Rocag said:

---

Both of your examples (Bell Labs and Space X) are or were heavily dependent on government contracts and funding. Bell Labs was founded using money the French government awarded Alexander Graham Bell, for example. That isn't to say that human innovation is dependent on government funding, but a large number of the society changing technological advancements that have occurred in the last century probably would not have happened without it because the funding for that research might not have been available to begin with.

This also isn't to say that there haven't been many private sector discoveries that didn't include government funding, because there absolutely have been. The point here is that it is blatantly wrong to depict our modern world as solely the product of private capitalist systems. It's just not true.

---

So we all agree it's not Medicare, Medicaid, SNAP, and the welfare state creating these outcomes? Glad we're on the same page instead of off on some anti-capitalism tangent.

None of those created the technology that enables our modern way of life, no. But that was never a claim being made by me or anyone else in this thread. I do dispute that the increase in the standard of living of the poor in America is not at all a result of government programs aimed at assisting them. They obviously do benefit from these programs in a large number of ways.

Rocag said:

---

None of those created the technology that enables our modern way of life, no. But that was never a claim being made by me or anyone else in this thread. I do dispute that the increase in the standard of living of the poor in America is not at all a result of government programs aimed at assisting them. They obviously do benefit from these programs in a large number of ways.

---

Materially they're better off than ever before. That was the debate, even if there is an income disparity.

nothing is solely the product of anything. but funding something and doing something are not the same thing.

look, if the premise of government funding = innovation and growth were true, the USSR would have won and the US would not.

in the end, capital seeks returns, it flows to innovation and growth. this is the basic functioning premise of market economies.

the very best case governments can do is to funnel of capital away from short term ventures to equally profitable long-term ventures. in reality their ability to do this is incredibly lossy.

if the government had not funded these growth areas, they would have been funded anyway if they had value. part of your argument is circular - the government monopolizes a space, so the government has to fund everything in that space, so the government funding is critical to growth in that space.

see previous reply. the fact that the government monopolized space travel doesnt mean that space travel would never have happened without a private entity. the government gave nothing. it redistributed money from some people to others to achieve a desired result. that doesn't mean that desired result was the best thing to do, or even a good thing to do. note that this is the same function a market serves. the only real difference is that markets do it well, because freedom; and governments do not.

the best case argument for NASA is that they endured unnecessary capital losses (in a ideal sense) to pull technology forward before it truly had an investment case. the worst case is that it would have happened much faster without them. the truth is probably somewhere in the middle.

As a counter argument, some projects are just too big for anything short of a government to handle. Whether it's the Great Wall of China, the Roman road system, the Manhattan Project, NASA, or the Panama Canal. For all the societies involved, these were massively beneficial and profitable once completed. However, they required manpower and money that no private entity could every come up with. Maybe the British East India company could pull of something like that, but once a corporation gets that large it's pretty much a government anyway. That's why the British had to nationalize it eventually.

Edit: to me the only difference between a government and a corporate effort is to whom the entity is accountable. Corporations are accountable to shareholders, governments are accountable royalty, aristocrats, bureaus, or the public depending on the system. Assuming anyone is holding any of these organizations accountable at all, which is always a dicey proposition

Quote:

---

Maybe the British East India company could pull of something like that, but once a corporation gets that large it's pretty much a government anyway

---

well that's not very fair, is it? "once my thesis is disproved, it is invalid"

Quote:

---

Edit: to me the only difference between a government and a corporate effort is to whom the entity is accountable. Corporations are accountable to shareholders, governments are accountable royalty, aristocrats, bureaus, or the public depending on the system. Assuming anyone is holding any of these organizations accountable at all, which is always a dicey proposition

---

that's kind of like saying the only difference between a slave and an employee is that the employee is free. the distinction seems to matter to people.

Zobel said:

---

Quote:

---

Maybe the British East India company could pull of something like that, but once a corporation gets that large it's pretty much a government anyway

---

well that's not very fair, is it? "once my thesis is disproved, it is invalid"

Quote:

---

Edit: to me the only difference between a government and a corporate effort is to whom the entity is accountable. Corporations are accountable to shareholders, governments are accountable royalty, aristocrats, bureaus, or the public depending on the system. Assuming anyone is holding any of these organizations accountable at all, which is always a dicey proposition

---

that's kind of like saying the only difference between a slave and an employee is that the employee is free. the distinction seems to matter to people.

---

The East India Company conquered India and took over all government and ruling functions. It was literally India's government, just not an officially sanctioned one until the British Empire nationalized the company. So yes, performing all the functions of government makes you a government even if you call yourself a company and are responsible to shareholders.

Not sure your point in the second statement. In the US, the government is nominally beholden to the people's interest as a whole. A corporation is beholden to increasing the wealth of their shareholders. Given that, I would trust a government more than a corporation to improve public welfare, since that is literally the government's job. Not that I really see much practical difference, but at least governments must pretend to have virtue. A corporation is designed to be an entity driven only by greed, and any moral limitations on that greed are imposed by external factors. Hard to see any reason to hold that up as something virtuous or good

just because a company is large does not make it a government. i agree with you that whatever entity is governing whether de facto or de jure is the government. but that has nothing to do with size. government is simply the supreme power in the state.

there is nothing inherent to government that requires virtue. a good government is one that administers this power in the public interest, a bad government is one that dies it in its own interest. when a monarch governs for the common advantage we call them a king, when they're bad we call them a tyrant. when a small group govern for the common advantage it is an aristocracy (either because the best men rule or because they rule with a view to what is best for the state and its people) and when it is bad we call it an oligarchy. when the people govern the state collectively toward the common advantage it is a constitutional government, but when they do it for their own personal interest it is democracy.

the ideal state and the ideal corporation are identical in nature and differ only in object. both are partnerships of free men with some aim.

the state is a partnership of free men, families, and clans that aims to self-sufficiency, to the full and independent good life.

a corporation is a partnership of free men and may aim at any particular outcome, over any particular timeframe.

to do this a good state, or a good corporation, must exist for the sake of noble action, not merely acting in common. a bad state or bad corporation would exist for any other purpose.

(just cribbing aristotle's politics book 3 here).

that being said, the point i'm making is that in a free market, a corporation acts with freedom all around - it cannot force others or coerce them into joining its aims or ends. the government does not lack this ability.

Quote:

---

a corporation is a partnership of free men and may aim at any particular outcome, over any particular timeframe.

---

I was with until this part. Corporations exist only to enrich their stakeholders. If they can do that best by moral means, then they will. If they can do that best by immoral means, then they will. They are as fundamentally amoral as a computer program. This is as true today as the days of the first Dutch stock exchange.

Governments are monopolies of force. From a historical perspective you can certainly call them amoral entities. However, from the time of the American and French revolution onward most of the world agrees that governments should act in the best interest of their populations and improve the lives of everyone that lives under them. Nearly all at least pay lip service to the idea, and I'd say a large number, if not most, of these governments actually try to do that.

So in the 1600s I think you'd have a good argument that governments and corporations are equally amoral, but the standards and expectations for government have been raised by then. The standards for corporations are the same as they were in 1600. You can go back as recently as the Nuremburg trials after WW2. Many German corporations used forced labor from concentration camps, and they were prosecuted for this. However, they were all acquitted. Each executive argued that they would have been fired if they refused to use concentration camp labor, and the next person up would have used that forced labor anyway. The boards were acquitted because failing to use forced labor would have reduced profits and their shareholders could have ousted them only for the next board to do the evil deed. Basically, because it was legal and permissible, these corporations had a fiduciary duty to use forced, concentration camp labor.

neither governments or corporations are amoral entities because they are nothing more than the aggregated wills of their members.

for example - let's say your practice operates under an LLC. it serves only the purpose to enrich you, the sole stakeholder. does that mean it will do it by immoral means if that is expedient? no: because you would not do that. the principle doesn't change because the power is diffuse, it just makes it easier for people to tolerate.

Quote:

---

most of the world agrees that governments should act in the best interest of their populations and improve the lives of everyone that lives under them

---

i quoted you Aristotle's Politics with regard to the distinction between good and bad governance hinging on this very point. this is not a new idea.

A sole stakeholder compared to a corporation is a poor comparison. As a sole owner, I can't be fired or replaced. The only decisions that matter are mine. If I'm not making enough money, then no one can complain about that. A corporation is an entirely different animal. It exists to enrich shareholders, and if the shareholders aren't being enriched enough then the leadership gets fired and replaced. As in the example above, if your leadership team refuses to maximize profits by using forced labor, then the shareholders will replace them with leadership that will.

The only goal for the corporation is to maximize shareholder value, and every other concern or moral must come from an external place. In fact, voluntarily obeying any moral precept at all that lowers profits will hurt the corporation compared to any competition that ignores all moral precepts. If you refuse to bribe regulators to evade regulation, bribe legislators to get handouts, monopolize a market, or pay our workers slave wages, then your competition will do all those things and you're now out of business. Unregulated corporate competition is a full sprint to the dark depths of human depravity, because limited yourself to only good behavior hurts profits and runs you out of business.

It's only when non-stakeholders penalize the company that you see corporations display any kind of morality. That can be from government and laws, customers and boycotts, or workers and strikes. When corporations are punished for being immoral, indecent, or cruel, then it's no longer profitable to be those things. Any public good created by a company was created within the restrictions set by all of these groups, because otherwise you'd only end up with increased shareholder wealth.

Quote:

---

i quoted you Aristotle's Politics with regard to the distinction between good and bad governance hinging on this very point. this is not a new idea.

---

It's not a new idea, but it's a newly enforced idea. It's not an accident that people across the world saw the American and French revolutions and decided to revolt against their despotic governments. Every government in the world paints their enemies as despotic and tyrannical. We say this of China, Russia, North Korea and Iran, and they all same the exact same thing about us.

By contrast, all the nations of the world came together in 1947 and decided to acquit cooperate leaders that used concentration camp labor for profit. They all agreed that any corporation could not be held responsible for any action that improved profits and that was permitted and legal in their society. Because corporations are geared to shareholder value only, and they can't be expected to morally govern themselves.

Yeah, so godless secular governments think people lose responsibility if they can wash their personal agency and virtue through the skin suit of corporate and legal duty. I, of course, think that's absurd on the face of it.

Same with government action. Whatever the US government does, for better or worse, is the responsibility of each and every citizen. It's diffuse, but that doesn't make it not real.

Zobel said:

---

Yeah, so godless secular governments think people lose responsibility if they can wash their personal agency and virtue through the skin suit of corporate and legal duty. I, of course, think that's absurd on the face of it.

Same with government action. Whatever the US government does, for better or worse, is the responsibility of each and every citizen. It's diffuse, but that doesn't make it not real.

---

Good for you, I guess? It's not like you're refuting anything I'm saying. You're just choosing to disagree

It's not like corporations are bridge clubs or sewing circles. They exist for a purpose, and they have to compete against others to accomplish that. There's a reason that "en****tification" was the word of the year. Given the opportunity, a corporation will screw over their workers, their vendors, their customers, their partners, their country, their environment and their society if doing so will increase shareholder value. There is a "raise shareholder wealth by any means necessary" shaped hole at the top of every corporation, and they between competition and leadership turnover you end up with leadership that fits that hole.

Yeah, i'm choosing to disagree by rejecting the idea that "a corporation" does anything. a corporation is not a thing. it has no agency. it is nothing but a legal concept.

people do things.

people screw over their workers, their vendors, their customers, their partners, their country, their environment. not companies. and those people are responsible, not the legal fiction.

I tend to think of corporations and other organizations like governments, book clubs, and mobs as superorganisms. At some point, these things take on a life of their own that persists even if you completely swap out the constituent members. It's the ship of Theseus but with people swapping out instead of planks.

I agree with you that people should be responsible for their actions, and that playing a role in an organization should be no defense for bad behavior. I think all the leaders of Flick KG should have been convicted in the Nuremburg trials. However, our view is apparently and sadly in the minority. Those executives were acquitted, because their role in the organization required them to use forced labor. To really throw gas on this fire, our own Supreme Court just affirmed that US Presidents cannot be prosecuted for any criminal actions that they do as a part of their job as President. So their role in the organization of the US Government means they are not responsible for any potentially criminal actions they initiate.

i agree with the idea of a superorganism 100%. the fathers and apostles use this exact concept describing the church - the Body of Christ, with each of us as members, animated (made alive) by the Spirit of God.

any body of people like this will be animated by a spirit, and that is both transformative for the people as well as transformed by them. kind of mutual excitation. that spirit can absolutely be evil. superorganisms can be nations, companies, clubs, teams, governments.

i just don't think that removes individual agency. since we agree here, i think we should challenge that idea whenever we encounter it.

Seconded.