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100% this. I heard it said that the only things Americans know about is World war Two and they don't know that much about that. It's a sobering thought. To yo

by jmyeet 4y ago

100% this. I heard it said that the only things Americans know about is World war Two and they don't know that much about that. It's a sobering thought. To your point, if anyone wants to see the effects of unchecked corporate power, just look at the 19th century and the robber barons. most notably, look at the history of the Pinkerton Detective Agency [1]. "Detective agency" is an inocuous sounding name but at its peak the Pinkertons outnumbered the US Army. Pinkertons were frequently used as striker breakers and to quash any form of labor movement. They did so with the blessing of the US government. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pinkerton_(detective_agency) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pinkerton_(detective_agency)

livueta 4y ago
While you and the parent are totally correct about the dynamics of power vacuums, I think it's also relevant to note that the robber-baron stuff wasn't exactly happening in some kind of Hobbesian state of nature - it's right there at the end of your quote: "They did so with the blessing of the US government". This was an environment where centralized authority was weakened to the point that private armies were worthwhile, yet still strong enough to engage in selective enforcement on behalf of corporate powers. Hence, the dynamic where you'd get beaten up by the Pinkertons and then arrested for fighting back. This sort of halfway environment is the worst possible case: in a more total vacuum, opposing corporate power via collective action is more viable; in a society with a stronger grip on a monopoly on violence, corporate abuses are (theoretically) restrained. While untrammeled corporate power and untrammeled government power are both scary, the effective fusion of the two via state capture is the real nightmare. I think that sort of halfway environment, where there's enough state to be worth capturing but not enough to be an effective counterweight, is the default in a lot of the particularly cursed post-colonial nations - Angola and Burma spring to mind - where traditional means of social organization were sublimated into the colonial state, leaving a vacuum when the colonial state itself began to molder.

by jmyeet 4y ago

livueta 4y ago

While you and the parent are totally correct about the dynamics of power vacuums, I think it's also relevant to note that the robber-baron stuff wasn't exactly happening in some kind of Hobbesian state of nature - it's right there at the end of your quote: "They did so with the blessing of the US government". This was an environment where centralized authority was weakened to the point that private armies were worthwhile, yet still strong enough to engage in selective enforcement on behalf of corporate powers. Hence, the dynamic where you'd get beaten up by the Pinkertons and then arrested for fighting back. This sort of halfway environment is the worst possible case: in a more total vacuum, opposing corporate power via collective action is more viable; in a society with a stronger grip on a monopoly on violence, corporate abuses are (theoretically) restrained. While untrammeled corporate power and untrammeled government power are both scary, the effective fusion of the two via state capture is the real nightmare. I think that sort of halfway environment, where there's enough state to be worth capturing but not enough to be an effective counterweight, is the default in a lot of the particularly cursed post-colonial nations - Angola and Burma spring to mind - where traditional means of social organization were sublimated into the colonial state, leaving a vacuum when the colonial state itself began to molder.