24 ms·

agreed, the rise of the corporation as the most powerful institution (above the nation-state) in this new budding global civilization is a long time coming. on

by bsedlm 4y ago

agreed, the rise of the corporation as the most powerful institution (above the nation-state) in this new budding global civilization is a long time coming. on the other hand, this is how democracy dies. what structures (systems) exist to prevent apple (and other comparable corporations) from being an oppresive force against human persons? moreover, what incentives do they have?

kube-system 4y ago
Corporations definitely have a lot of power today, but nothing more than they've had in the past. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Company_rule_in_India https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Company_rule_in_India
scottyah 4y ago
To be fair, banks have been more powerful than a lot of nation-states for awhile, and religious entities before that.
- atlasunshrugged 4y ago
  The religious entities I get the argument but what banks have been more powerful than nation states?
  - bsedlm 4y ago
    the ones that only service other banks hence only people working in higher level banking are likely to have heard about. e.g. the bank for international settlements I only found out about this bank because the former president of the mexican central bank -- Mr. Carstens, left the central banking gig to go to that bank.
    - atlasunshrugged 4y ago
      From reading their Wikipedia quickly sounds like BIS has a similar function to say the IMF when it comes to financial system stability. I do agree these sorts of organizations exert huge amounts of influence, especially for smaller countries that are dependent on loans and outside financing, but I'm not sure I agree they are more powerful than a nation itself. A nation can (theoretically) decide to opt out from these systems and operate independently, or can play different parties funded by nations (because in the end they all are working for someone's agenda) off of one another as many countries did during the cold war between the U.S. and Soviet Union. But if a nation reneges on its debt, the BIS, IMF, etc. isn't going to invade your country--one of it's creditor nations might, but not them.
    - seanhunter 4y ago
      The BIS is just a counterparty to facilitate payments between nations. It doesn't exert influence in international affairs (except really via the BCBS [1] which sets the Basel capital accords defining how much capital banks have to hold and therefore does have a lot of influence behind the scenes on how banks operate anyway). When the US says it's going to give $100m in aid to some country or one country pays back a debt to another country, there needs to be someone to process the payment, and that someone is the BIS. Source: friend used to work in the BIS and I've also been involved in banking off and on for a long time, including dealing with various international banking regulators. Some fun BIS facts: 1) They process payments via regular SWIFT[2] messages. So the $100m in aid comes as a message just the same as if you transfer $5 from one bank account to another. It has an IBAN number with a regular bank account, so if you changed that to your own account details and the message was processed suddenly $100m would appear in your checking account instead of going fund an aid programme for some government in Africa or whatnot. 2) The number of payments they process is very low (>100 per day max and usually in the low tens of messages) so every payment message is checked by hand by several independent people as well as having automated checks. Partly to avoid the risk of funds getting sent to the wrong places etc. 3) My friend worked there in the 90s and said that even back then they had extremely strong security with multifactor biometrics on every entry to the premises. You got in via an entrance where you had to step into a cylander which would only unlock after it had taken multiple photos including an iris scan [1] https://www.bis.org/bcbs/ https://www.bis.org/bcbs/ [2] https://www.swift.com/about-us/discover-swift/messaging-and-standards https://www.swift.com/about-us/discover-swift/messaging-and-...
  - concinds 4y ago
    The Knights Templar were a religious organisation, but also a quasi-banking institution in Europe; they took and protected deposits of gold, and issued 'cheques' allowing, for example, travellers to deposit gold in London and spend the money in Southern Europe. They were dissolved because they were beginning to rival the Papacy and nations in power due to their immense wealth. Also, few know this, but many African slaves who were victims of the slave trade became slaves due to debt-slavery (though this didn't involve formal banks). I've seen estimates of up to 25% of slaves back then having been debt-slaves.
    - atlasunshrugged 4y ago
      Yes! I had heard a bit about the Knights Templar, I guess I would have categorized them as religious first, financial/governance functions second. But also the Order of Malta had quite a lot of power, to the point I believe that it is still recognized by the UN! I hadn't realized that about African slaves; debt for what? https://www.un.int/orderofmalta/about#:~:text=in%20your%20browser.-,The%20Sovereign%20Order%20of%20Malta,is%20neutral%2C%20impartial%20and%20apolitical https://www.un.int/orderofmalta/about#:~:text=in%20your%20br....
saurik 4y ago
Based on their history of using their control over the App Store to "protect people" from such harmful content as content about how smartphones are made in sweatshops and tools (such as VPN clients, but also for a long time cryptocurrency wallets) that allow people to bypass restrictions put in place by these nation states that Apple works with, I'd claim these incentives are pretty shit :(. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vsazo-Gs7ms https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vsazo-Gs7ms
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- astrange 4y ago
  If you try to get into cryptocurrency your phone should automatically deliver electric shocks until you stop.
ryandrake 4y ago
I can think of a few, at least applicable in the USA: Apple doesn't have a military or police force with jurisdiction over me. They don't have the legal power to arrest me or throw me into prisons, which they also don't have. I don't have to pay taxes to Apple. I don't have to do business with them or interact with them in any way if I don't want to. I don't need Apple's permission to do anything unrelated to their product lines. Same is true for any megacorporation. It's a big stretch to say they are even remotely as powerful as nation-states, let alone more powerful.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- atlasunshrugged 4y ago
  Yes, the state's monopoly on force is to me what truly differentiates them into a different category of power than a corporation. Also international recognition for nation states and being able to have treaties and the like, but really its the monopoly on use of force. That said, I think the rise of charter cities (think of an SEZ on steroids run by a private corporation) will blur the lines further, although most proposals I've seen for charter cities leave policing to the locality they're residing in.
  - tambourine_man 4y ago
    Mandatory taxes, interest rates, printing money… nation states have a lot of power.
    - dane-pgp 4y ago
      > interest rates, printing money Many nation states don't have control over interest rates (because their central banks are run independently of the government) or even the ability to print money, if they have adopted another currency.[0] > Mandatory taxes States typically tax transactions which happen on their territory (e.g. wages and sales), and in the case of Apple, their devices are their territory, like feudally controlled tracts of land in cyberspace. Taking a cut of all app sales and in-app purchases seems very much like a tax under this analogy. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Currency_substitution https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Currency_substitution
jfjrkkskdik 4y ago
[dead]
Omniusaspirer 4y ago
Apple is a public corporation and votes on its corporate direction are freely available on the open market for anyone to purchase. Based on my share ownership Apple is much more subject to my whims than my actual elected politicians are on a % basis.

by bsedlm 4y ago

kube-system 4y ago

Corporations definitely have a lot of power today, but nothing more than they've had in the past. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Company_rule_in_India https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Company_rule_in_India

scottyah 4y ago

To be fair, banks have been more powerful than a lot of nation-states for awhile, and religious entities before that.

atlasunshrugged 4y ago
The religious entities I get the argument but what banks have been more powerful than nation states?
- bsedlm 4y ago
  the ones that only service other banks hence only people working in higher level banking are likely to have heard about. e.g. the bank for international settlements I only found out about this bank because the former president of the mexican central bank -- Mr. Carstens, left the central banking gig to go to that bank.
  - atlasunshrugged 4y ago
    From reading their Wikipedia quickly sounds like BIS has a similar function to say the IMF when it comes to financial system stability. I do agree these sorts of organizations exert huge amounts of influence, especially for smaller countries that are dependent on loans and outside financing, but I'm not sure I agree they are more powerful than a nation itself. A nation can (theoretically) decide to opt out from these systems and operate independently, or can play different parties funded by nations (because in the end they all are working for someone's agenda) off of one another as many countries did during the cold war between the U.S. and Soviet Union. But if a nation reneges on its debt, the BIS, IMF, etc. isn't going to invade your country--one of it's creditor nations might, but not them.
  - seanhunter 4y ago
    The BIS is just a counterparty to facilitate payments between nations. It doesn't exert influence in international affairs (except really via the BCBS [1] which sets the Basel capital accords defining how much capital banks have to hold and therefore does have a lot of influence behind the scenes on how banks operate anyway). When the US says it's going to give $100m in aid to some country or one country pays back a debt to another country, there needs to be someone to process the payment, and that someone is the BIS. Source: friend used to work in the BIS and I've also been involved in banking off and on for a long time, including dealing with various international banking regulators. Some fun BIS facts: 1) They process payments via regular SWIFT[2] messages. So the $100m in aid comes as a message just the same as if you transfer $5 from one bank account to another. It has an IBAN number with a regular bank account, so if you changed that to your own account details and the message was processed suddenly $100m would appear in your checking account instead of going fund an aid programme for some government in Africa or whatnot. 2) The number of payments they process is very low (>100 per day max and usually in the low tens of messages) so every payment message is checked by hand by several independent people as well as having automated checks. Partly to avoid the risk of funds getting sent to the wrong places etc. 3) My friend worked there in the 90s and said that even back then they had extremely strong security with multifactor biometrics on every entry to the premises. You got in via an entrance where you had to step into a cylander which would only unlock after it had taken multiple photos including an iris scan [1] https://www.bis.org/bcbs/ https://www.bis.org/bcbs/ [2] https://www.swift.com/about-us/discover-swift/messaging-and-standards https://www.swift.com/about-us/discover-swift/messaging-and-...
- concinds 4y ago
  The Knights Templar were a religious organisation, but also a quasi-banking institution in Europe; they took and protected deposits of gold, and issued 'cheques' allowing, for example, travellers to deposit gold in London and spend the money in Southern Europe. They were dissolved because they were beginning to rival the Papacy and nations in power due to their immense wealth. Also, few know this, but many African slaves who were victims of the slave trade became slaves due to debt-slavery (though this didn't involve formal banks). I've seen estimates of up to 25% of slaves back then having been debt-slaves.
  - atlasunshrugged 4y ago
    Yes! I had heard a bit about the Knights Templar, I guess I would have categorized them as religious first, financial/governance functions second. But also the Order of Malta had quite a lot of power, to the point I believe that it is still recognized by the UN! I hadn't realized that about African slaves; debt for what? https://www.un.int/orderofmalta/about#:~:text=in%20your%20browser.-,The%20Sovereign%20Order%20of%20Malta,is%20neutral%2C%20impartial%20and%20apolitical https://www.un.int/orderofmalta/about#:~:text=in%20your%20br....

saurik 4y ago

Based on their history of using their control over the App Store to "protect people" from such harmful content as content about how smartphones are made in sweatshops and tools (such as VPN clients, but also for a long time cryptocurrency wallets) that allow people to bypass restrictions put in place by these nation states that Apple works with, I'd claim these incentives are pretty shit :(. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vsazo-Gs7ms https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vsazo-Gs7ms

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
astrange 4y ago
If you try to get into cryptocurrency your phone should automatically deliver electric shocks until you stop.

ryandrake 4y ago

I can think of a few, at least applicable in the USA: Apple doesn't have a military or police force with jurisdiction over me. They don't have the legal power to arrest me or throw me into prisons, which they also don't have. I don't have to pay taxes to Apple. I don't have to do business with them or interact with them in any way if I don't want to. I don't need Apple's permission to do anything unrelated to their product lines. Same is true for any megacorporation. It's a big stretch to say they are even remotely as powerful as nation-states, let alone more powerful.

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
atlasunshrugged 4y ago
Yes, the state's monopoly on force is to me what truly differentiates them into a different category of power than a corporation. Also international recognition for nation states and being able to have treaties and the like, but really its the monopoly on use of force. That said, I think the rise of charter cities (think of an SEZ on steroids run by a private corporation) will blur the lines further, although most proposals I've seen for charter cities leave policing to the locality they're residing in.
- tambourine_man 4y ago
  Mandatory taxes, interest rates, printing money… nation states have a lot of power.
  - dane-pgp 4y ago
    > interest rates, printing money Many nation states don't have control over interest rates (because their central banks are run independently of the government) or even the ability to print money, if they have adopted another currency.[0] > Mandatory taxes States typically tax transactions which happen on their territory (e.g. wages and sales), and in the case of Apple, their devices are their territory, like feudally controlled tracts of land in cyberspace. Taking a cut of all app sales and in-app purchases seems very much like a tax under this analogy. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Currency_substitution https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Currency_substitution

jfjrkkskdik 4y ago

[dead]

Omniusaspirer 4y ago

Apple is a public corporation and votes on its corporate direction are freely available on the open market for anyone to purchase. Based on my share ownership Apple is much more subject to my whims than my actual elected politicians are on a % basis.