Comment by sqrt17 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by sqrt17 | Hacker News Reader

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the top 1% of larger corporations (i.e. VP level and CxO level) is more selective (i.e. not composed of normal people like you and me) than governments.

For both country governments and the governments of corporations, having some amount of both democratic control (through elections, or through laws that say what corporations can and cannot do - we don't want corporations to poison our kids any more than governments) as well as some economic responsibility (which is difficult - both for CEOs and for government officials it is frighteningly easy to disguise bad performance as "properties of the global economy").

taxing you to death for subpar services? Hello, Comcast and AT&T!

brainwashing your kids? Disney or Activision would never do that!

violent action? Corporations only do that in places with weak governments, which is a good thing. Never mind that the US health care system means that firing people also means taking their health care away.

can put you into deadly situations? Well, corporations would never do that. No one died in Dow Chemical's (now Monsanto) huge chemical spill in Bhopal. Also, both corporations and governments get rather bad PR when they kill people.

> the top 1% of larger corporations (i.e. VP level and CxO level) is more selective (i.e. not composed of normal people like you and me) than governments.

1% is one thing and I don't even know if you have any source to back this claim anyway. But look at 50% of the government official vs 50% of company executives, you'll find the companies are way more "democratic" than the officials.

Depends what you call "company". A 10 person business doesn't concentrate that much power, even if the CEO is a mean psychopathic dictator: that's only 9 employee under his command.

But if you look at big companies (let's say bigger than the equivalent of 1000 full time employees), this is a whole 'nother business.

I don't have the answer either way, but it could be interesting to see where most people are employed. Which masters yield the most labour? States? Companies? Big corporations?

Anyway, how did you came to the conclusion that companies are more democratic than official governments? Most are command economies inside! And while they don't have the legal power to kill you, they do have the power to banish you, and do so much more often than governments do.

I like how you answer without making any sense.

> taxing you to death for subpar services? Hello, Comcast and AT&T!

you don't have to use their services. Hello, competition ? Well, if you don't have competition where you live, too bad, but then that's probably because of excessive regulation. But if you are in a free country, at least you are free to move around. That's not given in countries with STRONG governments -blink-. Ask North Koreans or even Chinese what they think.

> brainwashing your kids? Disney or Activision would never do that!

You can perfectly live without watching Disney movies or playing Activision games. Living without going to school ? Good luck with that until a gov official knocks on your door.

> can put you into deadly situations? Well, corporations would never do that. No one died in Dow Chemical's (now Monsanto) huge chemical spill in Bhopal. Also, both corporations and governments get rather bad PR when they kill people.

yeah, I'm sure corporations have millions of people's bloods on their hands. World War I ? States. World War II? States. And it's certainly not corporations who killed the dozens of Russians in the Gulags or who killed massively the Chinese during the "Cultural revolution".

Seriously, go grab a book to educate yourself.

> you don't have to use [comcast and AT&T] services. Hello, competition ?

Bwahahah, that's a good one. Competition in a natural local monopoly setting, are you kidding me? Network infrastructure, especially the last mile, is expensive. Plus, it doesn't make economic sense to duplicate it. What naturally happens in a "free" market, is, some corporation put the first lines, capture almost everyone (because let's be honest, they will have a phone and an internet connection), and have a nifty monopoly. They sometimes lease their lines, but often at higher prices than what they would charge the end customer (it actually happens in France). And don't you try to build a redundant line for yourself: you won't capture half the customers after you do that, switching is just such a hassle.

If you want competition at the last mile, the physical infrastructure must be owned by the state, or the local community. Which will then lease the lines at a reasonable prices without bulk prices that favours the big over the small. Then you will have the condition for a free and efficient market.

Competition is good, but you have to ensure its presence. Free markets are mostly good but you sometimes have to enforce that freedom. (No, that's not an oxymoron. See how static typing sometimes allow you do do things you couldn't reasonably do with dynamic typing.)

> You can perfectly live without watching Disney movies or playing Activision games. Living without going to school ? Good luck with that until a gov official knocks on your door.

I have heard of studies showing that a sizeable proportion of kids spend more time in front of the TV than in front of their professor. Couple that with the fact TV is designed to catch your attention without any effort on your part, and I'm not sure which is actually doing most of the brainwashing.

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