Government, Inc.!

This spawns from a discussion with a friend.

With the fact that some transnationals have more money than most nation-states, and that real-world governments are largely turning to private sector help to plug in their gaps.

The eventual evolution of this is that government and company become one entity.

The idea being that the state will be wholly a subsidiary of a company, and that 'public' services are operated by a union of several different corporations. The idea can be expanded upon,

So is the idea of a Corporosate feasible? Perhaps a United Kindgom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland Sponsored by Unilever?

...wouldn't the Soviet Union and PRC have technically been this when they owned all the businesses in their respective nations...?

But that was state owning business.

Not the other way around, Flymo.

I don't think anyone knows. It might ride out for a couple of years, but it wouldn't be dramatically different from the first experiment — the Gilded Age — and to try to push it further toward an anarcho-capitalist system would not work. I think companies have to lean on a separate, 'objective' party to set the laws.

To take an example, Anarch-capitalists preach the replacement of laws and services with open competition and subscriptions of sorts. This tosses a whole new set of variables into the mix. Even enforcing a single law would take a ton of litigation, because there would be competing sets of laws — my rights versus your rights. Proponents of this idea don't like statutory law and place everything in the context of personal rights. And for the life of me I can't imagine how it would work in practice.

If there was a single Megacorp controlling everything, then you might be in business. The justice system would be basically the same — for one thing, an NGO big enough to call itself a country would probably have a lot of inequality. You need a rigid legal system to keep order. But obviously, a single governing entity would be no different from what we've already got.

Finally, a multinational corporation with national borders is already a wonky idea.

That's why I think a literal transition to corporate rule is more trouble than it's worth. Why not just back an obedient government? Or better yet, reshape the state to conform to the needs of business?

Same basic concept. One central authority or small groups of authorities that control all economic production in a given nation.

The only functional difference between real-life authoritarian socialism/command economies and corporatist/crony capitalist nations is the end-goal and how far the profit motive goes, methinks. At the end of the day, it involves business and government being indistinguishable. They merely come out with different sets of priority, between communist and capitalist models.

Well, it'd probably be the worst parts of a communist state (state control of everything) like the USSR with none of the upsides (safety net, social services).

On the upside, they'd start with bonus energy credits.

Sounds like a Banana Republic.

Yes it is feasable.

USA and Britain? Unlikely. They are too big, have too much money, have an armed force, etc. generally have to much power/force and resources at their command to be pushed around by corporations. Yet.

You probably want to start small, a very weak state and a VERY powerful corporations can be this.

Look at Whole Foods, a company that "owned" and operated several nation states in the Carabean, for a recent example.

If you want a fictional example, Robocop has OCP, a megacorp that has effectively taken over the USA because of OCP's deep, DEEP pocekts.

edited 4th Feb '12 8:20:43 PM by Natasel

The trope is One Nation Under Copyright.

There's a slight problem in that we have more than one big corporation in the US and probably most other countries. So the question is what company ends up owning what, exactly? Unless we see some mergers I don't think Big Oil and AT&T are going to be willing to cede territory to each other, given that they cover pretty much the same territory.

Anyway, it's feasible, but it wouldn't be a very nice place to live. And at some point, there would probably be a very bloody revolt to switch things away from the companies. Probably one to make the Russian Revolution look like a skip in the park.

Ace of Spades.

Sounds like Shadow Run doesn't it?

Maybe it'd be like the Armored Core series, but without the diversion of giant mecha battles to make you forget how much the setting sucks ass...

You're thinking of Syndicate. Shadowrun still has Lone Star, which I think is government run.

Actually it could very well happen in America right now. Ever been to tech campuses in Seattle or Silicon Valley? They might as well be a conglomerate of corporations cooperating to provide good infrastructure for their employees because they are profitable businesses that want top talent. So they attract that by providing infrastructure superior to the rest of America. Even the simple things, such as traffic lights that look nice and are easy to see even in sunlight, to medical facilities for the benefit of the employees (alongside medical plans).

Then you have a bunch of side businesses that sponge off the earnings of the employees; restaurants, clothing stores, high end cell phones (smart phones), tablets and services. The United States government still operates nominally but within the campus, the security is provided by the corporation not state/municipal police.

I've never played either of those games, so I can't really make the comparison. At any rate, I don't think corporations want to get anymore involved in state affairs than they are already. They already got control through bribes and such, and running both a huge business and a country has to be a logistical nightmare for a lot of people. I imagine that most businessmen that are bribing the politicians are content to maintain control simply by doing that. It seems to work fairly effectively after all. Why exert more force than necessary?

Well, in a corporate world, that's what it would be like: the top-tier employees that can't be replaced by automation or computers would get plushy positions, the grunt workers would get a pittance, and everybody else would be shit out of luck.

^ Pretty much.

The infrastructure is as good as business for that industry is... so if you're in a poor industry you get poor everything. And anybody attached to side businesses have variable, small-business like, success. For the big industries, you better be an important guy or else you get shit.

I suppose we could take comfort in the fact that when such a system inevitably collapses the resulting new nation would consider Right-wing economics to be a total joke.

That's a small comfort, though.

Why would it collapse? I suppose once central government becomes overly weak, you might argue that there is little authority to create a unified military but I doubt that. The weapon contractors are going to have a sham government enforce laws to maintain a military force to fuel foreign conflicts to boost military-related businesses. The industries tangentially related to that can make their money off anything. Plus with globalisation, just because it is headquartered in the United States doesn't mean they can't make money elsewhere. They can sponge money from well functioning socialist-capitalist economies in the world, use that to fuel their high-end campuses and hire top talent to continue making good products, all the while 30-40% of the local population live in squalor.

Because it's not a sustainable system. As more and more people get kicked out of their shitty jobs by machines and computer automation, you'll get a larger and larger bloc of people ready to go pillaging and burning in the streets.

Of course, the resulting country would probably be no better off, for different reasons, but...

Isn't that the luddite argument? That makes a presumption that those people can't find another job in a new industry offered up by other new technology. Afterall, computer programming is an industry wholly created by the fact we have computers.

I think it would increase poverty and many people will be working shitty jobs, but I don't see how it is unsustainable. It just totally sucks, to me, from the point of view of what kind of society you'd like to have.

Is it a Luddite argument? Perhaps. Thing is, job creation doesn't keep pace with the job destruction of automation unless you have really good education systems. Since a corporate-run plutarchy isn't gonna give a shit if it successfully educates everyone—only the select few that it really needs—that argument doesn't work.

That's the problem in the US, after all. Technology is way ahead of the education system, so it's not creating the kind of jobs it should. That, and technology has a habit of cleaving into the middle class, these days. Without mid-level industrial jobs, you get the janitors and fast food workers and the IT guys and managers, with little-to-nothing in between.

Computer programming is something people had to go and get educated to do, though. A guy working a factory job often couldn't afford to do that, especially after they got fired because the new computer could do the job in half the time. It's not luddite to point out that sometimes people just can't get the education to do the new jobs on the market, and thus are left out because there's no place to apply the skills they have. Adaptation isn't something you can do automatically.

And the reason it's unsustainable is you can't sell things to people who can't afford to buy it. And if no one buys your product, no matter how much they like or need it, then you have no profits. The money disappears, poof! Rioting in the street, and you can't afford that fancy security any more.

The above problem/scenario is very familiar.

Its a cyle.

• 1) Rich get richer. Poor get pooer.
• 2) Poor riot, rich get beheaded or run off with their money.
• 3) The poor now run things and become rich.

Repeat.

Sounds like a lot of nations history in summation dont' it?

edited 4th Feb '12 9:18:49 PM by Natasel

Hm, see with globalisation this becomes quite strange and it may or may not be unsustainable.

• These corporations will earn only a portion of their money from local demand but most of it from abroad
• If local talent decreases too much, you hire foreign
• The successful industries will have employees with income dependent on international profit, which means that they could be earning lots of money and this money is spent on local people who do not need to be skilled

However that last point is trickle-down, which as we know, doesn't quite work and personally I think it is because of market saturation. A wealthy employee earning 150k or 200k a year, can spend only on three meals a day, a few articles of clothing per month, drive a car or two, own a single home, so much furniture and so on. That creates a pretty good economy over all, but if the talent becomes increasingly foreign, then the locals become increasing poor as only so many people can feed those rich (well... upper middle class) employees.

I do notice that American corporations are hiring foreigners for a lot of cash these days.

80-20 rule. Business can insulate itself just fine with a plutocratic market. The issue is whether having to quell riots all the time is worth the bother. We don't know yet — it's been tried. The Europeans had an on-again, off-again relationship with laissez faire philosophy; on the one hand, the army was busy quelling uprisings all over the place. Worse, the exploited workers started to organize, with even the churches getting into the act. Eventually the barons decided you needed to give the population a bit of leeway.

The rich grow arrogant and forget their own lessons. Of course, the US is a special case — we're kind of the heirs to the Venetians and their weirdo worldview. Also, we have the Protestant tradition, which can be bent into an inhuman system if you're not careful.

edited 4th Feb '12 9:30:14 PM by johnnyfog