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A tempting analogy, but I think there are too many crucial differences to put corporations forward as a model for central planning. For a start, corporations a
by jl6 4y ago
A tempting analogy, but I think there are too many crucial differences to put corporations forward as a model for central planning.
For a start, corporations are very small compared to states. Even Walmart, the world's biggest employer, is less than 1% the size of the US by headcount.
More problematic is that corporations plan to maximize profit. That's it. It's a comparatively trivial optimization goal compared to the multitude of ways of valuing things that exist in wider society - and yet, corporations still frequently fail to be profitable. OP's example about the wedding ring is a case in point. Walmart's Finance department would value that for its raw weight in gold only.
But even more worrying, corporations have a magic tool for maintaining order and efficiency: firing people. States can't do that, or at least, not states that you'd want to live in. Corporations are rigidly hierarchical. Corporations are not democracies. Imagine human rights as implemented by the HR department. Scaling up corporate processes to manage a whole country would result in a terrifying dystopia.
- kneebonian 4y ago> firing people. States can't do that, The Gulags: Let me introduce myself.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- dragonwriter 4y ago> But even more worrying, corporations have a magic tool for maintaining order and efficiency: firing people. States can't do that, Deportation and capital punishment are real things, so I think your wrong.
- hgomersall 4y agoThey're not real things in a civilised society.
- photochemsyn 4y agoI think you just need to go up the corporate-financial ladder a step. Clearly the major shareholder conglomerates - Vanguard, Fidelity, State Street, Vanguard etc. can act in a manner very similar to a Soviet Central Committee to direct resources in a centrally planned manner. The current consolidation of banking into a small group of large corporate institutions (JPMorganChase, BankAmerica, Citgroup, WellsFargo) with direct ties to the Federal Reserve is another obvious example of how the US economy is more of a centrally planned model than not, and of course, the military-industrial corporate system, where the government is basically the sole buyer and distributor of contracts, is another one.
- AnimalMuppet 4y agoMaybe they could. But they don't. They invest in companies, but they don't tell the companies how to run themselves.
- cced 4y agoOP’s example of his wedding ring is absolutely not case in point; the value of his ring is it’s weight in gold. Whatever _sentimental value_ he may hold for his ring has no bearing on any rational actors choice to buy the ring. Apple, Microsoft, Walmart and, gee, I don’t know, any of the other F500 corporations don’t make it there because “they fail to value their products and services”. They pay real people, real wages, to produce real things, that are sold further down the supply chain. These aren’t imaginary objects and figures.