4 ms·

Companies are transcending power now. We are becoming the eminent vehicles for change and influence, and capital structures that matter. That doesn't sound lik

Companies are transcending power now. We are becoming the eminent vehicles for change and influence, and capital structures that matter. That doesn't sound like a better world. That sounds like a worse one. Governments tend to at least have some interest in keeping their citizens alive, healthy, and happy. The primary purpose of a company is to make money and as history has shown time and time again companies in general are all too willing to sell people dangerous products, work their employees to death, and do other unsavory things in order to make money. Sure the US government is seeming ineffective, and in many cases less than satisfactory. But a system in which companies have the power definitely isn't better.

orblivion 13y ago
> Governments tend to at least have some interest in keeping their citizens alive, healthy, and happy. Where would such an interest come from?
- Apocryphon 13y ago
  We the people.
  - orblivion 13y ago
    But what gives the politicians the incentives to care about We the people? I'm just trying to challenge the notion that government inherently cares about The People because it's chartered to do so, whereas companies supposedly are chartered to care about only themselves.
    - NathanKP 13y ago
      Another way to think about it is to ask "Where does the incentive come from to keep members of your family alive, healthy, and happy?" A government defines a group of people who tend to have some sort of patriotic emotional bond with each other, much like the emotional bond that ties a family together. This is why people all across America felt the pain of the 9/11 attacks despite the fact that realistically the vast majority of us did not have family members or friends that died in the attack. At a fundamental level this patriotic bond alone seems to make the majority of governments considerably more altruistic toward their citizens than a company would be towards their customers. After all the leaders of government are also citizens with that bond of shared country and patriotism that they share with other citizens. In a company there is a much larger "us and them" divide between people in the company and people the company is selling to. So in this light the grandparent's response of "We the People" though short is pretty meaningful and accurate. Governments tend to have interest in their citizens because of this patriotic bond which says that both the leaders and the ordinary citizens are "We the People".
    - wutbrodo 13y ago
      Accountability to the electorate isn't just theoretical. Politicians are faced with elections every 2, 4 or 6 years. No, this isn't a perfectly efficient model of accountability, but there's been this meme going around recently that electoral accountability simply doesn't exist, which is just ridiculous. You don't even have to go hunting for examples: the dramatic shift in who held the power in the recent debt ceiling/shutdown hostage negotiations was 100% because of the way polls were shaping up. Contrast that with the 2011 shutdown when 1) Obama was facing an election and thus had to tread more carefully and 2) public opinion was split roughly equally against both sides. In that case Republicans were able to extract relatively significant concessions based entirely on the fact that Obama didn't want to blow up the world economy (depending on your level of cynicism, perhaps because he knew that he'd get flak for it in the upcoming election). tl;dr: Gov't isn't assumed to care about the people's needs "because it's chartered to do so", but rather because they have specific and explicit dependencies on public approval. By contrast, companies have an explicit dependency on their customers (and shareholders). Everyone else and the externalities that they face are completely irrelevant as far as incentive structures for a company.
      - orblivion 13y ago
        Well for what it's worth, I don't think it's a new meme, it's probably as old as libertarianism itself. I'm glad your argument isn't about how the government is supposed to represent The People "at least in theory", I find that one rather funny given how people of my stripe are usually accused of only thinking in theory. As much as I want to, I can't convince myself of the aforementioned meme wholesale, there must be some counterbalance or we'd all be slaves. But I want people to break out of what at least seems to me to be the notion that while private companies are selfishly motivated, they can invent the institution called government that's free of perverse incentives and selfishness just because they think society needs it to function. Your point about nationwide approval of the government versus specific approval of companies is a good one. Consider some counterpoints: 1) the politicians need not pander to everyone, only those who care to vote. 2) expanding on the reluctance to bother voting, there's reluctance to be informed, since your vote had miniscule chance of effecting your life. It's known as rational ignorance, Bryan Caplan has a lot to say about it if you're interested in looking it up. In contrast, choosing one company over another always has immediate effect.
- yeukhon 13y ago
  The sole interest come from the their own interest. It's a career. A politician has to do something to keep themselves elected. So if they can keep enough supporters alive, they will be re-elected.
aaronbrethorst 13y ago
> Sure the US government is seeming ineffective A small group of people who have decided that government is ineffective have managed to get themselves elected with the help of a couple billionaires and have managed to prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that, as long as a small group of people who have decided that government is ineffective are in power, that government will be ineffective. It's almost tautological.
Sheepshow 13y ago
Any time you hear "profits are X" remember that is the vocabulary used by our aristocrats as shorthand for "standards of living for the proletariat are X." In other words, we should be grateful for the gifts blessed upon us, rather than greedy children asking for a seventh or eighth serving of ice cream.
sausman 13y ago
What specific power(s) do you object to companies having? The power to voluntarily exchange with others? Companies don't make money killing people, they make money improving the lives of customers and employees by offering them something they value more than their money/labor. If someone is working under poor working conditions, it's because their next best alternative is even worse.
- cglee 13y ago
  I think I understand your point, but the statement has been falsified many times throughout history. Many corporations have prospered on human misery and death.
  - nostrademons 13y ago
    Often with government backing. The modern nation-state is founded on the premise that the state has a monopoly on physical force; it is hard for a corporation to cause misery and death without that. I would be more scared about cozy relationships between government and corporations. That is when you get the most egregious offenses, eg. British East India Company + Great Britain vs. India and China, oil companies + US vs. the Middle East, Chinese government + Baidu in censoring their own people, Blackwater Associates + US in Iraq, etc. It is sometimes good to have the interests of corporations and government diametrically opposed, because that means they are not conspiring against the people they serve.
- alexqgb 13y ago
  "Companies don't make money killing people" No, they don't make money killing their CUSTOMERS. But they can make a lot of money by not giving a fig about people impacted by their operations. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bhopal_disaster http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bhopal_disaster This is why we have regulations, by the way. So when amoral idiots find themselves in a position to do serious harm, there's some external force to compensate (as much as possible) for their lack of suitable ethics and working moral compasses.
  - sausman 13y ago
ekianjo 13y ago
> That doesn't sound like a better world. That sounds like a worse one. Governments tend to at least have some interest in keeping their citizens alive, healthy, and happy. Oh really ? Are you really so naive? I'm sure the people in Syria and Libya are certainly happy about what their government is doing for them. Oh, and in modern democracies, apart from raising taxes every year and making more debt for the future generations to come, I fail to see the "good deeds" provided by governements. But it it makes you happy, I guess that's what matters.
- nikatwork 13y ago
  Yeah all those poor mopes on food stamps should just starve to death. What have they ever done for you, right? Fuck everyone except yourself, that's the way to a successful and balanced society!
  - ekianjo 13y ago
    Haha, I always like the allergic reaction where one guy pulls a strawman. By the way, you ought to read Losing Ground on the negative effects of the Welfare system. ANd this came from a guy who wanted to sum up the positive effects of it in the first place, who ended up being shocked by the data he gathered. http://www.amazon.com/Losing-Ground-American-Social-1950-1980/dp/1455165840 http://www.amazon.com/Losing-Ground-American-Social-1950-198... Come back after reading.
    - nikatwork 13y ago
      Your sarky and condescending parent comment made it clear that you believe the US government is useless and should be abolished. As you did not propose any alternative support systems, this would mean starvation for those on food stamps. That's not a strawman, comrade - that's called a logical conclusion.
      - ekianjo 13y ago
        For your information, I don't think government should be abolished, I'm rather a partisan of small-government more than anything else. The government still has some roles to take care of, but I am certainly not a big fan of government-sponsored welfare and I have provided you with some material to read to further understand my point of view. I don't really know why you focus so much on food stamps (which I never mentioned - that's why I called your comment a strawman- i.e. "informal fallacy based on misrepresentation of an opponent's position" which is exactly the case here), and do not focus on any of the points I raised in my first comment above. If you don't even bother making a point...
yeukhon 13y ago
I think this is quite the opposite. http://www.nytimes.com/2013/10/10/us/business-groups-see-loss-of-sway-over-house-gop.html?_r=0 http://www.nytimes.com/2013/10/10/us/business-groups-see-los... Read the first paragraph. Executives are expressing concerns on their influence over Republican, primarily over the Tea Party. As TP is constantly fighting with the other Republicans, these executives see poor prospect in Republican's re-election. Take immigration for example. Sure SV excutives have moved a bunch of people to start working on the immigration reform bill early this year, the group is broken. I believe all but one Republican is left in the group of 7 drafting the bill. Which means the bill will not get through neither House nor Senate in the next 6-12 months unless the seven congressmen sit together again. Surely government is relying on the Internet to spread their agenda and is constantly working with new startup to make government operation "more efficient", but these people, IMHO, don't really make politicians move. On the other hand, bankers continuously influence economic policy. This is an extremely specialized area (and since Federal Reserve board is made up of bankers around the country). SV is still not close enough. They shake a President's hand, but that's pretty much it.
aspensmonster 13y ago
>That doesn't sound like a better world. That sounds like a worse one. It sounds like a dystopian cyberpunk nightmare. And who better to lead us into the world of High Tech and Low Life than Silicon Valley Zaibatsus? I can never really tell when art and life are imitating each other.

orblivion 13y ago

> Governments tend to at least have some interest in keeping their citizens alive, healthy, and happy. Where would such an interest come from?

Apocryphon 13y ago
We the people.
- orblivion 13y ago
  But what gives the politicians the incentives to care about We the people? I'm just trying to challenge the notion that government inherently cares about The People because it's chartered to do so, whereas companies supposedly are chartered to care about only themselves.
  - NathanKP 13y ago
    Another way to think about it is to ask "Where does the incentive come from to keep members of your family alive, healthy, and happy?" A government defines a group of people who tend to have some sort of patriotic emotional bond with each other, much like the emotional bond that ties a family together. This is why people all across America felt the pain of the 9/11 attacks despite the fact that realistically the vast majority of us did not have family members or friends that died in the attack. At a fundamental level this patriotic bond alone seems to make the majority of governments considerably more altruistic toward their citizens than a company would be towards their customers. After all the leaders of government are also citizens with that bond of shared country and patriotism that they share with other citizens. In a company there is a much larger "us and them" divide between people in the company and people the company is selling to. So in this light the grandparent's response of "We the People" though short is pretty meaningful and accurate. Governments tend to have interest in their citizens because of this patriotic bond which says that both the leaders and the ordinary citizens are "We the People".
  - wutbrodo 13y ago
    Accountability to the electorate isn't just theoretical. Politicians are faced with elections every 2, 4 or 6 years. No, this isn't a perfectly efficient model of accountability, but there's been this meme going around recently that electoral accountability simply doesn't exist, which is just ridiculous. You don't even have to go hunting for examples: the dramatic shift in who held the power in the recent debt ceiling/shutdown hostage negotiations was 100% because of the way polls were shaping up. Contrast that with the 2011 shutdown when 1) Obama was facing an election and thus had to tread more carefully and 2) public opinion was split roughly equally against both sides. In that case Republicans were able to extract relatively significant concessions based entirely on the fact that Obama didn't want to blow up the world economy (depending on your level of cynicism, perhaps because he knew that he'd get flak for it in the upcoming election). tl;dr: Gov't isn't assumed to care about the people's needs "because it's chartered to do so", but rather because they have specific and explicit dependencies on public approval. By contrast, companies have an explicit dependency on their customers (and shareholders). Everyone else and the externalities that they face are completely irrelevant as far as incentive structures for a company.
    - orblivion 13y ago
      Well for what it's worth, I don't think it's a new meme, it's probably as old as libertarianism itself. I'm glad your argument isn't about how the government is supposed to represent The People "at least in theory", I find that one rather funny given how people of my stripe are usually accused of only thinking in theory. As much as I want to, I can't convince myself of the aforementioned meme wholesale, there must be some counterbalance or we'd all be slaves. But I want people to break out of what at least seems to me to be the notion that while private companies are selfishly motivated, they can invent the institution called government that's free of perverse incentives and selfishness just because they think society needs it to function. Your point about nationwide approval of the government versus specific approval of companies is a good one. Consider some counterpoints: 1) the politicians need not pander to everyone, only those who care to vote. 2) expanding on the reluctance to bother voting, there's reluctance to be informed, since your vote had miniscule chance of effecting your life. It's known as rational ignorance, Bryan Caplan has a lot to say about it if you're interested in looking it up. In contrast, choosing one company over another always has immediate effect.
yeukhon 13y ago
The sole interest come from the their own interest. It's a career. A politician has to do something to keep themselves elected. So if they can keep enough supporters alive, they will be re-elected.

aaronbrethorst 13y ago

> Sure the US government is seeming ineffective A small group of people who have decided that government is ineffective have managed to get themselves elected with the help of a couple billionaires and have managed to prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that, as long as a small group of people who have decided that government is ineffective are in power, that government will be ineffective. It's almost tautological.

Sheepshow 13y ago

Any time you hear "profits are X" remember that is the vocabulary used by our aristocrats as shorthand for "standards of living for the proletariat are X." In other words, we should be grateful for the gifts blessed upon us, rather than greedy children asking for a seventh or eighth serving of ice cream.

sausman 13y ago

What specific power(s) do you object to companies having? The power to voluntarily exchange with others? Companies don't make money killing people, they make money improving the lives of customers and employees by offering them something they value more than their money/labor. If someone is working under poor working conditions, it's because their next best alternative is even worse.

cglee 13y ago
I think I understand your point, but the statement has been falsified many times throughout history. Many corporations have prospered on human misery and death.
- nostrademons 13y ago
  Often with government backing. The modern nation-state is founded on the premise that the state has a monopoly on physical force; it is hard for a corporation to cause misery and death without that. I would be more scared about cozy relationships between government and corporations. That is when you get the most egregious offenses, eg. British East India Company + Great Britain vs. India and China, oil companies + US vs. the Middle East, Chinese government + Baidu in censoring their own people, Blackwater Associates + US in Iraq, etc. It is sometimes good to have the interests of corporations and government diametrically opposed, because that means they are not conspiring against the people they serve.
alexqgb 13y ago
"Companies don't make money killing people" No, they don't make money killing their CUSTOMERS. But they can make a lot of money by not giving a fig about people impacted by their operations. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bhopal_disaster http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bhopal_disaster This is why we have regulations, by the way. So when amoral idiots find themselves in a position to do serious harm, there's some external force to compensate (as much as possible) for their lack of suitable ethics and working moral compasses.
- sausman 13y ago

ekianjo 13y ago

> That doesn't sound like a better world. That sounds like a worse one. Governments tend to at least have some interest in keeping their citizens alive, healthy, and happy. Oh really ? Are you really so naive? I'm sure the people in Syria and Libya are certainly happy about what their government is doing for them. Oh, and in modern democracies, apart from raising taxes every year and making more debt for the future generations to come, I fail to see the "good deeds" provided by governements. But it it makes you happy, I guess that's what matters.

nikatwork 13y ago
Yeah all those poor mopes on food stamps should just starve to death. What have they ever done for you, right? Fuck everyone except yourself, that's the way to a successful and balanced society!
- ekianjo 13y ago
  Haha, I always like the allergic reaction where one guy pulls a strawman. By the way, you ought to read Losing Ground on the negative effects of the Welfare system. ANd this came from a guy who wanted to sum up the positive effects of it in the first place, who ended up being shocked by the data he gathered. http://www.amazon.com/Losing-Ground-American-Social-1950-1980/dp/1455165840 http://www.amazon.com/Losing-Ground-American-Social-1950-198... Come back after reading.
  - nikatwork 13y ago
    Your sarky and condescending parent comment made it clear that you believe the US government is useless and should be abolished. As you did not propose any alternative support systems, this would mean starvation for those on food stamps. That's not a strawman, comrade - that's called a logical conclusion.
    - ekianjo 13y ago
      For your information, I don't think government should be abolished, I'm rather a partisan of small-government more than anything else. The government still has some roles to take care of, but I am certainly not a big fan of government-sponsored welfare and I have provided you with some material to read to further understand my point of view. I don't really know why you focus so much on food stamps (which I never mentioned - that's why I called your comment a strawman- i.e. "informal fallacy based on misrepresentation of an opponent's position" which is exactly the case here), and do not focus on any of the points I raised in my first comment above. If you don't even bother making a point...

yeukhon 13y ago

I think this is quite the opposite. http://www.nytimes.com/2013/10/10/us/business-groups-see-loss-of-sway-over-house-gop.html?_r=0 http://www.nytimes.com/2013/10/10/us/business-groups-see-los... Read the first paragraph. Executives are expressing concerns on their influence over Republican, primarily over the Tea Party. As TP is constantly fighting with the other Republicans, these executives see poor prospect in Republican's re-election. Take immigration for example. Sure SV excutives have moved a bunch of people to start working on the immigration reform bill early this year, the group is broken. I believe all but one Republican is left in the group of 7 drafting the bill. Which means the bill will not get through neither House nor Senate in the next 6-12 months unless the seven congressmen sit together again. Surely government is relying on the Internet to spread their agenda and is constantly working with new startup to make government operation "more efficient", but these people, IMHO, don't really make politicians move. On the other hand, bankers continuously influence economic policy. This is an extremely specialized area (and since Federal Reserve board is made up of bankers around the country). SV is still not close enough. They shake a President's hand, but that's pretty much it.

aspensmonster 13y ago

>That doesn't sound like a better world. That sounds like a worse one. It sounds like a dystopian cyberpunk nightmare. And who better to lead us into the world of High Tech and Low Life than Silicon Valley Zaibatsus? I can never really tell when art and life are imitating each other.