4 ms·

There's a weird sort of fear of potential corporate dystopias that just ignores all the actual government dystopias that have existed throughout history. Plenty

by mzw_mzw 10y ago

There's a weird sort of fear of potential corporate dystopias that just ignores all the actual government dystopias that have existed throughout history. Plenty of government colonies were dictatorships, fiefdoms, attempts at building bizarre and broken societies. Many people reading this live in nations that originated in exactly that fashion.

kybernetikos 10y ago
> ignores all the actual government dystopias that have existed throughout history I think my fear of potential corporate dystopias is informed by my knowledge of actual government dystopias.
lmm 10y ago
There have pretty bad corporate dystopias in history too. The East India companies, Belgian Congo etc. Many nations with dystopian origins are fine now, sure, but there was a lot of suffering along the way; I don't think it's unreasonable to want to prevent that.
- mzw_mzw 10y ago
  The point is that there have been plenty of purely governmental dystopias -- far more than there have been even pseudo-corporate ones like the ones you describe -- but we don't have people fretting about how we shouldn't have the government run Mars colonization due to that.
  - lmm 10y ago
    Dystopian colonies run by national governments yes. Dystopian colonies run by democracies of which the colonists were citizens no.
    - mzw_mzw 10y ago
      Weren't Algerians citizens of France? Anyway, if we're no-true-Scotsmaning here, there also aren't any examples of dystopian colonies run by "corporations" that weren't joined at the hip with a national government.
      - lmm 10y ago
        > Weren't Algerians citizens of France? I'm not ever so familiar with that history, but a quick look at the wiki suggests very much not; some of the elites were (and, at certain periods, the non-muslim population), but never the regular population, and indeed this was a major point of contention leading up to the war. > Anyway, if we're no-true-Scotsmaning here, there also aren't any examples of dystopian colonies run by "corporations" that weren't joined at the hip with a national government. Musk is explicitly talking about a "public-private partnership". I think any project on the scale of Mars colonization is necessarily going to be intimately entangled with one or more governments.

by mzw_mzw 10y ago

kybernetikos 10y ago

> ignores all the actual government dystopias that have existed throughout history I think my fear of potential corporate dystopias is informed by my knowledge of actual government dystopias.

lmm 10y ago

There have pretty bad corporate dystopias in history too. The East India companies, Belgian Congo etc. Many nations with dystopian origins are fine now, sure, but there was a lot of suffering along the way; I don't think it's unreasonable to want to prevent that.

mzw_mzw 10y ago
The point is that there have been plenty of purely governmental dystopias -- far more than there have been even pseudo-corporate ones like the ones you describe -- but we don't have people fretting about how we shouldn't have the government run Mars colonization due to that.
- lmm 10y ago
  Dystopian colonies run by national governments yes. Dystopian colonies run by democracies of which the colonists were citizens no.
  - mzw_mzw 10y ago
    Weren't Algerians citizens of France? Anyway, if we're no-true-Scotsmaning here, there also aren't any examples of dystopian colonies run by "corporations" that weren't joined at the hip with a national government.
    - lmm 10y ago
      > Weren't Algerians citizens of France? I'm not ever so familiar with that history, but a quick look at the wiki suggests very much not; some of the elites were (and, at certain periods, the non-muslim population), but never the regular population, and indeed this was a major point of contention leading up to the war. > Anyway, if we're no-true-Scotsmaning here, there also aren't any examples of dystopian colonies run by "corporations" that weren't joined at the hip with a national government. Musk is explicitly talking about a "public-private partnership". I think any project on the scale of Mars colonization is necessarily going to be intimately entangled with one or more governments.