Current Events — HabitableZone

Current Events » in reply to Actually, "collectivism" isn't the issue.

Corporations are not private companies.
ER — (archived)

Publicly owned corporations are more like feudal states than they are private citizens. But ownership is dispersed through multiple layers of holding companies so there is no individual or small group in charge, there is only one law, to generate profit, and management professionals are hired to carry that function out and fired if they cannot.

These firms are essentially out of human control, they operate as semi-autonomous organisms. Evetually, a class of corporate samurai evolves that runs these firms to provide them with the profit and growth they demand, but these men rarely set policy outside of the narrow financial goal, and like samurai, their sword is for hire, they are essentially mercenaries. The possible deleterious or beneficial effects of the corporate entity to the society as a whole simply does not matter unless it can somehow be justified as part of a business plan.

The commercial activity carried out by small, privately owned firms may be enormous in the aggregate, but individually, none can really control political power except perhaps at the local or municipal level. (When I'm ready to build my new car dealership I'll have no trouble at all pulling the permits!). But your conception of finance capitalism as an individual entrepreneurial activity is just naive, TB. You are right about the dangers of collectivism, but you simply can't bring yourself to see that collectivism is no longer coming from the Left, today it is coming from the Right.

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