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> image a country runs by a company like Google, Facebook or Apple I believe at sufficiently large scale, i.e. the company's product is the well-being and util

> image a country runs by a company like Google, Facebook or Apple I believe at sufficiently large scale, i.e. the company's product is the well-being and utility of the population of a country, it doesn't matter whether it's run by the state or a private enterprise - It'll require a huge administrative body to communicate with only a fraction the efficiency of a smaller entity. Big things with lots of moving parts are slow and cumbersome. I'm sure Apple and Google are feeling this already - having tens of thousands of employees to manage is hard. Now scale it for running a country. I don't want to ignore that there are plenty of optimizations that could be made by eliminating political cruft, but a non-trivial level of complexity would remain. That said, in some significant ways the companies listed above will be influencing how a population functions by providing the frameworks for communicating with each other. I wonder if it's a path to self-governance by way of facilitating our policing of each-others actions, interactions and morals while regulating the information that we have access to.

bko 11y ago
I don't think what makes companies like Google, Facebook and Apple run better than most public entities has to do with scale or administration. Private businesses have all the same challenges with building an empire and expanding scale and scope of what they do. The difference is that they have to do this or cease to be. It's a lot easier to push a private entity to the point of irrelevancy when it falls out of favor with its users. Unfortunately, we don't have that same power with governments. Sure, you can vote but the system is designed to greatly benefit those already in power and skirt direct responsibility, whereas the power a consumer has with his dollar is generally a lot stronger. Peter Thiel explains it well when talking about the DMV: > Consider a political analogue using this framework. Say you have to go to the DMV to get your drivers license. In some sense, you, as a voter, control the government, and the DMV is a part of the government. Voters elect government people. Those people appoint other people. Presumably you had some indirect control on who becomes the head DMV bureaucrat. > But that head bureaucrat isn’t who you talk to after you wait in line. You have to talk to the people in possession: the window clerks and managers who actually run the DMV. They are the people who possess the ability to help you or not. You can tell them they suck. You can remind them that, under the theory of representative government, you are their boss. But that may not work very well. There is a misalignment between control and possession. It may not be a catastrophic one, but it is representative. Misalignment often happens when dealing with bureaucrats in government or, say, senior managers in the business world. [0] https://gist.github.com/harperreed/3201887 https://gist.github.com/harperreed/3201887
- icanhackit 11y ago
  The difference is that they have to do this or cease to be. Right, I understand the principal. Though I'd argue that it's not that black and white - the market is not a natural force like the waves in an ocean. Companies seek initial investment for growth, which can boil down to how strong your PowerPoint or people skills are, not on the strength of your ability to produce a decent product or service. The strength of your shares are often tied to public perception and professional market manipulation. The public's perception of the product itself often has little to do with reality but how well you've manipulated them into believing you add value to a (sometimes non-existent) void. And when you buy a product you can't see the organizational bickering between product/service divisions and executives - you don't see the sometimes horrendous failure rate because QA has hopefully pulled them off the line before they reach stores. Businesses don't need to open the kimono for all to see how, despite being somewhat dysfunctional and disorganized, they can still churn out a product. Businesses are made up of people, like governments, and so there are many parallels. whereas the power a consumer has with his dollar is generally a lot stronger In principal, yes. Though when we examine consumer choice let's look at, say, the mobile industry - despite starting with many different platforms and manufacturers, the market has naturally gravitated towards two primary platform choices and two primary hardware manufacturers. Humans are quite good at condensing complex options into binary choices.

bko 11y ago

I don't think what makes companies like Google, Facebook and Apple run better than most public entities has to do with scale or administration. Private businesses have all the same challenges with building an empire and expanding scale and scope of what they do. The difference is that they have to do this or cease to be. It's a lot easier to push a private entity to the point of irrelevancy when it falls out of favor with its users. Unfortunately, we don't have that same power with governments. Sure, you can vote but the system is designed to greatly benefit those already in power and skirt direct responsibility, whereas the power a consumer has with his dollar is generally a lot stronger. Peter Thiel explains it well when talking about the DMV: > Consider a political analogue using this framework. Say you have to go to the DMV to get your drivers license. In some sense, you, as a voter, control the government, and the DMV is a part of the government. Voters elect government people. Those people appoint other people. Presumably you had some indirect control on who becomes the head DMV bureaucrat. > But that head bureaucrat isn’t who you talk to after you wait in line. You have to talk to the people in possession: the window clerks and managers who actually run the DMV. They are the people who possess the ability to help you or not. You can tell them they suck. You can remind them that, under the theory of representative government, you are their boss. But that may not work very well. There is a misalignment between control and possession. It may not be a catastrophic one, but it is representative. Misalignment often happens when dealing with bureaucrats in government or, say, senior managers in the business world. [0] https://gist.github.com/harperreed/3201887 https://gist.github.com/harperreed/3201887

icanhackit 11y ago
The difference is that they have to do this or cease to be. Right, I understand the principal. Though I'd argue that it's not that black and white - the market is not a natural force like the waves in an ocean. Companies seek initial investment for growth, which can boil down to how strong your PowerPoint or people skills are, not on the strength of your ability to produce a decent product or service. The strength of your shares are often tied to public perception and professional market manipulation. The public's perception of the product itself often has little to do with reality but how well you've manipulated them into believing you add value to a (sometimes non-existent) void. And when you buy a product you can't see the organizational bickering between product/service divisions and executives - you don't see the sometimes horrendous failure rate because QA has hopefully pulled them off the line before they reach stores. Businesses don't need to open the kimono for all to see how, despite being somewhat dysfunctional and disorganized, they can still churn out a product. Businesses are made up of people, like governments, and so there are many parallels. whereas the power a consumer has with his dollar is generally a lot stronger In principal, yes. Though when we examine consumer choice let's look at, say, the mobile industry - despite starting with many different platforms and manufacturers, the market has naturally gravitated towards two primary platform choices and two primary hardware manufacturers. Humans are quite good at condensing complex options into binary choices.