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Tech giants have as much money and influence as nations

• mark_l_watson 7y ago
  This article was an interesting read, but I think it got the basics incorrect. Financial elites and corporations increasingly control governments in clever and effective ways: Few corporations control almost all news media, fragment population using news media to make (to use the USA as an example) Democrat’s fear and distrust republicans and vice versa, turn over public assets to corporations at bargain basement prices, etc. A bit off topic but: even though I am not a particularly strong Go and Chess player, I really appreciate reading through good games. Looking at the way elites have slowly taken over power since the end of the civil war (again using the USA as an example), with a slow and well played game, I must say “well played Sirs and Madames, well played.”
  • mtm7 7y ago
    This is interesting. Can you suggest any books or articles about the power climb?
    • mark_l_watson 7y ago
      Too many. As a liberal I still find conservatives Kevin D. Williams (The Smallest Minority, Independant Thinking in the Era of the Mob) and James Rikards (Currency Wars, Aftermath, etc.) to be interesting and useful. Then there is Thomas Piketty (Capital in the 21st Century), Douglas Rushkoff (Throwing Rocks at the Google Bus). Anyway, these few were enjoyably, but a warning: I have loaned books by the first two conservative authors to liberal friends and they didn’t like them, too far outside the bubble they like to live in. I like reading authors that have differing world views from myself. EDIT: The Devil’s Chessboard is also a good read, but parts of it were disturbing to me.
      • mtm7 7y ago
        Thanks — I'll give these a try! Each year, I try to read a handful of books that expand my world views, so these sound great. :)
• epicgiga 7y ago
  Problem is that states usually have constitutional safeguards that keep a safe balance of power between citizen and state. Not so with these companies. Step out of line and they can unperson you like that, and you can't vote on their leadership. And increasingly entire livelihoods and social existences are tied into them. This is why you're seeing states start to get so aggressive with them. The EU fining billions out of them on an ongoing basis. Dragging them before Congress. Etc. They're not only starting to rival them in power, they're starting to flex power over them -- playing a kingmaker role as they form the platforms on which elections are being won and lost. If the tech giants win, we lose. They've already shown willingness to coordinate with each other. The non-poaching agreements and the Alex Jones case. Our defences from power have always been the existence of multiple states (e.g. refugees) and democracy. They would be beholden to neither. Able to destroy social lives and livelihoods at the click of a button, with no defence and no safeguards. "Computer says no", to your life.
  • mhb 7y ago
    Problem is that states usually have constitutional safeguards that keep a safe balance of power between citizen and state. Not so with these companies. Step out of line and they can unperson you like that, and you can't vote on their leadership. And increasingly entire livelihoods and social existences are tied into them. The notional constitutional safeguards of states become eroded over time (n.b., interstate commerce, mass data collection) and the overreach of states is more potentially damaging to its citizens than getting locked out of a platform on which you built a business. Political power can be spent over and over. Dollars can only be spent once.
    • missingpint 7y ago
      Corporations give private citizens power they should not have over their neighbors in a democracy. HR can filter at mass, keeping people from work they enjoy. Advertising has social agency warping effects. And at scale we spend our time prioritizing paid speech. Policing valid speech at scale is how authoritarian states work. “This is how you view the problem, how you design the solution, and how you speak to people. Or you don’t get to have shelter & eat.” Sir, yes sir. “Profits (or some other ideological target) must go up this quarter!” Sir, yes sir. Not allowed to truly question what happens if AI that can schedule hair appointments isn’t developed. Computing/engineering effort we know is destined for the bin as hardware changes. Seems economical. That’s hardly a behavioral model for a free society. Nah sorry. We have friendly oligarchs, and looking at Google’s shifting culture and the Amazon warehouse situation that’s been going on for years... very superficially friendly. Political power is emotional. It fades generationally as people retire, or we could term limit officials. A big enough pile of dollars means you can generate more faster than you can spend what you need to in order to stay on top. Ownership is the root of political theory in America. And a smaller and smaller group really own anything. And the powers that be know that: they’ve read it in academia’s papers and philosophers notes. If the public took ownership of the manner of production (IMO themselves not factories) and stayed home for a week, politics would be shifting real fast. We keep looking at history to learn about us. Is it any shock we keep developing top down authoritarian structures when we’re casually fetishizing their previous existence? What was becomes hard to look beyond when continually referencing the material. Wonder what humanity could look like if future people read about past people living differently.
• deleted 7y ago
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• rusk 7y ago
  This made me laugh ... > “Many employees don’t like Apple Park [the company’s new headquarters] because it has very few private offices. ... nice one Jony ... design a brave and “beautiful” open plan workspace for a paranoiacally secretive organisation. Says it all really.
  • exBarrelSpoiler 7y ago
    And then leave a few years after that office building is opened. Solid exit.
  • culturestate 7y ago
    > ... nice one Jony ... design a brave and “beautiful” open plan workspace for a paranoiacally secretive organisation. I feel like it's worth pointing out that Steve Jobs was still running Apple when this building was designed. I don't work for Norman Foster so I have no way to know how much changed internally after he died, but I doubt the balance shifted too wildly given the logistical constraints of massive construction projects. As an aside - and I don't mean this in reference to office layouts - were I in charge of a global consumer products company that competes in multiple cutthroat markets, I'd want to foster a corporate culture of extreme openness and collaboration inside the walls but absolute silence outside. That's not exactly what Apple is today, obviously, but it's within the realm of possibility that it's their goal.
    • rusk 7y ago
      > I'd want a corporate culture of extreme openness and collaboration inside the walls but absolute silence outside Aspiration driven design it is so ... EDIT ... with no consideration for the practicalities of what it takes to achieve those aspirations.
    • dmitriid 7y ago
      > I'd want to foster a corporate culture of extreme openness and collaboration inside the walls Open space offices are entirely othogonal to this idea.
• deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
• AmericanChopper 7y ago
  I think it’s supposed to be a joke, but it’s still a bit contrived. The governance models of countries and companies are very different. Just about every company would end up being like some sort of socialist regime. No democracy, central planning. Perhaps you could argue they’re more like oligarchies or plutocracies (governed by capital).
  • arkitaip 7y ago
    And yet we think it's absolutely normal for companies to be run like oppressive regimes.
    • exBarrelSpoiler 7y ago
      Just how meritocratic is the selection of corporate leadership anyway?
    • Razengan 7y ago
      Should your employees take over any company you found?
      • Red_Leaves_Flyy 7y ago
        Should one person make life changing decisions for millions? Why do I even need to ask this?
        • cecja 7y ago
          So whats the difference to our so called democracy espcially if you look at the US you have one insane leader which runs basically rampage without real responsiblity. That's not isolated to america look at poland, russia even at some degree italy. The whole system is showing cracks at the moment and to be honest as tim cook said a dictatorship with the right person looks better to me than the mess we are in right now.
        • cameronbrown 7y ago
          Very few companies have millions of employees. Plenty of nations do.
• spectramax 7y ago
  Another way to think about this topic is that China's CEO is Xi Jingpin. There are a few distinctions between calling China a company and calling Apple a nation: - A nation uphelds the law whereas a company uses proxies (lobbying) to make laws - A nation has diplomatic rights, a company has to abide by export controls - A nation has a treasury, has control over interest rates and can prosecute violators, it ensures a level playing field. A company has equity and can fire employees, but has to maximize profits (shareholder interest) and eliminate/beat competition. - A nation has hard physical military and ability to go to war, a company has office security and HR - A nation can prosecute criminals, a company can layoff people. I don't think this analogy provides any interesting insight into Apple besides drawing loose connection between secrecy and censorship.
  • threatripper 7y ago
    Companies make internal rules that employees have to follow or be punished/fired. They have to comply with the laws where laws have to comply with the constitution and basic human rights. Diplomatic rights only go so far after you declare war. Most companies are in a constant state of economic war with their competitors. The nations of Europe gave away the control over their currency. Most nations can hardly win a war, especially a war against one of the superpowers. A company can also reassign people to the "retirement building". You could argue that most nations aren't truly nations. Which I would agree to.
  • xiler 7y ago
    I think the company-country analogy is stronger than you claim. > A nation uphelds the law whereas a company uses proxies (lobbying) to make laws Once companies can influence the government, any special abilities of the government (export controls, legal system, etc.) can, at least to some extent, be harnessed by high-net-worth individuals/companies [1]. [1] https://www.cambridge.org/core/services/aop-cambridge-core/content/view/62327F513959D0A304D4893B382B992B/S1537592714001595a.pdf/testing_theories_of_american_politics_elites_interest_groups_and_average_citizens.pdf https://www.cambridge.org/core/services/aop-cambridge-core/c...
  • elfexec 7y ago
    > Another way to think about this topic is that China's CEO is Xi Jingpin. He's more like the chairman. He sets the direction that he wants china to go in, others execute his plan. > There are a few distinctions between calling China a company and calling Apple a nation: Nobody is calling china a company and apple a nation. People are talking about money and influence. Apple certainly doesn't have the money and influence of China or the US. But it has more influence than most smaller or even midsized nations. - A nation has a treasury, has control over interest rates and can prosecute violators, Banking cartels/central banks like the Fed control interest rates. The treasury mints money and collects taxes. > - A nation has hard physical military and ability to go to war, a company has office security and HR So has companies. Companies have even fought wars against each other. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carnatic_Wars https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carnatic_Wars > - A nation can prosecute criminals, a company can layoff people. Governments prosecute criminals. Companies have been able to try, punish and enslave people.
• coder1001 7y ago
  Doesn't Apple need the secrecy to survive? Imagine Nokia getting hold of the specs of the original iPhone early before its release, how would the world be today?
  • tonyedgecombe 7y ago
    It's probably about customers as much as competitors. If you are launching a new device next month that is twice as fast as the current one for the same price then customers will hold back their purchases. See the Osborne effect for an extreme example[1]. They tend to be a bit more open when this isn't a concern, for example Apple TV or the new Mac Pro. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Osborne_effect https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Osborne_effect
  • IshKebab 7y ago
    Not really - industrial espionage is really rare. Google is much more open and their technology doesn't get stolen. Sure, product designs leak before their release, but that doesn't really matter much.
    • rapsey 7y ago
      That you know of. Just because it does not make the news does not mean it does not happen. Usually it is in neither parties interest to reveal such an event. I know of at least one such instance and the extreme lengths a Chinese competitor went to steal (not google).
  • distances 7y ago
    Nokia's woes were on software side, not hardware. Building a competitive software stack proved too slow an undertaking for a hardware company. It was Android in the end that ate Nokia's pie, not Apple.
    • deleted 7y ago
      [deleted]
    • rapsey 7y ago
• chrisseaton 7y ago
  I think the title here is missing some kind of punctuation.
  • ptcampbell 7y ago
    Agree. Overzealous HN title editing at the best of times.
• ncmncm 7y ago
  It is essentially the same at all corporations, always has been. Lenin was a great admirer of Ford Motor Company. His Soviet committees were copied directly from Ford. You could think of the SSRs as divisions, and satellite countries as wholly-owned subsidiaries.
  • pjc50 7y ago
    Conversely, Ford was its own colonial power, much like the United Fruit Company or Shell: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fordl%C3%A2ndia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fordl%C3%A2ndia Fordlândia had its own version of Prohibition, and its own little revolt about the cafeteria.
  • awb 7y ago
    I've overheard forms of this many times from C/VP-level execs facing internal debate: "We're not running a democracy here". It is interesting that we only see it in government. Most companies are dictatorships. Some might have a board of directors that is responsible for voting in it's own members, kind of like a tribal elders system. It's interesting to see these different forms of decision making producing different advantages and disadvantages.
    • wskinner 7y ago
      The difference is that the natural state of the corporation is to go extinct. Governments have so much inertia that it often takes a literal revolution to replace them. Bad externalities are the downside to dictatorships. The externalities of a corporation are much more limited, and there is more pressure to reduce them (from governments, other corporations, and their customers). Continuing the dictatorship metaphor, this pushes corporations to be more “benevolent”.
      • wrinkl3 7y ago
        Except for those that become "Too big to fail". Banks don't seem to dissolve naturally all that often.
    • 7y ago
• Hasknewbie 7y ago
  "Apple’s market valuation is roughly equal to the national net worth of Denmark (...). In all but name, this is a superpower" Denmark is a really nice country. Also, it is not a superpower.
  • ginko 7y ago
    It's also not true. Apples valuation is around $365 billion, Denmarks _GDP_ is around $370 billion per year. I'd argue a sovereign country's assets are essentially invaluable, but in Denmark's case there's the interesting historical fact that the US government offered to buy Greenland several times (and always being rebuffed by the Danes), so at least there's an estimate for the value of that island alone: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proposals_for_the_United_States_to_purchase_Greenland#Purchase_price_estimates_of_Greenland https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proposals_for_the_United_State... > If the United States wants it for the strategic value of its property, both on land and offshore, and to project military power, the answer is that a value of $500 billion is not overly rich EDIT: I got the numbers wrong. Apple Inc. is currently valued at over $1 trillion (I used Apple's total assets from their Wikipedia page) and they mention Denmark's net worth which is indeed in that ballpark. I'd still argue that you can't compare the valuation of a company to the net worth of a sovereign country.
    • jotm 7y ago
      Let's go by the price of land in Denmark. 25,000 Euros per hectare in 2009. That's for agricultural land. Greenland does not support agriculture, but it does have natural resources, and can have a good strategic value. So let's say it's 10,000 Euros per hectare, a good discount. It would cost 2.6 trillion Euros, or 2.9 trillion US Dollars. Everything has a price, I wonder if that would be acceptable for Denmark and under what conditions.
      • braythwayt 7y ago
        Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen called the idea of selling Greenland “absurd,” in public, which in the world of diplomacy is a sharp rebuke for President Trump mentioning the idea. The Danes went on to say, in a further humiliation on the world stage, that we are past the point in history of buying and selling lands and people, sending Trump off with a red card. Everything does not have a price, and even exploring the idea that the people of another nation’s protectorate can be traded like hockey cards will only lead to more embarrassment. p.s. If America wants Greenland, the easiest way would be to simply ask the people of Greenland, who have their own flag and government. https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2019/08/23/donald-trump-greenland-purchase-sovereignty-denmark-227859 https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2019/08/23/donald-tr... It’s a matter of speculation how they would feel about the prospect of being treated as America has treated Puerto Rico, but that would be their decision to make for themselves. In his century, Greenland is not a colony.
• yters 7y ago
  What is the big difference between nations and corporations?
• Proven 7y ago
  How could they compare Apple to a "liberal China"? That must be insulting to employees and users alike, but also everyone who appreciates capitalism. The writer should have their head examined.
• tomrod 7y ago
  So do several religions. As well as mafioso or cartels. I think of these groups as "states-in-waiting." Should their regional government grow too corrupt or too weak, they fill the void. [1] https://www.quora.com/What-is-the-net-worth-of-the-Catholic-Church https://www.quora.com/What-is-the-net-worth-of-the-Catholic-... [2] https://fox13now.com/2018/05/30/mormonleaks-lds-church-controls-billions-of-dollars-in-investment-funds/ https://fox13now.com/2018/05/30/mormonleaks-lds-church-contr... [3] https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/2660520/joaquin-el-chapo-guzman-mexican-drug-lord/ https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/2660520/joaquin-el-chapo-guzma...
  • bagacrap 7y ago
    To transition into something resembling a government would not be very on brand for Apple. If anything they seem likely to blast off into space and colonize Mars with all the cash they've mined and stockpiled here.
    • tomrod 7y ago
      And serve as the local authority there for at least awhile. It might follow something like this pattern, sans prior residents: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/East_India_Company https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/East_India_Company
    • xenospn 7y ago
      How would that benefit their bottom line?
      • ravenstine 7y ago
        By having a planet where only Apple products are available and the inhabitants are a part of their cargo cult, maybe? hah
      • tomrod 7y ago
        Taxation, typically.
    • BlueTemplar 7y ago
• isoskeles 7y ago
  This is only a problem if you think the state is the most important idea and institution that should exist.
  • throwlaplace 7y ago
    state as republic is absolutely the most important idea and institution that should exist in a world where there are no longer isolated communities.
• aj7 7y ago
  Does Apple have its own army? Can it?
• adaisadais 7y ago
  Just finished a wonderful(ly long) biography on Julius Caesar (Caesar: Politician and Statesman). Caesar was innovative in thinking of Rome as not just a city state but the beginnings of what would become an empire. Not an inherently new phenomena but one that has lasting influence to this day. In the same way our world is now flat. While there is much we do not understand we do know this: business (Due to the proliferation of the internet) knows no borders. And the goal of modern businesses that rely on scale is to do just that. So, look for businesses to become much more powerful than countries and to one day become greater than even the greatest of nations.
• olliej 7y ago
  As opposed to the Catholic Church? Oil companies? A number of retailers? Beating up tech companies specifically is getting irksome. There are many things wrong with our industry specifically, but beating them up over something true of many industries is <expletive of your choosing>.
  • BlueTemplar 7y ago
    They are being brought up more and more because they are starting to become as much if not more powerful than your examples?
    • olliej 7y ago
      but they aren't - there are few examples where laws are explicitly repealed to aid the tech industry, there a few cases where tech companies have be absolved of responsibility (or given drastically reduced fines) for their environment or societal damage.
      • BlueTemplar 7y ago
        Only because they haven't been around for long ?
• ksec 7y ago
  As an Apple Shareholder I would be furious if the part about Shows were only for 10 years and not for life are real. Apple News+, Apple Arcade are forgiving as they are only a few hundred million bet. Apple TV+ is a multi billions bet, with no short terms or long term goal or benefits.
• mbrodersen 7y ago
  Governments have a monopoly on violence, the ultimate source of influence. Tech giants don't. End of story.