9 ms·

I have a theory that as corporations get bigger, they become more like dysfunctional communist governments.

cbzbc 8y ago
Complete with five year plans and local versions of kremlinology.
dsr_ 8y ago
Look at how they are structured. Most corporations have a Council of Elders who advise the Glorious Chief. The Council can technically depose the Chief, but this is extremely rare. The Chief has a Central Executive Committee which is responsible for establishing and ordering policies. Politics is strictly limited to Committee members fighting among themselves and attempts to influence, bribe and convince the Committee members that certain plans should go forward at the expense of others. If the Council of Elders executes the Chief, it is usually a Committee member who they select to step up. Large Corporations grow by dominating other Corporations through economic warfare and forcing them into starvation, invading and absorbing them, or, most insidiously, subverting their Council Elders and launching a coup.
h4b4n3r0 8y ago
As a VP from Microsoft described it to me privately many years ago: “warm GULAG”.
gerbilly 8y ago
Think of it this way, large parts of our economy are under central planning because of the power of large corporations. For example Walmart, when they chose which company to buy lawnmowers from for example, they get to decide which lawnmower makers survive and which don't. By picking one winner and putting in a huge order at a huge discount, they can undercut every other manufacturer, effectively putting them out of business. I don't know about you, but I don't remember the election where I got to vote for who is in charge of Walmart, so it's very autocratic.
- AtlasBarfed 8y ago
  Cartel or monopoly is the general trend of the day. I believe that laissez faire economics leads toward cartel/monopoly rather than persistent decentralization, it's kind of chaos theory in action with strange attractors or local minima/maxima. Unless the fundamentals of the system are decentralized: farming/farmland, fisheries, mining, and other commodities.
AtlasBarfed 8y ago
I never understood why at super-large corporations they would centralize operations for critical stuff (infrastructure, etc) under monolithic organizations when they are large enough to create multiple competing organizations to provide the services: office space, servers, databases/software, laptops, etc. But then again no company really like competition unless the game is fixed in their favor, and neither does middle management.
- efitz 8y ago
  Because the legal construct of the corporation diffuses risk enough to make central control appealing. If the law did not allow incorporation, in other words if officers and directors and shareholders bore full liability for the business, we would see the end of gargantuan businesses like we have now.
commandlinefan 8y ago
I went back to do my master's degree after I had been working as a programmer for about 10 years, so I knew my way around corporate (dys)function by then. I had a professor who had spent his entire career in academia, but who had grown up under communist rule in (I believe) Czechoslovakia. He would often go on tangents about how horrible communist government was and give examples of their lunacy. I was struck that every example he gave was something I had actually seen happen in a corporate setting in my then ten years of employment. One example he gave was that the communist rulers would draft five-year plans, accomplish none of it, and then go back and change the wording of the plans to make it look like they had accomplished everything. I had literally been through that exact same dog-and-pony show at my job that day.
- erikpukinskis 8y ago
  Exactly, “communist” has just become a meme that means “dysfunctional” ish. People pretend to be experiencing communism even though almost no one is practicing it in the modern world. China is communist? Give me a break. The nice thing is no one remembers what communist actually means anymore. So someone will be able to come back and describe communism and people will be like “wow, this is interesting.”
erikpukinskis 8y ago
I don’t see what’s communistic about them? The employees don’t control the means of production. There’s rarely consensus. I don’t see them resembling modern communes, like kibbutzes or Berkeley co-ops. Seems more like a monarchy to me. Actually the thing they most resemble to me, in terms of operational stature, is the military.

Complete with five year plans and local versions of kremlinology.

dsr_ 8y ago

Look at how they are structured. Most corporations have a Council of Elders who advise the Glorious Chief. The Council can technically depose the Chief, but this is extremely rare. The Chief has a Central Executive Committee which is responsible for establishing and ordering policies. Politics is strictly limited to Committee members fighting among themselves and attempts to influence, bribe and convince the Committee members that certain plans should go forward at the expense of others. If the Council of Elders executes the Chief, it is usually a Committee member who they select to step up. Large Corporations grow by dominating other Corporations through economic warfare and forcing them into starvation, invading and absorbing them, or, most insidiously, subverting their Council Elders and launching a coup.

h4b4n3r0 8y ago

As a VP from Microsoft described it to me privately many years ago: “warm GULAG”.

gerbilly 8y ago

Think of it this way, large parts of our economy are under central planning because of the power of large corporations. For example Walmart, when they chose which company to buy lawnmowers from for example, they get to decide which lawnmower makers survive and which don't. By picking one winner and putting in a huge order at a huge discount, they can undercut every other manufacturer, effectively putting them out of business. I don't know about you, but I don't remember the election where I got to vote for who is in charge of Walmart, so it's very autocratic.

AtlasBarfed 8y ago
Cartel or monopoly is the general trend of the day. I believe that laissez faire economics leads toward cartel/monopoly rather than persistent decentralization, it's kind of chaos theory in action with strange attractors or local minima/maxima. Unless the fundamentals of the system are decentralized: farming/farmland, fisheries, mining, and other commodities.

AtlasBarfed 8y ago

I never understood why at super-large corporations they would centralize operations for critical stuff (infrastructure, etc) under monolithic organizations when they are large enough to create multiple competing organizations to provide the services: office space, servers, databases/software, laptops, etc. But then again no company really like competition unless the game is fixed in their favor, and neither does middle management.

efitz 8y ago
Because the legal construct of the corporation diffuses risk enough to make central control appealing. If the law did not allow incorporation, in other words if officers and directors and shareholders bore full liability for the business, we would see the end of gargantuan businesses like we have now.

commandlinefan 8y ago

I went back to do my master's degree after I had been working as a programmer for about 10 years, so I knew my way around corporate (dys)function by then. I had a professor who had spent his entire career in academia, but who had grown up under communist rule in (I believe) Czechoslovakia. He would often go on tangents about how horrible communist government was and give examples of their lunacy. I was struck that every example he gave was something I had actually seen happen in a corporate setting in my then ten years of employment. One example he gave was that the communist rulers would draft five-year plans, accomplish none of it, and then go back and change the wording of the plans to make it look like they had accomplished everything. I had literally been through that exact same dog-and-pony show at my job that day.

erikpukinskis 8y ago
Exactly, “communist” has just become a meme that means “dysfunctional” ish. People pretend to be experiencing communism even though almost no one is practicing it in the modern world. China is communist? Give me a break. The nice thing is no one remembers what communist actually means anymore. So someone will be able to come back and describe communism and people will be like “wow, this is interesting.”

erikpukinskis 8y ago

I don’t see what’s communistic about them? The employees don’t control the means of production. There’s rarely consensus. I don’t see them resembling modern communes, like kibbutzes or Berkeley co-ops. Seems more like a monarchy to me. Actually the thing they most resemble to me, in terms of operational stature, is the military.