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Comment by blowski | Hacker News Reader

If you think of the nation state as a dying entity, being replaced by global corporations, then it can sort of make sense. You could argue that they _are_ engaged in cyberwars. The way they can unilaterally change so much of our lives could also be construed as absolute power.

I don’t necessarily agree with the author, as I think he misses out much of the benefit they continue to offer the world. But I think your criticsm is anachronistic - power in the 21st century isn’t measured solely by boots on the ground, or ability to raise taxes.

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Power is also the legal system, and corporations don't make, pass or interpret law either, even if they have an undue influence on some of those who do. But even with that influence, they're still at the mercy of voters. It's always possible for an unfavorable administration or legislator to get into power, or an unsympathetic judge to rule against them.

And Governments have broken up powerful companies before.

For the sake of argument, they are at the mercy of voters is only true if voters cannot be influenced by these companies. Today's tech companies can influence voters in subtle ways an run huge PR campaigns to influence voters. In the future, only favourable legislators will come into power and laws, precedent and changing mindset will make it difficult for for a judge to rule against them.

The difference between modern tech giants and erstwhile powerful companies like standard oil is that tech giants are much closer to people's daily lives and occupy some much of their time. This way people are attached and strong feelings about Facebook, Google, Microsoft, etc. that they didn't have towards Standard Oil.

> Today's tech companies can influence voters in subtle ways and run huge PR campaigns to influence voters. In the future, only favourable legislators will come into power and laws ...

But favorable to which corporate interest or outside agency (Russian hackers)?

The corporate interests won't align on every issue or candidate, so they won't be influencing votes all the same. What's good for Google won't always be what's good for Amazon, or the Chinese government.

It's the various competing interests that somewhat cancel out. And it's not like other interests with power and money aren't aware of the reach of tech companies, and won't seek to use that to their advantage. Consider how traditional media has been used.

Or do you think the news organizations and tv/radio stations had all the power before?

Trump being elected wasn't the will of any of the tech giants. It's more of a platform that's used for whatever interest has the means to abuse it, such as pushing fake news.

> The difference between modern tech giants and erstwhile powerful companies like standard oil is that tech giants are much closer to people's daily lives

That's incorrect. Read the history of Standard Oil. They aggressively sought to get into people's daily lives. In fact, they may have been the first massive corporation to ever do so at an all-encompassing national level. They leveraged every bit of their power and wealth to distribute down to the town -> household level, with their fuels and free lanterns to burn their fuels. They waged Edison-style fear PR campaigns at that micro economic level, trying to get into people's homes commercially (correctly noting their product was mostly safer than the older alternatives). Their distribution channels by design reached into the daily lives of nearly every person in America (this is before the automobile had reached such distribution). Their in-your-home position was drastically more important in its day, as a critical basic needs upgrade, than the position Facebook occupies today. I would specifically suggest you research Standard Oil's numerous consumer oriented businesses.

I wasn't aware of that. Thank you for the info. This was the fallacy of looking at the past from a current perspective.

> and corporations don't make, pass or interpret law either

The latter one is about to change, at least for certain non-vital topics. We see privatization in law enforcement for copyright, free speech / personal rights, and so on.

When Facebook marks "fake news" or handles "hate speech", and when Google/Youtube removes "copyrighted material", there is neither the police nor any judge in the loop. Also, there are often false positives such as removing creative commons videos with no clear path to dispute.

There will soon be laws that require companies to interpret the law, which is a very worrying trend.

> We see privatization in law enforcement for copyright, free speech / personal rights, and so on.

Let's not forget forced arbitration. Companies that wrong you can now deny you your day in court if they just add a forced arbitration clause into the fine-print. They are removing conflicts from the justice system into a private system where the incentives are much more murky.

Aren't taxes part of the law? How's that working out for tech giants?

And what about countries that don't have 'fair' laws? Tech giants don't have many barriers if they decide to operate overseas.

And don't understate the influence on governments and voters either, just look at the tobacco industry. It is practically forcing itself on children in parts of the world. If that's tobacco, how much easier would it be for facebook to penetrate markets that don't really want them.

Who controls the voters' sources of information?

> Power is also the legal system, and corporations don't make, pass or interpret law either, even if they have an undue influence on some of those who do. But even with that influence, they're still at the mercy of voters.

Undue "influence" is a gross understatement.

Some people pointed out the more abstract type of influence (this is correct and meaningful); I'll point out the material: the list of, let's say, "indirect ability to make laws" is neverending, and it is directly proportional to a given company size.

Small and random, but significative, sample:

  - Mickey mouse laws
  - HSBC money laundering
  - Massive tax dodging in Europe

The above examples show, each in a different way, that when a company is very very big, the leverage it can exert does not fit in the "influence" definition anymore.

As cornet Joyce proved "people with guns" is the defination of power

By that strict definition, there were no powerful people before guns were invented.

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