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people will wise up to the idea that sufficiently coercive corporations are indistinguishable from government and vice-versa I will 100% agree that large-corp

by b112 3y ago

people will wise up to the idea that sufficiently coercive corporations are indistinguishable from government and vice-versa I will 100% agree that large-corp is a threat to democracy, and specific freedoms. But indistinguishable? Come on. A government can prevent you from speaking your mind, via legislation and the judicial branch. In terms of raw power, they have the capability to throw you in jail, they can detain you, they can prevent protest, pass laws to make your specific actions literally result in incarceration, they have armies, and police, and state spies, and on and on and on. Corporations may sometimes avail themselves of some of that power, but it is still the state wielding it. Corporations by themselves have little direct power, compared to states themselves. And yes, corporations will perform tasks for the state, and the state will sometimes perform tasks for corporations. But that's not my point. My point is, having a large corporation does not immediately provide for a massive army at the direct control of a CEO. It's just not indistinguishable, at all. So yes, looking at the specific powers of each entity is a good idea. Just.. keep it in perspective.

mindslight 3y ago
Ah, here we go with emphasizing the dichotomy. As I said, the important part for comparison is the amount of control being exerted. Jail is certainly a pretty strong deterrent. But it's actually not as strong as say not being able to eat. Which is contingent upon there being enough competition [0] between providers of food such they can't exercise coercive power. And the surveillance industry has been steadily destroying that open market dynamic we take for granted, for example "the unbanked". And thinking about coercion in hard discrete terms is fallacious as well. If the government illegalizes some thing, whereas cooperating corporations just make doing that thing such an uphill battle that most people don't do it, the net effect is quite similar. Resist the temptation to think "sure but you can still opt out", because while that can work for a handful of things that really matter to you, this won't actually change much. And conversely, you can actually still do anything the government has declared illegal if you're willing to possibly pay the price. [0] or more accurately - not too much collusion. these are different measures
- b112 3y ago
  I just think it's vital to not even mention the two in the same sentence. You seem to agree with me, in one respect, for you cite how you wish to focus on control. I'm all for that. But each of these two controlling aspects of our lives, are different entities, with different ways to address, rebuke, curtail, and prevent that control. And the control they each exert is unique. This is why I replied, for even though you stated you didn't want to focus on the dichotomy, you brought it up, and waved it away, stating it was not relevant for this discussion. But it is. It is, because each of these entities must be fought in unique ways. I think we mostly agree here on the large points. It's just nuance we're debating.
  - mindslight 3y ago
    I said 'sufficiently coercive', because the equivalence is in the limit. Even just one corporation that you can opt out of is a step up from government in many regards. But it can also be a step down in other regards if there are fewer ways to influence that corporation, and the consequences of opting out are significant. There are of course differences in the ways you can "address, rebuke, curtail, and prevent that control" based on the specific details of the entity - just as there are stark differences between democracies versus dictatorships, and publicly traded corporations versus privately held. And when we're talking about pushing back, those details should certainly be mentioned. But my point of emphasizing the similarities between the two large categories is to preempt this all too common pattern of people justifying corporate oppression by framing it in terms of voluntary association, while turning a blind eye to the actual coercive dynamic. I'm sure we do agree on a lot of things, but honestly your first comment is ripe with laying the groundwork for such type of justification. Corporations can certainly prevent you from speaking your mind - for example a geographic-monopoly Internet provider that censors based on content. The next step in the argument is of course "you can still speak your mind, just not using their infrastructure", but given that the sheer majority of speech is online today, that reasoning is specious - it's deliberately ignoring the power the company is actually wielding. Or coming at it from the other direction - if it's definitionally impossible for corporations to exercise coercive power, then why is accumulating such power one of the tenets of business ("build a moat"), and why are so many people so damn interested in having certain corporations perform censorship? An uncomfortable truth is that the main thing preventing corporations from having their own full-blown armies is the bona fide government. This circular dynamic is why I've come around to viewing freedom as a kind of logical reduction yin-yang rather as a unidirectional gradient - if the bona fide government disappeared tomorrow, the net effect would actually be the loss of much freedom, as those other aggressors would no longer be kept in check. Big-L Libertarianism sidesteps this by just asserting that having a singular military is one of the few necessary functions of government, but it's not clear why such an exception should only apply to one single topic when that same circular dynamic applies at other levels of abstraction.

by b112 3y ago

mindslight 3y ago

Ah, here we go with emphasizing the dichotomy. As I said, the important part for comparison is the amount of control being exerted. Jail is certainly a pretty strong deterrent. But it's actually not as strong as say not being able to eat. Which is contingent upon there being enough competition [0] between providers of food such they can't exercise coercive power. And the surveillance industry has been steadily destroying that open market dynamic we take for granted, for example "the unbanked". And thinking about coercion in hard discrete terms is fallacious as well. If the government illegalizes some thing, whereas cooperating corporations just make doing that thing such an uphill battle that most people don't do it, the net effect is quite similar. Resist the temptation to think "sure but you can still opt out", because while that can work for a handful of things that really matter to you, this won't actually change much. And conversely, you can actually still do anything the government has declared illegal if you're willing to possibly pay the price. [0] or more accurately - not too much collusion. these are different measures

b112 3y ago
I just think it's vital to not even mention the two in the same sentence. You seem to agree with me, in one respect, for you cite how you wish to focus on control. I'm all for that. But each of these two controlling aspects of our lives, are different entities, with different ways to address, rebuke, curtail, and prevent that control. And the control they each exert is unique. This is why I replied, for even though you stated you didn't want to focus on the dichotomy, you brought it up, and waved it away, stating it was not relevant for this discussion. But it is. It is, because each of these entities must be fought in unique ways. I think we mostly agree here on the large points. It's just nuance we're debating.
- mindslight 3y ago
  I said 'sufficiently coercive', because the equivalence is in the limit. Even just one corporation that you can opt out of is a step up from government in many regards. But it can also be a step down in other regards if there are fewer ways to influence that corporation, and the consequences of opting out are significant. There are of course differences in the ways you can "address, rebuke, curtail, and prevent that control" based on the specific details of the entity - just as there are stark differences between democracies versus dictatorships, and publicly traded corporations versus privately held. And when we're talking about pushing back, those details should certainly be mentioned. But my point of emphasizing the similarities between the two large categories is to preempt this all too common pattern of people justifying corporate oppression by framing it in terms of voluntary association, while turning a blind eye to the actual coercive dynamic. I'm sure we do agree on a lot of things, but honestly your first comment is ripe with laying the groundwork for such type of justification. Corporations can certainly prevent you from speaking your mind - for example a geographic-monopoly Internet provider that censors based on content. The next step in the argument is of course "you can still speak your mind, just not using their infrastructure", but given that the sheer majority of speech is online today, that reasoning is specious - it's deliberately ignoring the power the company is actually wielding. Or coming at it from the other direction - if it's definitionally impossible for corporations to exercise coercive power, then why is accumulating such power one of the tenets of business ("build a moat"), and why are so many people so damn interested in having certain corporations perform censorship? An uncomfortable truth is that the main thing preventing corporations from having their own full-blown armies is the bona fide government. This circular dynamic is why I've come around to viewing freedom as a kind of logical reduction yin-yang rather as a unidirectional gradient - if the bona fide government disappeared tomorrow, the net effect would actually be the loss of much freedom, as those other aggressors would no longer be kept in check. Big-L Libertarianism sidesteps this by just asserting that having a singular military is one of the few necessary functions of government, but it's not clear why such an exception should only apply to one single topic when that same circular dynamic applies at other levels of abstraction.