You see Neoliberalism is also a form of Authoritarianism, or more precisely it’s a way of transforming Democracy into Oligarchy.
And it’s actually quite simple if subtle:
In Capitalist Democractic countries there are two main forms of power: the State, whose leaders are elected by a vote were all citizens are the same and count the same (ideally, in practice not really) and Money which buys all kinds of things, including better treatment by the Justice System and which is an incredibly uneven power.
Neoliberalism is all about the State removing itself from the Markets, i.e. the place were Money operates and which impacts even the basic needs of people. This goes as far as the State removing itself from the provision or even regulation of the provision of life essentials: water, food, housing. Neoliberalism sells itself as Meritocratic yet strongly defends anti-meritocratic mechanisms such as private elite schools (were it’s money that buys entry, not merit) and which you can see from the experience in the UK (which has been doing it thus for almost a century) just serve to entrench power in the same segments of society across generations and collapse Social Mobility to pretty much zero.
In other words, Neoliberalism wants to reduce to meaniglessness the Power within Democracy which is controlled by people elected via a system were all citizens have roughly the same power, leaving only a single Power in action, that of Money whose control is so uneven that some people have billions of times more power than others, an inballance only beaten by that of Kings vs Peasants in the deepest darkest of Middle Age’s Feudalism.
The effect is achieved via the capture, subversion and/or nullification of the mechanisms of the State within Democracy rather bloody revolution, and people are kept in their place using techniques from Modern Psychology and Marketing to prey on human cognitive weaknesses (tribalism, information overload, emotion-driven action, familiarity, halo effect and so many others) rather than force (though at times, that too: look at how Obama suppressed Occupy Wall Street) but ultimatelly it anchores itself on the same principles.
And if you look around with a different perspective you see a lot of the things from John Oliver’s segment:
The institution which is the Press was not taken over by the State using force, it was simply bought with money.
The Judiciary in the US has long been subverted by the Political power nominating the Supreme Court Judges, breaking the independence between these supposedly independent pillars of Democracy
The demonised enemy has changed over time, in order: communists, middle easterns, terrorists, the other half of the US (yeah, the Identity Wars really perfectly allow both “sides” to give their bases a perfect enemy on the bases of the other side).
The Projection of Strength is the US’ hyper-nationalism and militarism (cultivated by both “sides”), with near constant military interventions abroad, both under Republican and Democrat presidents.
From this pespective the fight in the US is not between leftwing and rightwing, not even close, it’s between Oligarchy and Fascism. It is thus unsurprising how so many Americans feel powerless: they are powerless as the fight is really between two different models of Power were wealthy elites control everything and hence it’s mainly a fight between two side of the elites were the rest are but pawns.
You see Neoliberalism is also a form of Authoritarianism, or more precisely it’s a way of transforming Democracy into Oligarchy.
Which is why people rolled the dice on Trump - b/c the only other alternative was Hillary Clinton, so people chose to play Russian Roulette rather than that known quantity.
I need to update the words I use - e.g. I have been calling that “plutocracy”, but yeah neoliberalism seems to mean essentially the same thing? In the end at least. I really don’t like that word though, b/c it is basically the polar opposite of “liberal” - which I think is perhaps by design, as in describing people who present themselves as “liberal” but by virtue of being “neoliberal” they are the opposite.
That aside though, I also do not like it b/c that leads to a word creep, b/c what will come after that - post-neoliberalism? Nouveau-neoliberalism? :-) We are seeing the same effect with neoconservatism as well - as in, what the hell does it even mean!? And especially, how is neoconservatism any different from neoliberalism, especially when both devolve to mean the same thing as plutocracy!?
Wording aside though, absolutely yes: press bought with money, check, judiciary too, check (though it arguably took longer, and I think not strictly speaking in the precise manner in which you said but… yes, there’s no use quibbling intricacies when it amounts to the same end of agreement).
What did you think of the CGP Grey’s Rules for Rulers video? If you have any suggestions for a video to watch after that one, I am interested. That one messed me up, emotionally, and I still am not past it, b/c it highlights, as you said, that there IS no fixing this - this is simply how it is going to be, from now on. The Golden Era in the USA that, regardless of whether it truly even existed (expecially for e.g. black people), is definitely over. As soon as corporations started to amass more power than people could ever hope to - e.g. people die, and have to breathe, eat, sleep, etc., but corporations have special exemptions that give them super-human status, essentially making them Giants in the land of us mere pawn-style Humans. Even the CEOs of those institutions are helpless before their might, if the Board of Directors were to want to get rid of them.
We are fast becoming slaves to corporations, and while government was the only thing rivaling their strength, the power of misinformation seems to be reducing those hallowed institutions to weak ghosts of their former selves, or rather more like a cancer patient, barely able to move their arms a bit and even that ability fast waning until there will soon be nothing left. The wasps have laid eggs in the brain of this caterpillar, and when they finish hatching and eating us from the inside there will be nothing left. Nor will revolution likely work, when they have all of nukes and drones on their side and the rest of the people have… what, possibly slightly better AI? Even which weapons will end up being used in that fight seem to have not yet been defined.
At this point, maybe we should put all our hope into the EU to save democracy? :-P But if so, it won’t be for everyone, and I think the USA is probably too far gone… :-(
Yeah, that’s exactly what I think happenned in the US to elect Trump.
Agree that the words do not mean what they seem, but then again what else is new: NAZI stands for National Socialist German Workers’ Party and at least 2 of those things are the opposite of what they really stood for. The misnaming of political parties and ideologies is probably a hill not worth dying on, IMHO.
I like and agree with the Rules for Rulers video, though I think it oversimplifies things, especially in Democracies: if it was that simple, why is there such a massive difference in median quality of life and wealth between the US and, say, Sweden or why has oil-rich Norway not turned in to a Dictatorship, or why the difference between present day US and 1960s US - same country, same rules, yet hugelly different wealth distribution, quality of life and social mobility levels.
Clearly there are a lot more factors at least in Democracy.
Not that I think that video is wrong - I can actually see a lot of that in my own country both before and after Fascism was overthrown - I just think it’s not enough to explain everything.
Can’t really recomend any other videos: I’ve built my views on politics from reading a lot in quite a number of subjects (Finance, Behavioural Economics, Psychology, Mathematics and so on) as well as crossed with my life experience including membership in political parties. I don’t think this is easilly replicable and it would most definitelly not fit a couple of videos, which given the very pressures of seeking Youtube views and aimed for audience means the videos by need be very simplified views of reality.
As for Corporations, never forget that they do not have a will of their own - it’s all people doing the choices behind the veil of the corporation and those choices are made for the personal upside maximization of those people, even if only indirectly (which is why you see massive CEO payouts when it’s seldom in the best interest of the corporation). IMHO, the personification of corporation is a trick in Modern Capitalism meant to help deflect the blame away from the decision-makers within the corporation to the corporate entity itself, which is how for example a CEO of an airplane maker can decide to cut corners in the building of their planes, leading to hundreds of avoidable deaths, and yet instead of the CEO ending up in jail for Manslaughter it’s the company that ends up paying a fine - the system all the way through levels of the State such as the Legislative and Judiciary are set-up to stop certain elite from getting punished in the same way as non-elites would and the Press often cooperates by going on and on about the Corporation itself and never mention the CEO(s) who made the decision.
(I suspect that the solution for the current problems with corporations is simply going after the individuals themselves making the decisions in the name of the corporations. I’m probably not the only one who thinks so, which is why you often see people on the Internet advocating for prision sentences for CEOs of corporations for the crimes who for public consumption are attributed to the corporations)
I would be more worried about dynastic hold on Power and Money than explicitly about corporation, as corporations are simply agents and façades for those holding power.
Plutocracy means what it says it means - so not all words have be designed poorly, it is we who allow them to get away with it. Then again, how are we going to go to the nazis and tell them to change the name they use to refer to themselves?:-P On the other hand, we could call them what they are: fascists.
You asked why there is such a difference b/t Sweden vs. the USA, and I think the answer is simple: the former is a democracy, whereas the latter is not. The latter calls itself one, but that is merely a convenient fiction for something that is more trule rather a plutocracy. I don’t know how Norway has managed to remain so awesome - it has truly been a sight to behold though:-).
Back to the USA, the difference as I mentioned was the rise of “corporations” in the late 1970s: prior to that, if someone owned a “company”, like Mr. Smith’s paper mill, and he did something bad, then they could come and take it from him, plus also his actual house. However nowadays those limited liability organizations allow him to do whatever he pleases, confident that the LLC (Limited Liability Corporation) will take the fall, while he retains all of the privileges. At the highest levels, someone can live the lifestyle of a FABULOUSLY wealthy person - driving the best cars, flying around to their private jets and traveling not by car but by helicopter to & from it, to their personal private building where they live in the penthouse suites, eating the best foodstuffs and sampling all the best products, all while the corporation pays the taxes - at a significantly lower rate than a human being would - and shoulders all the liability concerns. And sure, occasionally they will pay the human a million dollars here or there, but that is a pittance compared to the multimillion-dollar lifestyle they live in perpetuity, offered by the corporation. We created these legal fictions to exist “above” us, we the people, and now they live… above us, while we suffer along barely able to eat.
Anyway that Rules for Rulers video was never meant to explain everything, just one of the various rules - i.e. it helps people to avoid falling into one of the various common traps.
I disagree about corporations though: the USA Supreme Court itself has stipulated that “corporations are people”, and moreover they are abstract entities that exist semi-independently from humans. Yes, humans are involved, but like cells in a body, whereas the corporation is more than the sum of all of them combined. e.g. if a CEO dies, it can be replaced, while the corporation moves ever onwards. Sometimes it may act in accordance aligned perfectly with the will of a particular CEO, but other times not - e.g. if the Board directs otherwise. It is not the only such entity, human families may act likewise: sometimes a dad may be in charge, other times a mom, still other times the children take the lead, e.g. perhaps they are put in charge of deciding where the entire family will go for a vacation; and there too the components are replacable, e.g. if a father dies and a step-father comes in to fill the gap, but the “family” abstract entity will go on, never quite being the same, but then again it’s never the same from one year to the next in any case.
But getting back to corporations: they DO have a will, and that will is to seek profits, at any cost. Like a zombie constantly eating flesh, even picking up the food that fell out of its own deteriorated body that could not hold it, a corporation just nom-noms forever, regardless of whether it has been successful or failed in the past, it always marches on towards the direction of profits. Though, like the human abstract concept of “family”, yes it too receives input from its component parts, even as it also takes on a semi-independence beyond that as well. I probably am horribly botching this explanation, b/c it almost sounds like I am disagreeing with you, but what I am intending is to say that corporations are not solely limited to being made up of humans: they also have something inherent within themselves. For example, if the exact same humans within an LLC would behave differently in a non-LLC, where they could be held personally responsible for their actions, then that is the difference that the “corporation” aspect made.
Though yeah, you do bring up a valid point about things that work against the interests of the corporation as a whole. Just like humans who drink or do drugs and harm the whole entire body - freedom is a bitch, which offers benefits & detractions both. The legal fiction of corporations have given those giants “abilities” that humans do not have, but somehow people never got around to doing much to place “restrictions” upon those super-persons - like a human cannot murder another human, so why are corporations allowed to do things like hostile take-overs? And yes, pay their CEOs enormous compensation packages that hurt the corporation overall - should that be allowable, or does that additional “freedom” hurt society, as well as all the humans within the corporation, to a greater degree than it provides any benefits? The EU is placing restrictions upon corporations, and the USA used to do things like have anti-trust lawsuits to hold back the likes of Microsoft e.g. in the infamous browser wars of the 90s, but ever since such laws have not been enforced, making the restrictions weaker and effectively no longer present - inept and hobbled - by design of course.
i.e. that “trick in Modern Capitalism” is on purpose, by those who wish to make use of those tricks, hence put them into the law to begin with, and constantly fiddle with the laws to keep them and tune them further towards their liking.
I do disagree though that corporations are nothing to worry about - they might have been such when they were first growing up, but now their might literally rivals that of many countries, and furthermore they are starting to hollow out the actual governments of literal nations in order to control them parasitically from within. Imagine a man holding a sword and also a small knife - yes the abstract idea of a “corporation” may only be the sword, and yes he still has a small knife (plus whatever other tricks up his sleeve, including his own hands, feet, and whatever else), but even so… it would be foolish to ignore the sword that is currently pointed at you. Likewise, a literal child could pick up the sword and do GREAT damage with it (e.g. Elon Musk). So it is not that humans are dangerous and that corporations are not, it is that both offer their unique challenges, as well as tbf probably some benefits to society as well. However, the balance seems to have been lost, just like with guns in the USA, wherever everyone and their brother can run around with them unchecked, and despite how many people continue to die on a DAILY basis (including literal fucking CHILDREN!!!), those who enjoy using (read: abusing) the power of such do not want limitations or restrictions to be placed upon them, and in fact continue to work to remove those whenever possible.
e.g. Trump - among many other things - lowered the budgets of the organizations that police fraud (the Securities and Exchange Commission), and what you are allowed to get away with saying on television (FCC), and regulations on what train companies must uphold. Therefore now, mere months later to watch MULTIPLE train derailments happen across the nation… strains credibility to think that those deregulation events and the subsequent derailments are entirely unconnected. i.e. humans, using corporations, reach into the realm of government and alter the rules to work better for those Giants and less well for mere Humans overall. And since corporations control such a large fraction of the wealth in this country, which can pass between humans even when they die, they seem to be taking on an increasingly prominent role in Western society. Not entirely but semi-independently of the humans that run them. e.g. even if all of the current CEOs were to die, and even if we threw in all forms of all upper management, then just how much would it do, really, to stem the evil tide of greed that they push upon us, when their whole entire and literal purpose in being is to generate profits, with no real restrictions on “ethics” or even things like “sustainability” that affect profits in a more long-term rather than strictly short-term sense? The adult dies, a child picks up the sword, and continues the trend - at some point the issue is the sword-wielder, but at another level of abstraction it is the sword itself? Therefore perhaps restrictions should be placed upon it, e.g. you perhaps should not be allowed to draw out a sword when you are in the presence of valuable things like museums or schools or in the company of a king - they have their uses, in the proper time & place, but why should anarchy reign supreme in all places, just b/c those who have chosen to become sword-wielders say that it should?
I’ve worked in all sizes of company, including major corporations.
Internally they’re a mess of interests, the carrot of money and the stick of dismissal mostly keeping people in line but those tools only work for things that can be measured (and there are oh so many ways to put one’s personal upsides above the company’s with little or no risk of detection) and mainly for people who have little power (upper management has long figured out ways to subvert the supposed surveillace of the board).
At the most you could compare Corporations to the Mafia - the aggregated pressures of the interests, punishement and rewards mechanisms within them means certain things when wished by those with enough power get executed, but it’s still the the bosses choosing who gets wacked: they’re mechanisms for execution of somebody’s will (mainly the owners and high level management) but they don’t actually chose what gets executed.
Personal legal liability would both remove the de facto immunity of the decision makers within corporation and the willingness of those in the machinery of the corporation to execute actions which are illegal, but as you so well pointed out the laws that created this form of corporation have been created exactly for corporations to operate as they do and keep getting adjusted to keep things the same.
(Also note how immunity for people within the mechanism which is the State works in pretty much the same way as with corporations. Actually in my professional experience the internal social and behavioural patterns that sit behind so many of the problems pointed out in the Public Sector are exactly the same in Private companies which have Monopoly or Cartel market positions - it’s just how humans behave in a content of having power with weak oversight, which in the case of the Private sector happens when a company has no real competition and can thus grow fat and lazy)
I would say that corporations should be seen and treated as explosives: something that can be used to do good things but which also gives those who want to do harm the means to do so. In this framework corporations by themselves would have no legal power or personhood because they would be treated as just tools and it would be those yielding those tools who get the full responsability.
Instead you see neoliberals (i.e the plutocrats) doing the exact opposite: corporations are treated as better and more important than people and we’re constantly getting told by those politicians about how important it is to do what’s “better for businesses”, never ever with the condition that only businesses which are good for people will get our support.
But then there are two main vehicles - these days - to power: government and money. In the olden days, there used to be physical strength, but what can compare with e.g. the powers of nukes & greed? Democratic governments, when implemented correctly, provide an internal system of checks & balances, and forces people (like HRC) to still try to, or at least make a minimally-convincing outward appearance of, competing against their “opponents”. Corporations, on the other hand, just have to keep raking in the dough, and quite frankly as we saw with Reddit not even that really.
Also, for all the mouth-noises that people make about “voting with your wallets” - how can a normal, non-Giant human being “vote” when it comes to going toe-to-toe with the big Giants? Even Elon Musk strongly leveraged Tesla in order to purchase Twitter X. Like if we e.g. wanted to see more space exploration, I suppose “all we have to do” is pull ourselves up by our boostraps and go there, beating out the likes of Bezos & Musk etc. along the way, i.e. somehow do MOAR than them, b/c when they went they had the actual help of the USA government, but now we are supposed to do it against the gradient of their anti-competitive business practices? Those quoted phrases are “alternative facts” lies.
Government at least can exist without the might of corporate greed digging into it. And even if not quite yet, soon corporations will be able to exist independently of governments as well - e.g. when AI comes more to fruition and workforces are no longer needed. Though personal slaves workers may still hold some appeal, for awhile, until they too can be replaced. By virtue of tying a democratic government to the welfare of its constituents, however loosely, I still think democracy aka oligarchy wins out over corporations that exist solely to feed their capitalistic greed, in terms of morality. If only just barely. Therefore I like your analogies e.g. about explosives:-) - some people do not want to have any restrictions placed upon them whatsoever, but those tend to be the absolute worst people of all, in any system (government or business):-(.
You see Neoliberalism is also a form of Authoritarianism, or more precisely it’s a way of transforming Democracy into Oligarchy.
And it’s actually quite simple if subtle:
The effect is achieved via the capture, subversion and/or nullification of the mechanisms of the State within Democracy rather bloody revolution, and people are kept in their place using techniques from Modern Psychology and Marketing to prey on human cognitive weaknesses (tribalism, information overload, emotion-driven action, familiarity, halo effect and so many others) rather than force (though at times, that too: look at how Obama suppressed Occupy Wall Street) but ultimatelly it anchores itself on the same principles.
And if you look around with a different perspective you see a lot of the things from John Oliver’s segment:
From this pespective the fight in the US is not between leftwing and rightwing, not even close, it’s between Oligarchy and Fascism. It is thus unsurprising how so many Americans feel powerless: they are powerless as the fight is really between two different models of Power were wealthy elites control everything and hence it’s mainly a fight between two side of the elites were the rest are but pawns.
Which is why people rolled the dice on Trump - b/c the only other alternative was Hillary Clinton, so people chose to play Russian Roulette rather than that known quantity.
I need to update the words I use - e.g. I have been calling that “plutocracy”, but yeah neoliberalism seems to mean essentially the same thing? In the end at least. I really don’t like that word though, b/c it is basically the polar opposite of “liberal” - which I think is perhaps by design, as in describing people who present themselves as “liberal” but by virtue of being “neoliberal” they are the opposite.
That aside though, I also do not like it b/c that leads to a word creep, b/c what will come after that - post-neoliberalism? Nouveau-neoliberalism? :-) We are seeing the same effect with neoconservatism as well - as in, what the hell does it even mean!? And especially, how is neoconservatism any different from neoliberalism, especially when both devolve to mean the same thing as plutocracy!?
Wording aside though, absolutely yes: press bought with money, check, judiciary too, check (though it arguably took longer, and I think not strictly speaking in the precise manner in which you said but… yes, there’s no use quibbling intricacies when it amounts to the same end of agreement).
What did you think of the CGP Grey’s Rules for Rulers video? If you have any suggestions for a video to watch after that one, I am interested. That one messed me up, emotionally, and I still am not past it, b/c it highlights, as you said, that there IS no fixing this - this is simply how it is going to be, from now on. The Golden Era in the USA that, regardless of whether it truly even existed (expecially for e.g. black people), is definitely over. As soon as corporations started to amass more power than people could ever hope to - e.g. people die, and have to breathe, eat, sleep, etc., but corporations have special exemptions that give them super-human status, essentially making them Giants in the land of us mere pawn-style Humans. Even the CEOs of those institutions are helpless before their might, if the Board of Directors were to want to get rid of them.
We are fast becoming slaves to corporations, and while government was the only thing rivaling their strength, the power of misinformation seems to be reducing those hallowed institutions to weak ghosts of their former selves, or rather more like a cancer patient, barely able to move their arms a bit and even that ability fast waning until there will soon be nothing left. The wasps have laid eggs in the brain of this caterpillar, and when they finish hatching and eating us from the inside there will be nothing left. Nor will revolution likely work, when they have all of nukes and drones on their side and the rest of the people have… what, possibly slightly better AI? Even which weapons will end up being used in that fight seem to have not yet been defined.
At this point, maybe we should put all our hope into the EU to save democracy? :-P But if so, it won’t be for everyone, and I think the USA is probably too far gone… :-(
Yeah, that’s exactly what I think happenned in the US to elect Trump.
Agree that the words do not mean what they seem, but then again what else is new: NAZI stands for National Socialist German Workers’ Party and at least 2 of those things are the opposite of what they really stood for. The misnaming of political parties and ideologies is probably a hill not worth dying on, IMHO.
I like and agree with the Rules for Rulers video, though I think it oversimplifies things, especially in Democracies: if it was that simple, why is there such a massive difference in median quality of life and wealth between the US and, say, Sweden or why has oil-rich Norway not turned in to a Dictatorship, or why the difference between present day US and 1960s US - same country, same rules, yet hugelly different wealth distribution, quality of life and social mobility levels.
Clearly there are a lot more factors at least in Democracy.
Not that I think that video is wrong - I can actually see a lot of that in my own country both before and after Fascism was overthrown - I just think it’s not enough to explain everything.
Can’t really recomend any other videos: I’ve built my views on politics from reading a lot in quite a number of subjects (Finance, Behavioural Economics, Psychology, Mathematics and so on) as well as crossed with my life experience including membership in political parties. I don’t think this is easilly replicable and it would most definitelly not fit a couple of videos, which given the very pressures of seeking Youtube views and aimed for audience means the videos by need be very simplified views of reality.
As for Corporations, never forget that they do not have a will of their own - it’s all people doing the choices behind the veil of the corporation and those choices are made for the personal upside maximization of those people, even if only indirectly (which is why you see massive CEO payouts when it’s seldom in the best interest of the corporation). IMHO, the personification of corporation is a trick in Modern Capitalism meant to help deflect the blame away from the decision-makers within the corporation to the corporate entity itself, which is how for example a CEO of an airplane maker can decide to cut corners in the building of their planes, leading to hundreds of avoidable deaths, and yet instead of the CEO ending up in jail for Manslaughter it’s the company that ends up paying a fine - the system all the way through levels of the State such as the Legislative and Judiciary are set-up to stop certain elite from getting punished in the same way as non-elites would and the Press often cooperates by going on and on about the Corporation itself and never mention the CEO(s) who made the decision.
(I suspect that the solution for the current problems with corporations is simply going after the individuals themselves making the decisions in the name of the corporations. I’m probably not the only one who thinks so, which is why you often see people on the Internet advocating for prision sentences for CEOs of corporations for the crimes who for public consumption are attributed to the corporations)
I would be more worried about dynastic hold on Power and Money than explicitly about corporation, as corporations are simply agents and façades for those holding power.
Plutocracy means what it says it means - so not all words have be designed poorly, it is we who allow them to get away with it. Then again, how are we going to go to the nazis and tell them to change the name they use to refer to themselves?:-P On the other hand, we could call them what they are: fascists.
You asked why there is such a difference b/t Sweden vs. the USA, and I think the answer is simple: the former is a democracy, whereas the latter is not. The latter calls itself one, but that is merely a convenient fiction for something that is more trule rather a plutocracy. I don’t know how Norway has managed to remain so awesome - it has truly been a sight to behold though:-).
Back to the USA, the difference as I mentioned was the rise of “corporations” in the late 1970s: prior to that, if someone owned a “company”, like Mr. Smith’s paper mill, and he did something bad, then they could come and take it from him, plus also his actual house. However nowadays those limited liability organizations allow him to do whatever he pleases, confident that the LLC (Limited Liability Corporation) will take the fall, while he retains all of the privileges. At the highest levels, someone can live the lifestyle of a FABULOUSLY wealthy person - driving the best cars, flying around to their private jets and traveling not by car but by helicopter to & from it, to their personal private building where they live in the penthouse suites, eating the best foodstuffs and sampling all the best products, all while the corporation pays the taxes - at a significantly lower rate than a human being would - and shoulders all the liability concerns. And sure, occasionally they will pay the human a million dollars here or there, but that is a pittance compared to the multimillion-dollar lifestyle they live in perpetuity, offered by the corporation. We created these legal fictions to exist “above” us, we the people, and now they live… above us, while we suffer along barely able to eat.
Anyway that Rules for Rulers video was never meant to explain everything, just one of the various rules - i.e. it helps people to avoid falling into one of the various common traps.
I disagree about corporations though: the USA Supreme Court itself has stipulated that “corporations are people”, and moreover they are abstract entities that exist semi-independently from humans. Yes, humans are involved, but like cells in a body, whereas the corporation is more than the sum of all of them combined. e.g. if a CEO dies, it can be replaced, while the corporation moves ever onwards. Sometimes it may act in accordance aligned perfectly with the will of a particular CEO, but other times not - e.g. if the Board directs otherwise. It is not the only such entity, human families may act likewise: sometimes a dad may be in charge, other times a mom, still other times the children take the lead, e.g. perhaps they are put in charge of deciding where the entire family will go for a vacation; and there too the components are replacable, e.g. if a father dies and a step-father comes in to fill the gap, but the “family” abstract entity will go on, never quite being the same, but then again it’s never the same from one year to the next in any case.
But getting back to corporations: they DO have a will, and that will is to seek profits, at any cost. Like a zombie constantly eating flesh, even picking up the food that fell out of its own deteriorated body that could not hold it, a corporation just nom-noms forever, regardless of whether it has been successful or failed in the past, it always marches on towards the direction of profits. Though, like the human abstract concept of “family”, yes it too receives input from its component parts, even as it also takes on a semi-independence beyond that as well. I probably am horribly botching this explanation, b/c it almost sounds like I am disagreeing with you, but what I am intending is to say that corporations are not solely limited to being made up of humans: they also have something inherent within themselves. For example, if the exact same humans within an LLC would behave differently in a non-LLC, where they could be held personally responsible for their actions, then that is the difference that the “corporation” aspect made.
Though yeah, you do bring up a valid point about things that work against the interests of the corporation as a whole. Just like humans who drink or do drugs and harm the whole entire body - freedom is a bitch, which offers benefits & detractions both. The legal fiction of corporations have given those giants “abilities” that humans do not have, but somehow people never got around to doing much to place “restrictions” upon those super-persons - like a human cannot murder another human, so why are corporations allowed to do things like hostile take-overs? And yes, pay their CEOs enormous compensation packages that hurt the corporation overall - should that be allowable, or does that additional “freedom” hurt society, as well as all the humans within the corporation, to a greater degree than it provides any benefits? The EU is placing restrictions upon corporations, and the USA used to do things like have anti-trust lawsuits to hold back the likes of Microsoft e.g. in the infamous browser wars of the 90s, but ever since such laws have not been enforced, making the restrictions weaker and effectively no longer present - inept and hobbled - by design of course.
i.e. that “trick in Modern Capitalism” is on purpose, by those who wish to make use of those tricks, hence put them into the law to begin with, and constantly fiddle with the laws to keep them and tune them further towards their liking.
I do disagree though that corporations are nothing to worry about - they might have been such when they were first growing up, but now their might literally rivals that of many countries, and furthermore they are starting to hollow out the actual governments of literal nations in order to control them parasitically from within. Imagine a man holding a sword and also a small knife - yes the abstract idea of a “corporation” may only be the sword, and yes he still has a small knife (plus whatever other tricks up his sleeve, including his own hands, feet, and whatever else), but even so… it would be foolish to ignore the sword that is currently pointed at you. Likewise, a literal child could pick up the sword and do GREAT damage with it (e.g. Elon Musk). So it is not that humans are dangerous and that corporations are not, it is that both offer their unique challenges, as well as tbf probably some benefits to society as well. However, the balance seems to have been lost, just like with guns in the USA, wherever everyone and their brother can run around with them unchecked, and despite how many people continue to die on a DAILY basis (including literal fucking CHILDREN!!!), those who enjoy using (read: abusing) the power of such do not want limitations or restrictions to be placed upon them, and in fact continue to work to remove those whenever possible.
e.g. Trump - among many other things - lowered the budgets of the organizations that police fraud (the Securities and Exchange Commission), and what you are allowed to get away with saying on television (FCC), and regulations on what train companies must uphold. Therefore now, mere months later to watch MULTIPLE train derailments happen across the nation… strains credibility to think that those deregulation events and the subsequent derailments are entirely unconnected. i.e. humans, using corporations, reach into the realm of government and alter the rules to work better for those Giants and less well for mere Humans overall. And since corporations control such a large fraction of the wealth in this country, which can pass between humans even when they die, they seem to be taking on an increasingly prominent role in Western society. Not entirely but semi-independently of the humans that run them. e.g. even if all of the current CEOs were to die, and even if we threw in all forms of all upper management, then just how much would it do, really, to stem the evil tide of greed that they push upon us, when their whole entire and literal purpose in being is to generate profits, with no real restrictions on “ethics” or even things like “sustainability” that affect profits in a more long-term rather than strictly short-term sense? The adult dies, a child picks up the sword, and continues the trend - at some point the issue is the sword-wielder, but at another level of abstraction it is the sword itself? Therefore perhaps restrictions should be placed upon it, e.g. you perhaps should not be allowed to draw out a sword when you are in the presence of valuable things like museums or schools or in the company of a king - they have their uses, in the proper time & place, but why should anarchy reign supreme in all places, just b/c those who have chosen to become sword-wielders say that it should?
I’ve worked in all sizes of company, including major corporations.
Internally they’re a mess of interests, the carrot of money and the stick of dismissal mostly keeping people in line but those tools only work for things that can be measured (and there are oh so many ways to put one’s personal upsides above the company’s with little or no risk of detection) and mainly for people who have little power (upper management has long figured out ways to subvert the supposed surveillace of the board).
At the most you could compare Corporations to the Mafia - the aggregated pressures of the interests, punishement and rewards mechanisms within them means certain things when wished by those with enough power get executed, but it’s still the the bosses choosing who gets wacked: they’re mechanisms for execution of somebody’s will (mainly the owners and high level management) but they don’t actually chose what gets executed.
Personal legal liability would both remove the de facto immunity of the decision makers within corporation and the willingness of those in the machinery of the corporation to execute actions which are illegal, but as you so well pointed out the laws that created this form of corporation have been created exactly for corporations to operate as they do and keep getting adjusted to keep things the same.
(Also note how immunity for people within the mechanism which is the State works in pretty much the same way as with corporations. Actually in my professional experience the internal social and behavioural patterns that sit behind so many of the problems pointed out in the Public Sector are exactly the same in Private companies which have Monopoly or Cartel market positions - it’s just how humans behave in a content of having power with weak oversight, which in the case of the Private sector happens when a company has no real competition and can thus grow fat and lazy)
I would say that corporations should be seen and treated as explosives: something that can be used to do good things but which also gives those who want to do harm the means to do so. In this framework corporations by themselves would have no legal power or personhood because they would be treated as just tools and it would be those yielding those tools who get the full responsability.
Instead you see neoliberals (i.e the plutocrats) doing the exact opposite: corporations are treated as better and more important than people and we’re constantly getting told by those politicians about how important it is to do what’s “better for businesses”, never ever with the condition that only businesses which are good for people will get our support.
But then there are two main vehicles - these days - to power: government and money. In the olden days, there used to be physical strength, but what can compare with e.g. the powers of nukes & greed? Democratic governments, when implemented correctly, provide an internal system of checks & balances, and forces people (like HRC) to still try to, or at least make a minimally-convincing outward appearance of, competing against their “opponents”. Corporations, on the other hand, just have to keep raking in the dough, and quite frankly as we saw with Reddit not even that really.
Also, for all the mouth-noises that people make about “voting with your wallets” - how can a normal, non-Giant human being “vote” when it comes to going toe-to-toe with the big Giants? Even Elon Musk strongly leveraged Tesla in order to purchase
TwitterX. Like if we e.g. wanted to see more space exploration, I suppose “all we have to do” is pull ourselves up by our boostraps and go there, beating out the likes of Bezos & Musk etc. along the way, i.e. somehow do MOAR than them, b/c when they went they had the actual help of the USA government, but now we are supposed to do it against the gradient of their anti-competitive business practices? Those quoted phrases are“alternative facts”lies.Government at least can exist without the might of corporate greed digging into it. And even if not quite yet, soon corporations will be able to exist independently of governments as well - e.g. when AI comes more to fruition and workforces are no longer needed. Though personal
slavesworkers may still hold some appeal, for awhile, until they too can be replaced. By virtue of tying a democratic government to the welfare of its constituents, however loosely, I still think democracy aka oligarchy wins out over corporations that exist solely to feed their capitalistic greed, in terms of morality. If only just barely. Therefore I like your analogies e.g. about explosives:-) - some people do not want to have any restrictions placed upon them whatsoever, but those tend to be the absolute worst people of all, in any system (government or business):-(.bUt ThE eCoNoMy ThOuGh! :-|