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Comment by brutal_chaos_ | Hacker News Reader

When businesses become so large, they no longer are a $countryOfOrigin company (A US company in the case of Apple). They become multinational entities that have no loyalty to a nation, just loyalty to pocket books.

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Small companies don’t have loyalty to any specific nation either. Nor should they. Companies should serve customer needs and wants (profits are a measure of this), not become soldiers in political battles.

I’m confused as to why people think this is an $insightfulComment.

Would you rather have countries wall off their economic activity from each other so governments have to bomb each other to acquire resources by force?

Any economic intertwining of Chinese and American interests is a good thing, no matter how evil you think the Chinese are. Because the inevitable alternative is war (re: all of human history).

Historically, the only thing that prevents tribes of human animals from blowing each other up is mutually beneficial economic cooperation.

> Historically, the only thing that prevents tribes of human animals from blowing each other up is mutually beneficial economic cooperation.

That's correct, until someone thinks that he is being screwed and does not see mutual benefit. Mostly what Lenin explained in "Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism"

That is an excellent point and one I have tried bringing up before. Allowing corporations and individuals to obtain such massive amounts of wealth is a national security threat.

It is also a personal security threat and democracy threat.

Yes, by national security I meant anything that country holds important (government, people, resources, etc.).

Ah yes, THE nation. Very specific, especially in this context.

You're unnecessarily reading into it too much. By nation, I meant whatever nation houses one of these corporations, particularly the country that houses the headquarters.

As well as a disproportionate effect on the political systems, tax evasion, and so forth.

Arthur Jensen, 1976, would like a word: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=35DSdw7dHjs

From news stories of the past decade or few - I was not aware that even mid-sized companies, operating near-exclusively within $countryOfOrigin, showed much actual loyalty to said country.

That's a fair point. However, that doesn't change the situation, that merely highlights the severity of the problem, IMHO.

The scary thing is that nobody in any position of power seems to want to do anything about it and we seem to be past the point of no return.

Not really, they are listed on NASDAQ, a US-based stock exchange regulated by the SEC (also US)

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