Comment Rather Bored (Score 1) 505
I'm not sure why I'm choosing to enter the ring on this rather non-news article, but why not?
On the mysterious source of this document, including its statistics, it was produced by ips which is a weak liberal think tank, the conservatives have their own think tanks that put out equally farcical thought. In the US thinktanks are where failed academics, retired military personnel/spies, and corparate leaders go to die.
The statistics are clearly labeled as coming from fortune magazine. Oooh the big bad corporations didn't want me to see this, so they hid it inside of the magazine instead of printing it on the cover.
I agree with many of the posters that the statistics are misleading. Comparing sales to gdp (which is made up of sales) is comparing orange juice to oranges. How about market cap? The capitilization of a all the stocks listed on all stock exchanges vs. the individual members. Does this sound silly? It is.
However, in the end, money = power, and the article was successful in saying that corporations have a lot of it (money, power, whatever). Is this a bad thing?
I personally would say corporations are no better or worse than governments (or people for that matter). The primary directive of corporations is profit. The primary directive of governments depends on the government. Think about what governments have done. The difference lies in responsibility. Governments are supposed to be responsible to their own people (they haven't been generally). Corporations are ultimately responsible to the free market, either through their share holders, or their customers who don't generally have to buy from the corporation. People are supposed to vote with their pocketbooks. If you care about dolphins don't eat tuna mixed with it. Or something.
Corporations evolved because they were absolutely neccessary. Once our economies had passed the stage of single artisans, some sort of legal agreement between consenting adults was neccessary to codify the new complex relationships between people working together to provide a good or service. How would single people produce and market a computer on a mass basis? There are what ~6.7 billion (I think) people, you can't expect that many people to live in villages and all buy their toothpaste and condoms from the local toothpaste and condom artisans (licensed members of their guild I'm sure). A corporation is just a piece of paper representing what was already in existance...
On the mysterious source of this document, including its statistics, it was produced by ips which is a weak liberal think tank, the conservatives have their own think tanks that put out equally farcical thought. In the US thinktanks are where failed academics, retired military personnel/spies, and corparate leaders go to die.
The statistics are clearly labeled as coming from fortune magazine. Oooh the big bad corporations didn't want me to see this, so they hid it inside of the magazine instead of printing it on the cover.
I agree with many of the posters that the statistics are misleading. Comparing sales to gdp (which is made up of sales) is comparing orange juice to oranges. How about market cap? The capitilization of a all the stocks listed on all stock exchanges vs. the individual members. Does this sound silly? It is.
However, in the end, money = power, and the article was successful in saying that corporations have a lot of it (money, power, whatever). Is this a bad thing?
I personally would say corporations are no better or worse than governments (or people for that matter). The primary directive of corporations is profit. The primary directive of governments depends on the government. Think about what governments have done. The difference lies in responsibility. Governments are supposed to be responsible to their own people (they haven't been generally). Corporations are ultimately responsible to the free market, either through their share holders, or their customers who don't generally have to buy from the corporation. People are supposed to vote with their pocketbooks. If you care about dolphins don't eat tuna mixed with it. Or something.
Corporations evolved because they were absolutely neccessary. Once our economies had passed the stage of single artisans, some sort of legal agreement between consenting adults was neccessary to codify the new complex relationships between people working together to provide a good or service. How would single people produce and market a computer on a mass basis? There are what ~6.7 billion (I think) people, you can't expect that many people to live in villages and all buy their toothpaste and condoms from the local toothpaste and condom artisans (licensed members of their guild I'm sure). A corporation is just a piece of paper representing what was already in existance...
