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Because money is power, corporations are not democratic, and putting so much power in the hands of one person or a handful of people is dangerous to society. I

Because money is power, corporations are not democratic, and putting so much power in the hands of one person or a handful of people is dangerous to society. I would also refer you to the entire history of US antitrust law, which will be hard for anyone to summarize in a comment. The whole field of competition law is a question of how to balance the rights of those running a business with the rights of those affected by the business. Often those rights conflict, and there is no way for the law to be "neutral", it has to take a position on how to strike the right balance. I don't have an answer for how to determine when a corporation is too large, it's a very difficult question that I am not qualified to answer. As for who determines that, I think a democratic government should decide. I disagree with how the current US government makes these decisions, but I still think it is the right organization for the job.

gher-shyu3i 6y ago
> corporations are not democratic, and putting so much power in the hands of one person or a handful of people is dangerous to society. Citation needed. Democracy is not a sufficient nor even necessary requirement for prosperity or "good" in general.
- burkaman 6y ago
  Not really possible to give you a citation, it's an opinion, or a philosophy. If you have a different idea of an ideal society, we're not going to cite our way to an agreement.
  - gher-shyu3i 6y ago
    If you're going to dictate an opinion over an entire social structure, then it better be proven to work. My idea of an ideal society has already been proven to work in the past (look at the Islamic Golden Age). However, many of those in power today won't allow it to happen since it is against their interests.
    - burkaman 6y ago
      I'm sorry, I don't understand what you mean by "proven to work". Give me any society in the history of the world, and I'll give you a moral framework that makes that society ideal. There is no right answer, there is no reference society we can use as a baseline. Do you want me to cite some philosophers that try to justify the value of democracy? > However, many of those in power today won't allow it to happen since it is against their interests. Is this bad? Can you prove it? The idea that the few shouldn't rule over the many without their consent is a political opinion.
      - gher-shyu3i 6y ago
        The modern West thinks that their version of democracy is the only way to success or prosperity, conveniently ignoring what it took them to get there. I read an interesting article that was making the argument that it's because the modern West is already prosperous that they have the luxury to run their nations under their version of democracy, not that democracy caused them to become that way. The end goal is to have a functioning, stable, and just society. Unless we're willing to stick to rules that are proven to work, we're going to keep fumbling and wondering why things are the way they are. I bring up the Islamic Golden Age because Islam places a set of rules which dictate things like government and finance, basically red lines that should not be broken. However, everything within those lines are up to society to decide as it sees fit based on the times. I don't want to say that Islam is "democractic" because that would give the wrong impression that it is fully in line with the West's current practices. It isn't. However, it has a concept known as "Shura", a form of consultation if you will, that allows society to determine how things are run within the boundaries I mentioned, even including the ruler (but not in the free for all manner how elections are run in the West). It's more nuanced, and it's been proven to work. You can cite philosophers, and I can also cite philosophers that oppose democracy (again in the Western sense). It won't get anywhere, it's all hypothetical. What I did do is show you a system that has been historically proven to work. Today's system is a fumbling mess and we keep crying about it.
        burkaman 6y ago
        I guess I'm stuck on the phrase "just society". Your position, which is perfectly reasonable, is that a stable society that achieves economic, scientific, and cultural prosperity is a good society. Some people value having an equal voice in their government above all of those things. It is not just posturing, it is a genuine belief sincerely held by many people. They would consider the Islamic Golden Age to be an unjust society. Other people sincerely believe that the current system in America is working, by their metrics. They don't want anything to change. Some people would rather die than live in a society where they can't practice their religion, some people think any religion is incompatible with a just society, some people think society can't be considered just until everyone follows their religion. Since there is no such thing as objective justice, there is no way to "prove" that any of these positions work. They work if you think they work.
  - woofie11 6y ago
    Perhaps. Democracy is the worst form of government, except for all the others. I'm a firm believer in continuing to innovate and improve governance. I don't think it's just an abstract philosophical argument. These things can be modeled with game theory (cite: The Dictator's Handbook). There are opinions and philosophies about evolution, vaccines, and lots of other things, but at the end of the day, those can be resolved through rational discourse. I'd like my government to look out for my interests. I'd like it to be competent and not corrupt. There are lots of ideas for how to get there, and I'm really not comfortable with the imperialism of democracy. China had good ideas with civil service exams, which select for competence. Aristotle and Confucius had good ideas around moral philosophy of rulers. Marx had some nice ideas too. They didn't play out as well in practice as capitalist democracy, but that doesn't mean we should toss up our hands, give up, and quit trying. Especially now that we have tools for corrupting democracy like never before, and conversely, ways to model governance like never before.
    - burkaman 6y ago
      A discussion about vaccines can be resolved through rational discourse only if everyone agrees that diseases are bad for you. If I think disease is good, you can't convince me that vaccines are good for society, even if we agree on their effects. That's a contrived example, but this kind of disagreement is very common in discussions about government and society. If you believe that individual choice is important and all humans are born with equal rights, and I believe that individual choice is unimportant and some humans are born superior to others, we are never going to agree on an ideal form of government. We can have full agreement on the facts and full disagreement on what we consider to be a "good" outcome. You mentioned game theory, but you can't design one model that will satisfy one person who wants to maximize outputs for all players, one person who wants to weight players in different castes differently, and one person who wants to set a hard cap on all players because too much material comfort leads us away from God.
      - gher-shyu3i 6y ago
        The solution is to look at systems that have been proven to work. I brought up the Islamic Golden Age in this thread. It doesn't have the nonsense of putting a hard cap on anyone's wealth. It actually encourages people to work and gather wealth morally, and spend it correctly. The best of both worlds so to speak.
SllX 6y ago
You’re going to have to try harder than this. Money is a form of power, it is not equivalent to power. Amazon is valued at $1.6T and this is a calculation that directly correlates to how much individual shares of Amazon. Shares can be sold for money, but this decreases the share of power the shareholder has by the exact amount of shares they sold to the buyer, which increases their shares and power over the company. The act of buying and selling shares affects the stock price which can increase or decrease the market valuation of Amazon. If Amazon were a lone behemoth sitting on top of the stock market and second place wasn’t even close, I think you would have a stronger case. Checking literally thirty seconds ago, Amazon isn’t sitting up there all by its lonesome, it is the bronze medal with Apple and Microsoft sitting above it, Apple up above the $2T barrier, and Google lagging pretty closely behind at 1.3T. Now these market valuations will be a bit different tomorrow, or next week, or next month, but none of this is literal money in the bank. Money in the bank comes from the products and services these companies sell. They are also both cooperators and competitors with each other and companies like Facebook ($761B), Walmart ($395B I think it was) and Adobe ($232B). The power they can leverage from these assets is immense, but it is in competition with other motivated actors who are throwing more actual cash around. If we do nothing, it is likely there will be more trillion dollar companies this decade than the ones we are discussing now, some of those will be in different market sectors altogether, and some of those will be competitors, and some of those will be semi-competitors. Companies with far less cash than this already lobby for their interests in places like the Capitol, and the amount of money they’re using to successfully (and unsuccessfully) lobby is measured in the low millions, not the billions, and certainly not the trillions. So what exactly is the problem that reducing the size of these companies valuation and theoretical power supposed to solve? How does this benefit society? Is society being harmed by Amazon at $1.7T or Apple at $2.2B? Is the problem their size or their practices? Break this down. It’s easy to say “no company should be this size”, it’s a lot harder to say why, and I am not convinced yet. There’s plenty of people in the PRC with billions, and that hasn’t stopped the PRC from soliciting them for “voluntary” contributions, so maybe lots of money < lots of guns and a big Army in the overall economy of power.
- burkaman 6y ago
  I'm not trying to convince you, I just wanted to answer your question. I don't think it's possible to convince you in the space of one comment, and if it is, I'm not the one to do it. This is a centuries-old argument with absolutely no expert consensus that seems to get more difficult the more you study the issue. If you want an easy to read modern political argument you can read Break Em' Up by Zephyr Teachout. If you want a more academic approach I would look up the syllabus of an antitrust course and read some court cases, but different syllabi will probably give you wildly different conclusions. Supreme Court cases from a couple decades apart will give you different conclusions. As I said earlier, there is no right answer, it's about balancing inherently conflicting rights and deciding where to draw the line.
DickingAround 6y ago
I think the problem is that it's not obvious why getting super big is bad. Anti-trust is a law around abuse of customers by cornering a market. But what if they haven't abused customers? What if they treat customers really well and otherwise provide a lot of value? Why stop them from becoming that big? (It is a big company, but I also appreciate being able to order on-demand compute, or getting like a hundred million things in under a day delivered to my door)
- burkaman 6y ago
  I guess it's similar to arguing against a benevolent dictatorship. And I don't mean that to be snide, I think if I met someone living under a truly benevolent dictator I would have a very hard time explaining to them why I think it's a bad and dangerous form of government.
  - noisy_boy 6y ago
    For one, if you don't like something, you don't get to air your displeasure, find common ground with others who feel the same and then band together to do something about it, say, vote out the people who are the reason for it. Benevolent dictatorships tend to bare their teeth once the spotlight of scrutiny hits them.
    - AlexandrB 6y ago
      The parallels to Amazon's response to unionization efforts are uncanny.
- Ericson2314 6y ago
  https://scholarship.law.upenn.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=2987&context=faculty_scholarship https://scholarship.law.upenn.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?articl... The consumer welfare principle post-dates anti-trust.
- telltruth 6y ago
  Imagine a $2T company. One day CEO decides that his company should stand for only Republican values, donate them handsomely, buy newspapers for them, start TV channels for them, only offer employment to republican leaning persons, introduce new laws through lobby... All of these is in fact legal. When a company becomes too big, a single person can control its resources towards hurting political system, general public good, tilt opinions and so on. You are then relying on this one person to knowingly or unknowingly not make a bad move. Most often, they will.

gher-shyu3i 6y ago

> corporations are not democratic, and putting so much power in the hands of one person or a handful of people is dangerous to society. Citation needed. Democracy is not a sufficient nor even necessary requirement for prosperity or "good" in general.

burkaman 6y ago
Not really possible to give you a citation, it's an opinion, or a philosophy. If you have a different idea of an ideal society, we're not going to cite our way to an agreement.
- gher-shyu3i 6y ago
  If you're going to dictate an opinion over an entire social structure, then it better be proven to work. My idea of an ideal society has already been proven to work in the past (look at the Islamic Golden Age). However, many of those in power today won't allow it to happen since it is against their interests.
  - burkaman 6y ago
    I'm sorry, I don't understand what you mean by "proven to work". Give me any society in the history of the world, and I'll give you a moral framework that makes that society ideal. There is no right answer, there is no reference society we can use as a baseline. Do you want me to cite some philosophers that try to justify the value of democracy? > However, many of those in power today won't allow it to happen since it is against their interests. Is this bad? Can you prove it? The idea that the few shouldn't rule over the many without their consent is a political opinion.
    - gher-shyu3i 6y ago
      The modern West thinks that their version of democracy is the only way to success or prosperity, conveniently ignoring what it took them to get there. I read an interesting article that was making the argument that it's because the modern West is already prosperous that they have the luxury to run their nations under their version of democracy, not that democracy caused them to become that way. The end goal is to have a functioning, stable, and just society. Unless we're willing to stick to rules that are proven to work, we're going to keep fumbling and wondering why things are the way they are. I bring up the Islamic Golden Age because Islam places a set of rules which dictate things like government and finance, basically red lines that should not be broken. However, everything within those lines are up to society to decide as it sees fit based on the times. I don't want to say that Islam is "democractic" because that would give the wrong impression that it is fully in line with the West's current practices. It isn't. However, it has a concept known as "Shura", a form of consultation if you will, that allows society to determine how things are run within the boundaries I mentioned, even including the ruler (but not in the free for all manner how elections are run in the West). It's more nuanced, and it's been proven to work. You can cite philosophers, and I can also cite philosophers that oppose democracy (again in the Western sense). It won't get anywhere, it's all hypothetical. What I did do is show you a system that has been historically proven to work. Today's system is a fumbling mess and we keep crying about it.
      - burkaman 6y ago
        I guess I'm stuck on the phrase "just society". Your position, which is perfectly reasonable, is that a stable society that achieves economic, scientific, and cultural prosperity is a good society. Some people value having an equal voice in their government above all of those things. It is not just posturing, it is a genuine belief sincerely held by many people. They would consider the Islamic Golden Age to be an unjust society. Other people sincerely believe that the current system in America is working, by their metrics. They don't want anything to change. Some people would rather die than live in a society where they can't practice their religion, some people think any religion is incompatible with a just society, some people think society can't be considered just until everyone follows their religion. Since there is no such thing as objective justice, there is no way to "prove" that any of these positions work. They work if you think they work.
- woofie11 6y ago
  Perhaps. Democracy is the worst form of government, except for all the others. I'm a firm believer in continuing to innovate and improve governance. I don't think it's just an abstract philosophical argument. These things can be modeled with game theory (cite: The Dictator's Handbook). There are opinions and philosophies about evolution, vaccines, and lots of other things, but at the end of the day, those can be resolved through rational discourse. I'd like my government to look out for my interests. I'd like it to be competent and not corrupt. There are lots of ideas for how to get there, and I'm really not comfortable with the imperialism of democracy. China had good ideas with civil service exams, which select for competence. Aristotle and Confucius had good ideas around moral philosophy of rulers. Marx had some nice ideas too. They didn't play out as well in practice as capitalist democracy, but that doesn't mean we should toss up our hands, give up, and quit trying. Especially now that we have tools for corrupting democracy like never before, and conversely, ways to model governance like never before.
  - burkaman 6y ago
    A discussion about vaccines can be resolved through rational discourse only if everyone agrees that diseases are bad for you. If I think disease is good, you can't convince me that vaccines are good for society, even if we agree on their effects. That's a contrived example, but this kind of disagreement is very common in discussions about government and society. If you believe that individual choice is important and all humans are born with equal rights, and I believe that individual choice is unimportant and some humans are born superior to others, we are never going to agree on an ideal form of government. We can have full agreement on the facts and full disagreement on what we consider to be a "good" outcome. You mentioned game theory, but you can't design one model that will satisfy one person who wants to maximize outputs for all players, one person who wants to weight players in different castes differently, and one person who wants to set a hard cap on all players because too much material comfort leads us away from God.
    - gher-shyu3i 6y ago
      The solution is to look at systems that have been proven to work. I brought up the Islamic Golden Age in this thread. It doesn't have the nonsense of putting a hard cap on anyone's wealth. It actually encourages people to work and gather wealth morally, and spend it correctly. The best of both worlds so to speak.

SllX 6y ago

You’re going to have to try harder than this. Money is a form of power, it is not equivalent to power. Amazon is valued at $1.6T and this is a calculation that directly correlates to how much individual shares of Amazon. Shares can be sold for money, but this decreases the share of power the shareholder has by the exact amount of shares they sold to the buyer, which increases their shares and power over the company. The act of buying and selling shares affects the stock price which can increase or decrease the market valuation of Amazon. If Amazon were a lone behemoth sitting on top of the stock market and second place wasn’t even close, I think you would have a stronger case. Checking literally thirty seconds ago, Amazon isn’t sitting up there all by its lonesome, it is the bronze medal with Apple and Microsoft sitting above it, Apple up above the $2T barrier, and Google lagging pretty closely behind at 1.3T. Now these market valuations will be a bit different tomorrow, or next week, or next month, but none of this is literal money in the bank. Money in the bank comes from the products and services these companies sell. They are also both cooperators and competitors with each other and companies like Facebook ($761B), Walmart ($395B I think it was) and Adobe ($232B). The power they can leverage from these assets is immense, but it is in competition with other motivated actors who are throwing more actual cash around. If we do nothing, it is likely there will be more trillion dollar companies this decade than the ones we are discussing now, some of those will be in different market sectors altogether, and some of those will be competitors, and some of those will be semi-competitors. Companies with far less cash than this already lobby for their interests in places like the Capitol, and the amount of money they’re using to successfully (and unsuccessfully) lobby is measured in the low millions, not the billions, and certainly not the trillions. So what exactly is the problem that reducing the size of these companies valuation and theoretical power supposed to solve? How does this benefit society? Is society being harmed by Amazon at $1.7T or Apple at $2.2B? Is the problem their size or their practices? Break this down. It’s easy to say “no company should be this size”, it’s a lot harder to say why, and I am not convinced yet. There’s plenty of people in the PRC with billions, and that hasn’t stopped the PRC from soliciting them for “voluntary” contributions, so maybe lots of money < lots of guns and a big Army in the overall economy of power.

burkaman 6y ago
I'm not trying to convince you, I just wanted to answer your question. I don't think it's possible to convince you in the space of one comment, and if it is, I'm not the one to do it. This is a centuries-old argument with absolutely no expert consensus that seems to get more difficult the more you study the issue. If you want an easy to read modern political argument you can read Break Em' Up by Zephyr Teachout. If you want a more academic approach I would look up the syllabus of an antitrust course and read some court cases, but different syllabi will probably give you wildly different conclusions. Supreme Court cases from a couple decades apart will give you different conclusions. As I said earlier, there is no right answer, it's about balancing inherently conflicting rights and deciding where to draw the line.

DickingAround 6y ago

I think the problem is that it's not obvious why getting super big is bad. Anti-trust is a law around abuse of customers by cornering a market. But what if they haven't abused customers? What if they treat customers really well and otherwise provide a lot of value? Why stop them from becoming that big? (It is a big company, but I also appreciate being able to order on-demand compute, or getting like a hundred million things in under a day delivered to my door)

burkaman 6y ago
I guess it's similar to arguing against a benevolent dictatorship. And I don't mean that to be snide, I think if I met someone living under a truly benevolent dictator I would have a very hard time explaining to them why I think it's a bad and dangerous form of government.
- noisy_boy 6y ago
  For one, if you don't like something, you don't get to air your displeasure, find common ground with others who feel the same and then band together to do something about it, say, vote out the people who are the reason for it. Benevolent dictatorships tend to bare their teeth once the spotlight of scrutiny hits them.
  - AlexandrB 6y ago
    The parallels to Amazon's response to unionization efforts are uncanny.
Ericson2314 6y ago
https://scholarship.law.upenn.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=2987&context=faculty_scholarship https://scholarship.law.upenn.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?articl... The consumer welfare principle post-dates anti-trust.
telltruth 6y ago
Imagine a $2T company. One day CEO decides that his company should stand for only Republican values, donate them handsomely, buy newspapers for them, start TV channels for them, only offer employment to republican leaning persons, introduce new laws through lobby... All of these is in fact legal. When a company becomes too big, a single person can control its resources towards hurting political system, general public good, tilt opinions and so on. You are then relying on this one person to knowingly or unknowingly not make a bad move. Most often, they will.