> Corporations should never be allowed to get this large.
Or maybe we should convince a larger swath of humanity to unite behind an idea larger than "nationhood" or "my country".
Also it can appear voluntary... "Sure you can pay 2x the cost for your insurance or you can get insurance, food, accommodation conveniently provided by Amazon who is also your employer for a good discount"
Not saying Amazon IS a monopoly. But a "nation corporation" would effectively be company scrip on a much larger scale I suspect
"Concealment at scale is the secret to Amazon’s success. Customers enjoy a seamless one-stop shop experience from the comfort of their homes. Out of sight is a ruthless game of regulatory arbitrage, as Amazon installs itself in low-tax jurisdictions and exploits legal loopholes around the world. Even further away from the customer lies Amazon’s environmental impact, scorching frontline communities in the global south while executives in Seattle roll out their latest greenwashed PR campaign."
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/dec/01/amazon...
And at a certain point it's consumerism that's driving all of this. I don't know if it's fair to blame Amazon for this any more than it is to blame McDonalds for obesity. We live in a society where people are free to make their own choices, and as long as these "hidden costs" aren't well regulated, a lot of people will take a cheeseburger at the cost of a few extra pounds, and some 2-day shipped plastic junk at the expense of some poor over-worked employee's vacation.
Meanwhile, these consumers are putting additional strain on the healthcare system, and encouraging companies like Amazon to get away with all of its labor abuses.
The US healthcare system, oil, gas and coal companies, weapons manufacturers, factory farms, fast fashion sellers, soft drink and dessert companies?
I mean, Amazon and MS are in ESG investing indexes, so they must be doing okay. Those indexes won't even allow nuclear power in.
From a legal/ideological standpoint, this might be a powerful soft-pivot that would solve a lot of problems.
There's a famous line from Walt Disney, during Disney's golden age, where he said "we don't make movies so we can make money - we make money, so we can make movies". That really hits at the heart of it.
The interesting thing is that, to a large degree, most of the meaningful corporations that improve the world - despite nominally being for-profit companies, generally tend to operate halfways into public-benefit territory. Partly because the benefit provided by them is essentially what the owners are "buying for themselves". To put it in perspective - if you're an extravagantly wealthy patron who wants to - themselves - have animated films to watch, you can't just hire some off-the-shelf people to do it, because they don't exist unless an industry to train them, exists. There's not really a "more narrowly selfish" way to do it - you're best served by building some outfit like Disney to build a brain trust of people to produce what you want.
Similarly with Amazon; sure, an extravagantly wealthy individual could probably accomplish the shipping part of it with personal couriers, but the information-gathering part of it where all the products-available-to-buy are laid in front of you as choices would be nearly impossible to match. Like, you could try to match it with some awful, personal, potemkin setup. But by the time you put in all of that effort ... I mean, you're basically already building what could be a business that could serve others, so you may as well.
So the best thing to do is to try to nudge the system in a direction where the worst tendencies are mitigated: build institutions in which non-sociopaths can thrive politically, and allow a reasonable path for outsiders to join the political process.
The US in particular is very bad at both. First past the post election systems don't provide a path for outsiders to join, which makes them seem stable until they suddenly become very volatile. And the fact that all elections in the US are personalized favours sociopathy over competence in politicians (compare the US system to one where you vote for a party instead of a person; in the former, people who are competent but lack charisma can still rise in the ranks of a party and get to power, while in the latter everything devolves to low-quality popularity contests).
I refuse to believe that is the only alternative.
In my country it is illegal not to subscribe to the state TV channel. The same cannot be said about Amazon Prime.
Just curious: 1) What country 2) Do you have to pay?
2) Yes
You might not like where your taxes go, but at least you can vote for that to change. In a company you have no such freedom unless you have the financial ability to buy stock.
a lot of European counties pay for state tv from a tax on things like electricity, but saying “it’s illegal not to pay tax” is an odd statement.
"Illegal not to subscribe to the state TV channel" seem like small fries.
The governments of Russia, Germany and China killed over a hundred million of their own people last century, no corporation comes anything near that.
Just because the companies doing the murder are more numerous and regularly go out of business, doesn’t mean that capitalism’s hands are free of blood.
This is, frankly, a very silly thing to get hung up on.
First of all, I assume you mean you have to make some payment that goes to that channel, not that you're forced to watch it.
Second, this means you're essentially passing a presumably small tax that is earmarked for that channel.
In other words, it's not any different from all the other taxes: paying them is part of life in society, and you're never going to agree with all their uses.
I bet there are far bigger items in your government's budget that you disagree with.
The British East India company was a corporation when it took over large parts of India.
Corporations are chartered by governments and reflect the chartering government’s values (which may be laissez-faire, but in the case of the British East India Company—and it's state-granted monopoly, violations of which were punishable by indefinite term of imprisonment—were decidedly not.)
It will always be a matter of "us vs them" it's just a matter of who is "us" or "them"