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0 sats \ 8 replies \ @nullcount 11 Mar \ parent \ on: The State of Democracy Around the World charts_and_numbers
Corporations
I doubt it will work on a country scale!
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Many corporations have more employees and/or customers than some countries have citizens
But i agree on the point of scale. Large nation states are unnatural, its why empires always collapse in a debt fueled inferno.
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But these corporations are in very large countries. They may be in small countries, but only for tax reasons.
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There are also many corporations that have lasted longer than government regimes.
The word "corporation" has legal baggage. It implies "incorporated in a state" and bound by the laws of that state.
What I really mean by "corporation" is a market enterprise that competes to deliver more value at some cost.
With this framing, states ARE ALREADY corporations. They compete in a market for productive citizens, and resources, they provide value in the form of property, protection and rights, and they have costs like taxes, mandatory military service, laws to abide by, etc.
States are just corporations which managed to secure a monopoly on violence. Once a corporation corners the market on violence, they have essentially become a state.
With violence as an asset, states can start stealing value instead of creating it. They can do this for centuries with little consequence.
Why does anyone's stake in the corporation matter if you can just steal (or print yourself) a bigger stake?
Its from this place of violence as a means to compete for value that "government systems" emerge.
Governments are like a cancer that grows on any corporation that has grown beyond its ability to compete peacefully.
Once a corporation has a system of government that selects elites based on something other than their personal stake, its days/years are numbered.
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I think I understand your theory, but I think it would be very difficult to implement. Don't forget that we're talking about the masses and the masses have a lot of power. It took us thousands of years to get here, do you think such a system would be feasible in a few decades?
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It doesn't have to be implemented. It just emerges.
I think its already becoming more difficult to monopolize violence.
3D printed firearms, Money thats difficult to take by force, robot drones and humanoid bodygaurds, and one day it will be feasible for someone to manufacture a nuke in their garage.
All these factors are signaling a decentralization of access to violence. But also access to protect oneself without need of a state.
States are like the newspapers with their monopoly on information getting disrupted by the internet age.