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Comment by mindcrime | Hacker News Reader

It's funny how a lot of people (especially those of the anti-capitalist / left'ish wing ilk) cite cyberpunk literature in which corporations achieve a level of power approaching - or exceeding - that of Nation States... and decry that hypothetical scenario as a horrible and undesirable thing.

But in this case, what we see is a situation where we'd like to see Twitter stand up to various world governments... perhaps even the US government. But we all know that, in the end, there's a limit to how much they can contest the will of the government because the governments are the ones with "men with guns".

Maybe companies / corporations with enough power to actually challenge the governments of the world isn't such a bad thing after all. Or, perhaps it would be better to say "maybe corporations with enough power to challenge the governments of the world" is, at least, not a universally bad thing.

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As someone of "the anti-capitalist / left'ish wing ilk", the problem with my dear comrades is often that they get a little bit too excited about things like Twitter, which leads them to forget that

a) Twitter's job is to make money; carrying your latest 140-char call to arms 'normally' helps, but if in some circumstance it doesn't, they won't

b) Corporations (and actually, at the end of the day, all capitalist enterprises) are by definition reliant on the state, so you would expect them to compromise when the merde hits the fan.

So, colour me unsurprised. Yes, in theory I would like Twitter to stand up to oppressive state regimes. My political beliefs are as they are, in part, because I know they won't.

Democratic governments are at least notionally beholden to their people. I realize that's something of a bread-and-circuses fantasy, but at the very least they have to act like they're listening and taking action, or they get voted out next election.

Corporations are under no such compulsion. Their sole motive is profit. Put Wal-Mart in charge, and they'll happily kill half the population and feed them to the other half if the accountants say it will cut costs somehow. Yeah, every now and then you get someone with a conscience in charge of a big company, but if you're going to rely on that you might as well just cut out the middleman and go straight to a "benevolent" dictatorship.

Oh, the other thing you missed is that most corpocracy scenarios (including the one that we're actually living in) aren't about corporations standing up to the government, but about them using money and influence to make sure that the government does what's best for the corps instead of what's best for the people. Giving the corps more power doesn't create a balance, it just makes it easier for them to pull the puppet strings.

I'd argue that democratic governments use populism to stay in power in a similar way as corporations use marketing to make profit. In both cases they seek to make masses happy enough to maintain their status quo.

On a related note, if we look at corporations as nations with citizens being their employees, then actually they work in a more similar way to a government - they usually provide healthcare, define certain laws (as in, rules and dependencies within the corporation itself) and seek to make their employees happy (or else employees will go to other company). And additionally people don't get so zealously protective about their corporations as they do about nations, so maybe rather than waging wars they would choose to simply change the corporation they are in.

Well, I certainly don't say we should make a change in this direction though; it's simply a thought I find interesting, how corporations provide to their employees some of the things similarly as the government does (and sometimes provide even though the government should, but doesn't).

> Maybe companies / corporations with enough power to actually challenge the governments of the world isn't such a bad thing after all. Or, perhaps it would be better to say "maybe corporations with enough power to challenge the governments of the world" is, at least, not a universally bad thing.

Please review the history of the various "East India" companies. I think you will find it an enlightening read.

> Please review the history of the various "East India" companies. I think you will find it an enlightening read.

I have, actually. What's interesting to me is that it really points out the inherent paradox, in that corporations (as we know them today anyway) actually owe their existence to the State. With the East India Company it was a Royal Charter.

Note that I'm just playing "Devil's Advocate" here to some extent. I'm not necessarily a fan of super-huge corporations with Nation-State level power. In fact, I'm not necessarily a fan of any entity having "Nation-State level power", including Nation-States! :-)

Wow that was so missing the point. I was kinda more hinting towards how the East India Company financed wars of conquest, meddled in local politics, and then neglected their responsibilities to the population and let them starve (e.g. Bengal famine of 1770).

From my point-of-view, that stuff just kinda goes without saying, when talking about the East India Company. So yeah, we all know that big companies / corporations sometimes do Bad Things. But in the context of a discussion about whether or not a corporation should have Nation-State level power, the interesting point in noting that the East India Company (of at least one iteration) was created by Royal Charter and had (essentially) it's own army, etc., is exactly that paradox of how intertwined corporations and States can be.

Again, I'm not arguing for corporations like that. I'm just interested in the discussion vis-a-vis how power can/should/might be organized and controlled.

Fasting/roaming half-naked in streets are cheap tools/tricks used by Bania Gandhi to humiliate (not defeat) British regime during India's struggle for Independence.

No thanks. I don't trust corporations like Twitter any more than governments.

All of the dominant American online service already come with their own built-in ideological censorship, usually under the euphemism "family-friendly". (Twitter is actually one of the most tolerant services.)

People can challenge the governments of their own countries quite well, thankyouverymuch. It may take time, but in the end they are a big fat easy target.

Challenging global corporations is a lot more terrifying. So far the only thing that has helped us fight back has been... governments.

In South Korea, some argue that Samsung has that position:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/in-s-korea-the-republic-...

> It's funny how a lot of people (especially those of the anti-capitalist / left'ish wing ilk) cite cyberpunk literature in which corporations achieve a level of power approaching - or exceeding - that of Nation States

Reminds me of the ludicrous scenario for Deus Ex Human Revolution. Nation States (at least in developed countries) are concentrating far more power than most multinational companies anyway, so I'd say anything that puts some balance of power is probably a good thing.

Why concentrate power at all? How about we disperse the power, so that the power one has diminishes outside his nation city (size of which is determined approximately by how much one can move in a day). And limit power so that you cannot cumulate it to achieve anything globally drastic unless lots of time passes, or most of people have same need.

Rather than having indirect power that can be stolen, people need direct local power that has consequences with transparent effects.

Big nations, and corporations, we allow them to exist, and some of us, sometimes myself, think they are good for us. It just makes me sad how passive and accepting we are in this regard, and how current culture enables small companies quickly rise to into position to serve yet another brand of Soma.

> Maybe companies / corporations with enough power to actually challenge the governments of the world isn't such a bad thing after all.

Corporations are entities who owe their existence to government and can be terminated at a whim by government. If the government chartering a corporation decides it shouldn't continue to exist, it doesn't exist anymore.

This gets obscured a lot by the fact that the same class of people that derive the most benefit from the existence of corporations also have disproportionate power over government, so that this power is very rarely exercised, but that's not because corporations are powerful enough to resist government or even theoretically could be, its because corporations and governments ultimately are run by the same people.

Corporations are entities who owe their existence to government and can be terminated at a whim by government.

Yeah that's the way it works today and in Real Life. Clearly the cyberpunk scenario is a hypothetical, but it might not be as far-fetched as it seems.

Whether it's a Good Idea or not is, obviously a big question.

If corporations were independent of sovereign governments, they would be sovereign governments, not challengers to them.

Maybe, but not necessarily the same kind of sovereign government.

Has this ever happened? I know governments have taken over/privatized businesses, but when was the last time one was just shut down because it presented a threat? I'd think you'd be well into "too big to fail/jail" territory.

> Has this ever happened?

Yes, corporate charters have been revoked for failure to comply with legal requirements. AFAIK, the most recent period of time during which this (sometimes referred to as the "corporate death sentence") was an actively-pursued remedy for violations of the law in the US (though it is one on the books still in, I believe, all states) is the late 19th and early 20th century [1].

[1] Some New York cases discussed starting on p. 250 (of the source document, not the PDF) under "Revocations Based on Misuse of the Corporate Charter for Violations of State Law": http://digitalcommons.pace.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1...

I don't question that the state can revoke a charter, I meant if it had done so as a result of a perceived threat (rather than as a result of criminal behavior). I'm aware that since the state also defines criminal behavior the line can be blurry, but I think we can agree that the North River Sugar Refining Company did not pose an existential threat to the state of New York.

As long as you are not born into corporations and free to "leave" one and "join" another one they are vastly better than governments.

The problems start when governments and corporations merge.

The view makes sense. We don't want it to happen because it's unlikely to go well. But if it does happen that corporations acquire power, we express our wish that it goes well, however unlikely that is.

Very good explanation of the paradox.

In theory Twitter could bribe these governments, but that would be morally worse (and legally worse) than caving.

> Maybe companies / corporations with enough power to actually challenge the governments of the world isn't such a bad thing after all.

We should never expect corporations to take on the role of challenging the government. In "democracies", this is the role of the citizen (whose responsibility is to vote). Corporations, on the other hand, are controlled by people with lots of money whose goal it is to make even more money.

Yes, but countries like Russia and Pakistan can hardly be called liberal democracies. If there is no free speech, then it is difficult for citizens of those countries to take action. That is where corporations challenging the government can be helpful.

I don't see why we shouldn't expect corporations to take on the role of challenging the government. It is in Twitter's interest for governments not to crack down on free speech. So when governments do crack down, it is in their interest to stand up to those governments, especially when they don't have any employees or assets in those countries.

One worry would be that the Russian government could threaten Twitter with cyberattacks.

> It is in Twitter's interest for governments not to crack down on free speech

Article shows otherwise, it is not in Twitter's interest to worsen relationships with any government by refusing to comply with requests. Providing some evidence would be helpful.

Its not really twitter vs the government, its twitter vs companies that control / influence / lobby the government

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