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This is fine in theory, with a big caveat. Our lives are increasingly dominated by big entities, and the political ones are often small fish compared to giant

This is fine in theory, with a big caveat. Our lives are increasingly dominated by big entities, and the political ones are often small fish compared to giant international corporations that can play smaller political entities off against each other (example: Amazon headquarters). The idea of limiting the size of political entities has merit, but it will backfire unless you also limit the size of economic entities. (And you need to do this first or possibly somehow simultaneously, because once you reduced the size of political entities, it may no longer be possible to limit the size of the economic entities.)

golergka 8y ago
This argument has solid logic, but I don't agree with underlying view of the world. The governments of the world can, and do force tech companies to do whatever they want in terms of privacy, security and other stuff. GDPR and Article 13, Net Neutrality, censorship and privacy issues in Russia and China... The only pushback I've seen by corporations is by PR and lobbying, and in the end, politicians seem to do whatever they want. Yes, company may be even wealthier than the government - but as long as government has monopoly on violence and can enforce it laws, corporations would only be comparable to banana republics and african failed states.
- toyg 8y ago
  What you list were all continent-sized efforts. Look at what happened when people tried to introduce Linux in the public sector in early 2000s at regional level - Microsoft promptly bought up anyone who could be bought, country by country, with discounts and (likely) bribes.
AnthonyMouse 8y ago
It's really the opposite. These large entities are created by centralized governments. If you have a small business that only operates in New York, they don't care what the law in California is, it doesn't affect them. Walmart and Amazon care, because it does. And what they want is for the law to be the same everywhere, and for that law to be the one that benefits them. So they get that law passed by the central government. Then they take over everywhere because a) all the laws are the same, so there is no opportunity for a local business to carve out a local niche, b) the laws being the same increases economies of scale and lowers compliance costs for huge companies that operate everywhere but has no advantage for companies that only operate locally, so it increases the scale advantage of being large, and c) larger entities are the ones large enough to have a voice in the central government, whereas local entities have a stronger voice in local governments, so the laws that do get passed centrally are the ones that benefit the large players over the smaller ones. We also have really bad central policies like the federal tax laws that make it so that when companies return profits to shareholders they pay heavy taxes but companies that retain the profits or use them to buy other companies do not, which naturally promotes mergers and consolidation and hoarding cash which then becomes a lobbying piggybank for huge companies. So your theory is that we need a large government to rein in large entities. But the large government is already owned by the large entities. It isn't reining them in, and it won't. But the smaller governments could do so locally if they weren't being preempted at the federal level -- good luck being a huge conglomerate when every state is passing laws to give their local businesses a different advantage over you.
- notahacker 8y ago
  The largest entities are multinationals operating on multiple continents, so it's pretty clear that regulations being passed at federal level isn't the primary source of their economies of scale. Sure, companies can use regulatory harmonization to their advantage, but they can also use tax and labour law competition between localities to their advantage.
  - AnthonyMouse 8y ago
    > The largest entities are multinationals operating on multiple continents, so it's pretty clear that regulations being passed at federal level isn't the primary source of their economies of scale. First, it still can be. If the US has one set of laws and the EU has another set, a conglomerate has two sets of laws to navigate. That is still much easier for them than having dozens in each place. Second, companies do their "harmonization" game with treaties as well, which of course only works by having a sufficiently powerful central government that can be controlled to sign onto such treaties and use their power to get other governments to do the same, using many of the same problematic shenanigans that happen at the federal level to create bad federal laws. > Sure, companies can use regulatory harmonization to their advantage, but they can also use tax and labour law competition between localities to their advantage. But that has nothing to do with entity size, and in fact is the opposite. If one state has advantageous laws then local companies there have an advantage over companies of any size that operate elsewhere.
    - notahacker 8y ago
      > But that has nothing to do with entity size, and in fact is the opposite. If one state has advantageous laws then local companies there have an advantage over companies of any size that operate elsewhere. Meanwhile, in the real world, tax havens are tiny jurisdictions for very good and well-understood reasons and the companies operating out of them are not in any meaningful sense "local", and the downward pressure on workers' rights is much stronger when multinationals can credibly threaten to relocate to one of several other jurisidictions with relevant manufacturing industries if new labour laws are passed locally rather than by a large trading bloc. And navigating 100 sets of copyright regulations rather than two is a challenge for a startup but something Amazon has ample resources to do where there's sufficient money in it to be worth bothering. Local regulatory innovation gives us a lot more Google Bermudas and goods exported from Special Economic Zones designed specifically to privilege their patron corporations than local search engines and consumer electronics industries.
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]

golergka 8y ago

This argument has solid logic, but I don't agree with underlying view of the world. The governments of the world can, and do force tech companies to do whatever they want in terms of privacy, security and other stuff. GDPR and Article 13, Net Neutrality, censorship and privacy issues in Russia and China... The only pushback I've seen by corporations is by PR and lobbying, and in the end, politicians seem to do whatever they want. Yes, company may be even wealthier than the government - but as long as government has monopoly on violence and can enforce it laws, corporations would only be comparable to banana republics and african failed states.

toyg 8y ago
What you list were all continent-sized efforts. Look at what happened when people tried to introduce Linux in the public sector in early 2000s at regional level - Microsoft promptly bought up anyone who could be bought, country by country, with discounts and (likely) bribes.

AnthonyMouse 8y ago

It's really the opposite. These large entities are created by centralized governments. If you have a small business that only operates in New York, they don't care what the law in California is, it doesn't affect them. Walmart and Amazon care, because it does. And what they want is for the law to be the same everywhere, and for that law to be the one that benefits them. So they get that law passed by the central government. Then they take over everywhere because a) all the laws are the same, so there is no opportunity for a local business to carve out a local niche, b) the laws being the same increases economies of scale and lowers compliance costs for huge companies that operate everywhere but has no advantage for companies that only operate locally, so it increases the scale advantage of being large, and c) larger entities are the ones large enough to have a voice in the central government, whereas local entities have a stronger voice in local governments, so the laws that do get passed centrally are the ones that benefit the large players over the smaller ones. We also have really bad central policies like the federal tax laws that make it so that when companies return profits to shareholders they pay heavy taxes but companies that retain the profits or use them to buy other companies do not, which naturally promotes mergers and consolidation and hoarding cash which then becomes a lobbying piggybank for huge companies. So your theory is that we need a large government to rein in large entities. But the large government is already owned by the large entities. It isn't reining them in, and it won't. But the smaller governments could do so locally if they weren't being preempted at the federal level -- good luck being a huge conglomerate when every state is passing laws to give their local businesses a different advantage over you.

notahacker 8y ago
The largest entities are multinationals operating on multiple continents, so it's pretty clear that regulations being passed at federal level isn't the primary source of their economies of scale. Sure, companies can use regulatory harmonization to their advantage, but they can also use tax and labour law competition between localities to their advantage.
- AnthonyMouse 8y ago
  > The largest entities are multinationals operating on multiple continents, so it's pretty clear that regulations being passed at federal level isn't the primary source of their economies of scale. First, it still can be. If the US has one set of laws and the EU has another set, a conglomerate has two sets of laws to navigate. That is still much easier for them than having dozens in each place. Second, companies do their "harmonization" game with treaties as well, which of course only works by having a sufficiently powerful central government that can be controlled to sign onto such treaties and use their power to get other governments to do the same, using many of the same problematic shenanigans that happen at the federal level to create bad federal laws. > Sure, companies can use regulatory harmonization to their advantage, but they can also use tax and labour law competition between localities to their advantage. But that has nothing to do with entity size, and in fact is the opposite. If one state has advantageous laws then local companies there have an advantage over companies of any size that operate elsewhere.
  - notahacker 8y ago
    > But that has nothing to do with entity size, and in fact is the opposite. If one state has advantageous laws then local companies there have an advantage over companies of any size that operate elsewhere. Meanwhile, in the real world, tax havens are tiny jurisdictions for very good and well-understood reasons and the companies operating out of them are not in any meaningful sense "local", and the downward pressure on workers' rights is much stronger when multinationals can credibly threaten to relocate to one of several other jurisidictions with relevant manufacturing industries if new labour laws are passed locally rather than by a large trading bloc. And navigating 100 sets of copyright regulations rather than two is a challenge for a startup but something Amazon has ample resources to do where there's sufficient money in it to be worth bothering. Local regulatory innovation gives us a lot more Google Bermudas and goods exported from Special Economic Zones designed specifically to privilege their patron corporations than local search engines and consumer electronics industries.

deleted 8y ago

[deleted]