Final Quarter: Humans v Corporations
As a human grows older s/he generally loses power to the final end when all power disappears.
As a corporation grows older its power and wealth generally increases and its life has no obvious termination.
Do humans control corporations or do corporations control humans? As time goes on how does this power ratio change?
We seem to have developed a fetish (obsessive devotion) for commodification (making an entity an object of commerce) and reification (making an object of an idea). In other words, we seem to be obsessed with making more of what were human values into objects and making these objects valued in dollars.
In a world of such fetishes it seems to me that the corporation constantly gains and humans constantly lose.
What is the logical end for such a process? I think the logical end is that humans slowly morph into a machine controlled by our invented machines, i.e. our corporations.
Final Quarter: Humans v Corporations
Final Quarter: Humans v Corporations
coberst wrote: Final Quarter: Humans v Corporations
As a human grows older s/he generally loses power to the final end when all power disappears.
As a corporation grows older its power and wealth generally increases and its life has no obvious termination.
Do humans control corporations or do corporations control humans? As time goes on how does this power ratio change?
We seem to have developed a fetish (obsessive devotion) for commodification (making an entity an object of commerce) and reification (making an object of an idea). In other words, we seem to be obsessed with making more of what were human values into objects and making these objects valued in dollars.
In a world of such fetishes it seems to me that the corporation constantly gains and humans constantly lose.
What is the logical end for such a process? I think the logical end is that humans slowly morph into a machine controlled by our invented machines, i.e. our corporations.
This is an overly simplistic, cynics eye view.
Corporations are made up of component parts, which are human. Hence they take on gross manifestations of those human characteristics, the good, the bad and the ugly.
Large corporations almost always started as small businesses. Bill Gates and Paul Allen started out as college dropouts who slept under their desks.
9 of 10 small businesses, essentially die in childbirth, or at least never make it past the first few years of life. Infant mortality for corporations is much higher than it is for individual humans, at least in countries with modern healthcare.
Businesses have to pay their own way, just as humans do as they become adults. A certain amount of commodification has to happen, for that to take place. There's a fine line between commodification and over commodification. Over emphasis on the goods instead of the service will lead to the goods not working. In a free market, we quickly stop buying goods that don't work, providing opportunity to those who can build the proverbial better mousetrap.
As businesses grow, the smart ones realize it's in their best interests to take care of their own, in the form of healthcare, education, and retirement benefits. Of course, when the companies that provide those services, i.e. the druggies and the insurance industry, become hopelessly corrupt and greedy, they will be forced to change as well.
The difficulty here is that this is change on an institutional level, and institutional change is almost geologic, in that it is slow.
Because they are comprised of human parts, corporations are organic in nature. Organic life is, ultimately, subject to the laws of nature. Nature always corrects imbalances. Imbalance is what makes a free market work. Corporations can't violate natural law any more than we can.
As a human grows older s/he generally loses power to the final end when all power disappears.
As a corporation grows older its power and wealth generally increases and its life has no obvious termination.
Do humans control corporations or do corporations control humans? As time goes on how does this power ratio change?
We seem to have developed a fetish (obsessive devotion) for commodification (making an entity an object of commerce) and reification (making an object of an idea). In other words, we seem to be obsessed with making more of what were human values into objects and making these objects valued in dollars.
In a world of such fetishes it seems to me that the corporation constantly gains and humans constantly lose.
What is the logical end for such a process? I think the logical end is that humans slowly morph into a machine controlled by our invented machines, i.e. our corporations.
This is an overly simplistic, cynics eye view.
Corporations are made up of component parts, which are human. Hence they take on gross manifestations of those human characteristics, the good, the bad and the ugly.
Large corporations almost always started as small businesses. Bill Gates and Paul Allen started out as college dropouts who slept under their desks.
9 of 10 small businesses, essentially die in childbirth, or at least never make it past the first few years of life. Infant mortality for corporations is much higher than it is for individual humans, at least in countries with modern healthcare.
Businesses have to pay their own way, just as humans do as they become adults. A certain amount of commodification has to happen, for that to take place. There's a fine line between commodification and over commodification. Over emphasis on the goods instead of the service will lead to the goods not working. In a free market, we quickly stop buying goods that don't work, providing opportunity to those who can build the proverbial better mousetrap.
As businesses grow, the smart ones realize it's in their best interests to take care of their own, in the form of healthcare, education, and retirement benefits. Of course, when the companies that provide those services, i.e. the druggies and the insurance industry, become hopelessly corrupt and greedy, they will be forced to change as well.
The difficulty here is that this is change on an institutional level, and institutional change is almost geologic, in that it is slow.
Because they are comprised of human parts, corporations are organic in nature. Organic life is, ultimately, subject to the laws of nature. Nature always corrects imbalances. Imbalance is what makes a free market work. Corporations can't violate natural law any more than we can.