Hacker News Reader

Comment by arcticbull | Hacker News Reader

Oh, I'm not sure that's true. That's a very modern take.

Have you met the British East India Company [3] and the Dutch East India Company (VOC) [4]? The VOC even has a genocide to it's name [1]. [edit] Make that two. [2]

A lot of colonialism was actually carried out by private enterprise. Substantially all of slavery. Once you reach a certain size and scale, is there really even a difference between government and enterprise - except that the voters control one and shareholders the other?

[1] https://historibersama.com/the-voc-genocide-historia/

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amboyna_massacre

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/East_India_Company

[4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dutch_East_India_Company

View on HN

Let’s not forget Jardine Matheson, who in 1840 persuaded the British government to start a war with the Qing Dynasty over their right to keep addicting the Chinese population to opium[1][2].

The Brits got lots of mileage out of that one - Hong Kong for starters, and HSBC, which continues its storied tradition of facilitating immorality to this very day [3][4]. JM itself diversified after the wars and the company lives on as “a multinational conglomerate... with legal domicile in Bermuda”.

Kids, if you want to make it big without actually having to challenge yourself too much, make sure you stick to large-scale, officially-sanctioned crimes against othered groups of humans. That way, you get the George W. Bush treatment instead of accountability!

[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Jardine_Matheson_....

[2] https://www.eiu.edu/historia/Cassan.pdf

[3] HSBC money laundering report: Key findings http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-18880269

[4] https://www.icij.org/investigations/fincen-files/hsbc-moved-...

My understanding is that those trading companies were effectively the tools with which those countries conducted foreign relations in those regions. I know at least the leader of the VOC was directly government appointed. Could be wrong though, I haven't done much reading on them.

>Once you reach a certain size and scale, is there really even a difference between government and enterprise - except that the voters control one and shareholders the other?

Voter control of countries over time and by country has varied from none to tenuous and I think shareholder control of enterprise might be the same. I think the bigger distinction is use of physical force/violence. A government is the collective with a near monopoly on force within a region. So the thing that makes it scarier when they get access to new tools of oppression is the exact thing that makes them what they are.

Sure but the private enterprises of the time that you mention still didn't hold a candle to the monarchy or the church.

Both of those companies were extensions of the state.

None of your links contradict what the person you're replying to noted about orders of magnitude. Stalin, Mao and Hitler alone killed over a hundred million people in the 20th century.

I think the parent's point is valid - enterprise has generally been less likely to commit those acts. I mean, just look at Hitler, Stalin, and Mao. They killed tens of millions of people.

Even in the examples of the companies that you listed, their acts were generally state sanctioned, making government a party to that, and sometimes supplying state resources to commit them. And of course demanding their share of the spoils.

I do agree that there doesn't seem to be too much difference between large corporations and government. Also they tend to do a good bit of cross pollination of corruption.

Why is this downvoted?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com