agreed, the rise of the corporation as the most powerful institution (above the nation-state) in this new budding global civilization is a long time coming.
on the other hand, this is how democracy dies. what structures (systems) exist to prevent apple (and other comparable corporations) from being an oppresive force against human persons? moreover, what incentives do they have?
I can think of a few, at least applicable in the USA:
Apple doesn't have a military or police force with jurisdiction over me. They don't have the legal power to arrest me or throw me into prisons, which they also don't have. I don't have to pay taxes to Apple. I don't have to do business with them or interact with them in any way if I don't want to. I don't need Apple's permission to do anything unrelated to their product lines.
Same is true for any megacorporation. It's a big stretch to say they are even remotely as powerful as nation-states, let alone more powerful.
Yes, the state's monopoly on force is to me what truly differentiates them into a different category of power than a corporation. Also international recognition for nation states and being able to have treaties and the like, but really its the monopoly on use of force. That said, I think the rise of charter cities (think of an SEZ on steroids run by a private corporation) will blur the lines further, although most proposals I've seen for charter cities leave policing to the locality they're residing in.
Many nation states don't have control over interest rates (because their central banks are run independently of the government) or even the ability to print money, if they have adopted another currency.[0]
> Mandatory taxes
States typically tax transactions which happen on their territory (e.g. wages and sales), and in the case of Apple, their devices are their territory, like feudally controlled tracts of land in cyberspace. Taking a cut of all app sales and in-app purchases seems very much like a tax under this analogy.
>Many nation states don't have control over interest rates
And many others do. The State can abdicate such power and it usually does in stable economies where markets can self regulate.
Given a big enough crisis, however, and the State will usually take that power back.
>or even the ability to print money, if they have adopted another currency.
Usually in cases of near total State bankruptcy
>Taking a cut of all app sales and in-app purchases seems very much like a tax under this analogy.
> I don't have to do business with them or interact with them in any way if I don't want to. I don't need Apple's permission to do anything unrelated to their product lines... Same is true for any megacorporation
Nope. You can avoid buying an iphone, but you cannot escape Google. I'm often forced to "do business" with google. I've seen several government websites that require code hosted on Google's servers. I need Google's permission to do all kinds of things unrelated to their service (reCAPTCHA) and google will track everywhere you go online even if you never use any of their services. Facebook also doesn't give you any option. They'll create a profile for you and start collecting data on you even if you've never created an account. You could argue that you pay these companies taxes in the form of your data rather than money, or that the fees they charge developers drive up consumer prices (acting as a tax on the purchases), and I suspect that should Apple/Google pay become more commonplace they will start charging a fee (tax) for that as well. Nothing stops them from doing it.
Some corporations even have their own literal armies (Blackwater/Xe/Academi), but others don't bother because they have the ability to command the police and military wherever they are. The RIAA have their own "swat" team. They participate directly in raids breaking down doors and handling evidence.
Companies like Apple and Google are far more invasive than police watching everything you do, listening to everything you say, recording every person you're in contact with. They censor and ban with impunity. If they really wanted to, they could plant data on your devices that would get you arrested and thrown in prison in any country around the globe.
corporations might not yet be as powerful as a nation state, but they're a lot closer than you give them credit for, and they likely have more direct influence on your day to day life and what happens to you.
No, they're nowhere close to being a nation state. Those spheres of power are nothing compared to something like the British East India Company, which had a currency, an army, and forcefully controlled almost 2 million sq. km. of Asia.
Captchas are definitely worthy of criticism, but they are not remotely on the same level as forcefully controlling the land under someone's feet.
The Knights Templar were a religious organisation, but also a quasi-banking institution in Europe; they took and protected deposits of gold, and issued 'cheques' allowing, for example, travellers to deposit gold in London and spend the money in Southern Europe. They were dissolved because they were beginning to rival the Papacy and nations in power due to their immense wealth.
Also, few know this, but many African slaves who were victims of the slave trade became slaves due to debt-slavery (though this didn't involve formal banks). I've seen estimates of up to 25% of slaves back then having been debt-slaves.
Yes! I had heard a bit about the Knights Templar, I guess I would have categorized them as religious first, financial/governance functions second. But also the Order of Malta had quite a lot of power, to the point I believe that it is still recognized by the UN!
I hadn't realized that about African slaves; debt for what?
the ones that only service other banks hence only people working in higher level banking are likely to have heard about. e.g. the bank for international settlements
I only found out about this bank because the former president of the mexican central bank -- Mr. Carstens, left the central banking gig to go to that bank.
From reading their Wikipedia quickly sounds like BIS has a similar function to say the IMF when it comes to financial system stability. I do agree these sorts of organizations exert huge amounts of influence, especially for smaller countries that are dependent on loans and outside financing, but I'm not sure I agree they are more powerful than a nation itself. A nation can (theoretically) decide to opt out from these systems and operate independently, or can play different parties funded by nations (because in the end they all are working for someone's agenda) off of one another as many countries did during the cold war between the U.S. and Soviet Union. But if a nation reneges on its debt, the BIS, IMF, etc. isn't going to invade your country--one of it's creditor nations might, but not them.
The BIS is just a counterparty to facilitate payments between nations. It doesn't exert influence in international affairs (except really via the BCBS [1] which sets the Basel capital accords defining how much capital banks have to hold and therefore does have a lot of influence behind the scenes on how banks operate anyway). When the US says it's going to give $100m in aid to some country or one country pays back a debt to another country, there needs to be someone to process the payment, and that someone is the BIS.
Source: friend used to work in the BIS and I've also been involved in banking off and on for a long time, including dealing with various international banking regulators.
Some fun BIS facts:
1) They process payments via regular SWIFT[2] messages. So the $100m in aid comes as a message just the same as if you transfer $5 from one bank account to another. It has an IBAN number with a regular bank account, so if you changed that to your own account details and the message was processed suddenly $100m would appear in your checking account instead of going fund an aid programme for some government in Africa or whatnot.
2) The number of payments they process is very low (>100 per day max and usually in the low tens of messages) so every payment message is checked by hand by several independent people as well as having automated checks. Partly to avoid the risk of funds getting sent to the wrong places etc.
3) My friend worked there in the 90s and said that even back then they had extremely strong security with multifactor biometrics on every entry to the premises. You got in via an entrance where you had to step into a cylander which would only unlock after it had taken multiple photos including an iris scan
Based on their history of using their control over the App Store to "protect people" from such harmful content as content about how smartphones are made in sweatshops and tools (such as VPN clients, but also for a long time cryptocurrency wallets) that allow people to bypass restrictions put in place by these nation states that Apple works with, I'd claim these incentives are pretty shit :(.
Apple is a public corporation and votes on its corporate direction are freely available on the open market for anyone to purchase. Based on my share ownership Apple is much more subject to my whims than my actual elected politicians are on a % basis.
on the other hand, this is how democracy dies. what structures (systems) exist to prevent apple (and other comparable corporations) from being an oppresive force against human persons? moreover, what incentives do they have?