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Comment by calibraxis | Hacker News Reader

Yes, refrigerators full of bodies.

This person preaches just what we'd expect from an HR/selfhelp person: accept it individually. More sensible people don't just organize in "cult-like" corporate communes to further enrich wealthy elites; they organize to build a better society, which requires dismantling these "soulless" gangs which treat humanity as "just collateral damage."

(Unfortunately, most who fancy themselves hackers really have no imagination for such things, regardless of rhetoric about "disruption" or "creative destruction".)

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Yet, to "build a better society" is a just euphemism for "build a better government." Empirically, governments organize themselves just as corporations: cult-like, soulless gangs which exist to enrich the wealthy elites and treat humanity as just "collateral damage." In fact, government invented the term of art.

The relative advantage of corporations, however, is one can choose to quit. Or choose to not buy their product. No one "has to have" an ipad or other such nonsense. No such option exists with regards to government. Voting has negligible effect and emmigration can only offer a least-worst improvement.

No not really. I didn't read anything in his statement that indicated he wanted to nationalize all the things. Maybe he just wants a better arrangment. The corporation isn't something that arises from the natural order of the universe. It's an arangement designed by the government. I would like it if they phased out that arrangement in favor of cooperatives. Just like a corporation you would be free to quit, but you'd be less likely to want to and less likely to be treated like overhead.

> The corporation isn't something that arises from the natural order of the universe. It's an arangement designed by the government.

I sort of disagree. The effects of governments are secondary, akin to trimming a hedge. Corporations look exactly like what happens when you have people getting more and more powerful and people who they rule also rule another people. I don't think it's a coincidence that corporations look a lot like feudal societies.

Corporations are defined by a state's laws. A corporate charter is granted by the government. The reason corporations look like feudal societies is that the first ones were formed by feudal lords to harness the power of the merchant class that operated outside the feudal system, essentially granting monopolies. I recommend the first couple of chapters of Life, Inc by Douglass Rushkoff for a good overview of corporate history

A refrigerator full of bodies is a morgue.

I don't think I'd care to work at a morgue.

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