for 6 months each year.
As best I can immediately tell, the cost to incorporate in Nicaragua is $0 and ~30 days application period, with no residency requirement, and 0 tax on global income/profits.
A (low) bar to residency which leads to being eligible to apply for citizenship after a several years' commitment (also being highly dependent on any political change during those years) is not what I would call an "easy" process.
Maybe we’re discussing apples and oranges then. I would consider that a very easy and clear path to citizenship. In my mind, A residency is entirely reasonable and not difficult. I would consider the US system difficult due to the barriers intentionally set up around legal residency and visas
>or we will reach the day where corporations are more powerful than national governments
It's been true for decades that multinational corporations can push governments around by threatening to move their HQ or manufacturing or literally any other public benefit that they provide (like jobs) to any of the other countries they operate in (and maybe even some new ones that are campaigning for their attention).
Of course it's more complex than that in practice, but in a similar way that billionaires are (or can be seen as) a systemic economic failure, so too can highly capitalized organizations manipulate their living environments for their sole benefit, to the detriment of the vast majority of people that the organization touches with their actions. Jamie Dimon and Steve Mnuchin should be in prison right now for their performances around 2008, but instead they are vaunted leaders worldwide suffering zero consequences for their widely-destructive failures. This state of affairs is obviously not a meritocracy.
Antitrust enforcement operates pretty much at the leisure of the offenders, regulatorily captured like a lot of oversight in our increasingly authoritarian world.
There are two issues here though. The first issue there is that you have a negotiation between a private entity for whom costs are directly associated, negotiating with a public entity where costs are opaquely passed on to taxpayers, but for whom public benefits are often very direct.
The second issue is that federalisation of taxation and spending creates a race to the bottom between state entities. The problem isn't only that some city doesn't want to throw money away on a stadium - it's that they're put in a position where another city will buy the team a new stadium. In reality this is state intervention to prop up a private business like a state buying warehouses for Amazon. It destroys the prospect of ever taxing corporations - or indeed more than that, it uses state spending to subsidize private corporations.
If governments start cutting off markets to corporations, then corporations will accede to whichever market is the biggest (China, EU, and the US, in that order).
I don’t like the system we have now but I also don’t like corporate governance being determined by market size.
More powerful in what sense? For corporations to be more powerful than a standing government there would need to be a bunch of private armies roaming around. Although mercenaries can be found it isn't on the scale where it could threaten a government.
Corps don't need a military in their own name if they can influence existing militaries to do what they want. Chiquita did this repeatedly, for instance - they got the Colombian military to fire on striking workers in 1928, they got the US military to overthrow the Guatemalan government in 1954, they funded a paramilitary terrorist organization in Colombia from 1997 to 2004, etc.
Right but the issue is corps becoming more powerful than government. Needing to act through the government would seem to indicate that corps are not more powerful.
Being able to make other people do work for you is sort of the standard expression of power. My management doesn't have root, and I do, but they're more powerful than me simply because they can tell me what to do with my root access. The owners of the company probably don't even know who I am, but they are more powerful still because they can tell my management what to do.
Historically, there have been such things. For example, while one says "The British" colonized India, it was (until towards the end of the colonial era) not actually the British government but rather a British company called the East India Company that had their own military forces.
I’d argue that Facebook is already more powerful than many small and developing countries. Millions of people spend hours a day on their platform... in the past they’ve disclosed experimenting with affecting the emotions of users (with little self awareness and no express consent). They’ve contributed to genocide in Myanmar and numerous other social issues.
A few minor algorithm shifts could potentially sway public opinion or even gradually radicalize people and they’re more aware of it than anyone, especially the leadership of the country they primarily operate in.
The term "banana republic" was coined in 1904, exactly to describe Caribbean states where governments have less clout than United Fruit Company.
But this is too close. Instead, let's remember how the Hanseatic Union, an multi-national sea trade corporation of medieval times, waged war on Danish and Norwegian kings which had the impudence to plunder one of its trade ports, and won singlehandedly.
The Hanseatic League was a collection of city states and a naval power which wasn't too unusual and tended to be a regional norm - look at all of the Italian city states like Venice, Florence, and Milan. They could be called a northern counterpart to the Italian city states. By definition they weren't conquered by kings.
"Big X" is a snarl phrase in the first place. It basically that relies upon fear of the unknown mixed in with a victim and underdog complex. People find bigger things harder to understand but that doesn't make it bad. Warlord territories are smaller than governments but that doesn't make them better - it is the everything else.
> Americans depend on a safe, functional and resilient food system at least as much as they depend on their social media networks or ability to search the internet.
Shouldn't this say "far more" rather than "at least as much as." We simply don't need search engines and social networks. We do need food systems
Section 230 protections for social media companies, municipal and state enticement packages for company additions and relocations, etc.
Companies use government regulation to gain unfair competitive advantage, raise the barrier to entry, and drive prices higher through the increased demand of government entities.
For instance, it is hard for smaller medical software companies to compete against Cerner/Leidos to provide software solutions if they are winning contracts for the entire DoD (Active and Veteran health).
If, let's say, the VA's hospital system were to be privatized, then each participating health system would have the ability to tailor their own solutions, and more companies could compete. This is a net positive in innovation for an industry that is plagued by mediocrity.
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[ 4.5 ms ] story [ 169 ms ] thread> Private capital tends to become concentrated in few hands… The result of these developments is an oligarchy of private capital the enormous power of which cannot be effectively checked even by a democratically organized political society. This is true since the members of legislative bodies are selected by political parties, largely financed or otherwise influenced by private capitalists who, for all practical purposes, separate the electorate from the legislature. The consequence is that the representatives of the people do not in fact sufficiently protect the interests of the underprivileged sections of the population. Moreover, under existing conditions, private capitalists inevitably control, directly or indirectly, the main sources of information (press, radio, education). It is thus extremely difficult, and indeed in most cases quite impossible, for the individual citizen to come to objective conclusions and to make intelligent use of his political rights. - Albert Einstein, 1949
Maybe I’m just being oblivious...
I think it’s more a problem of technology enabling massive economies of scale so the big players can always be the lowest price. And also technology is so complicated that few have the resources to be able to compete. Even Intel struggles with TSMC, and how many different teams of people are there in the world that can make fabs?
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/jul/12/big-tobacco-di...
Facebook - https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1326801/000132680117...
Apple - https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/320193/0000320193170...
Google - https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1288776/000119312507...
It's nothing conceptually different from the US deciding to tax its citizens on their worldwide income even when they are living abroad. It's "completely independent of where they're actually doing business or living"
The Double Irish involves a company in non-Ireland country A doing business with a customer in non-Ireland country B, and routing that transaction through Ireland. I have no issue with either A or B deciding that they ought to tax this transaction, because both countries are relevant.
If large corporations can decide to pick their country of incorporation freely and according to what most benefits them, but people can't (in general) pick their country of citizenship, then something has gone wrong.
After all, there ARE countries where more or less anyone can relatively easily become a citizen, it's just that most people don't want to actually live in those countries.
Some countries give people easy visas on arrival. Others make you jump through several hoops. Why? Perhaps this works out best for both groups of countries. The first group benefits from the tourism dollars, the second group perhaps sees benefits from not having the country flooded by tourists who might or might not leave easily.
I'm not sure where this fits into your argument anyway, but I could not identify what country you might mean? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naturalization#Summary_by_coun...
A (low) bar to residency which leads to being eligible to apply for citizenship after a several years' commitment (also being highly dependent on any political change during those years) is not what I would call an "easy" process.
It's been true for decades that multinational corporations can push governments around by threatening to move their HQ or manufacturing or literally any other public benefit that they provide (like jobs) to any of the other countries they operate in (and maybe even some new ones that are campaigning for their attention).
Of course it's more complex than that in practice, but in a similar way that billionaires are (or can be seen as) a systemic economic failure, so too can highly capitalized organizations manipulate their living environments for their sole benefit, to the detriment of the vast majority of people that the organization touches with their actions. Jamie Dimon and Steve Mnuchin should be in prison right now for their performances around 2008, but instead they are vaunted leaders worldwide suffering zero consequences for their widely-destructive failures. This state of affairs is obviously not a meritocracy.
Antitrust enforcement operates pretty much at the leisure of the offenders, regulatorily captured like a lot of oversight in our increasingly authoritarian world.
I don't think the size of the company really matters, just how hungry politicians are for votes, and how starved their government is for tax money.
The second issue is that federalisation of taxation and spending creates a race to the bottom between state entities. The problem isn't only that some city doesn't want to throw money away on a stadium - it's that they're put in a position where another city will buy the team a new stadium. In reality this is state intervention to prop up a private business like a state buying warehouses for Amazon. It destroys the prospect of ever taxing corporations - or indeed more than that, it uses state spending to subsidize private corporations.
I don’t like the system we have now but I also don’t like corporate governance being determined by market size.
Snowcrash...
Autonomous zones appear to be leaving the realm of science fiction and into reality.
A few minor algorithm shifts could potentially sway public opinion or even gradually radicalize people and they’re more aware of it than anyone, especially the leadership of the country they primarily operate in.
But this is too close. Instead, let's remember how the Hanseatic Union, an multi-national sea trade corporation of medieval times, waged war on Danish and Norwegian kings which had the impudence to plunder one of its trade ports, and won singlehandedly.
Shouldn't this say "far more" rather than "at least as much as." We simply don't need search engines and social networks. We do need food systems
Government intervention in that market.
Companies use government regulation to gain unfair competitive advantage, raise the barrier to entry, and drive prices higher through the increased demand of government entities.
For instance, it is hard for smaller medical software companies to compete against Cerner/Leidos to provide software solutions if they are winning contracts for the entire DoD (Active and Veteran health).
If, let's say, the VA's hospital system were to be privatized, then each participating health system would have the ability to tailor their own solutions, and more companies could compete. This is a net positive in innovation for an industry that is plagued by mediocrity.