MNCs are like local governments levying property taxes.
e.g. you need a phone much like you have to live somewhere. Your "Tech Government" is determined by a highly constrained choice like your local civil government is determined by your zip code. Maybe you can move at great disruption and cost but it's only to the jurisdiction of another government and some variation of autocratic laws and taxes.
However, you have no vote and there is no pretence at serving your interests. You are not a citizen but cattle to be farmed... just maximal exploitation to please the mighty Mammon.
No? If your local government runs a surplus, that's sort-of equivalent to a profit (but not quite). Profits aren't equivalent to taxes. That's just silly.
So wrong. Every dollar that $FOO_COMPANY shovels to Google and Apple to spend on advertising is a dollar that you, the consumer, end up footing the bill for; a dollar that does not go towards improving the product you receive in any way whatsoever.
The advertising industry itself is a tax on the price of everything.
> [...] the consumer, end up footing the bill for; a dollar that does not go towards improving the product you receive in any way whatsoever.
Huh? You could make the same argument against providing free coffee for employees. Every dollar the company spends on coffee is one that they didn't spend on anything else..
And, obviously, ads go towards improving the improving the product I receive: without ads, I might have bought a different product or none at all.
Not all ad spend improves my experience, obviously, but neither does all spend on everything else. And I don't have to buy a product, if I don't like the ads.
Megacorps are adopting the level of competence of governments.
I see no contradiction here.
Any sources for that? From all the studies (and anecdotes) I've seen, MNCs are vastly more competent that most local companies, and the latter are also _usually_ still more competent than government.
> By and large, governments are still vastly less competent than multinational corporations.
I just agreed with them. Adopring the level of competence of governments, when governments are not competent, doesn't imply an upward movement.
Corporations do not force you to pay taxes YET. When the corporations get in total control and you cannot even vote just wait to see what a slave you are.
I don't live in the US, and don't pay taxes for that. Most of the things you mention aren't even public goods. (See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_good_(economics))
In any case, I grew up in Germany and have adopted Singapore as my home. And in comparison I am very happy that my overall tax rates here are perhaps a third of what they would be in Germany, while the services provided here are at least three times as good. (But the latter is subjective.)
Not incidentally, Singapore is perhaps the most well run city on the globe, and the place most run like an MNC.
> Corporations do not force you to pay taxes YET. When the corporations get in total control and you cannot even vote just wait to see what a slave you are.
Huh? That seems about as relevant as making an analogous argument against current real world governments by pointing out that someone might clone Stalin.
Yes, theoretically possible, but rather far-fetched.
https://www.npr.org/2015/03/29/395811510/how-singapore-becam...
"Some of the biggest sectors domestically — shipbuilding, electronics, banking, and now they're very involved in private banking — got their start because Lee Kuan Yew and the government specially directed state funds into those areas," Kurlantzick says.
The government also provided social services like housing and health care, in a way liberal economists applauded."
"He understood the politics of this very diverse place, and put together the laws, including the labor laws, that created a stable, peaceful place that multinationals were looking for," Lim says.
And it is good for you, but what about people who are not you?
"People live well, but the per capita GDP conceals a high level of inequality, so that is definitely a major issue in Singapore today and one of the things that the current prime minister has focused on," he says.
Aren't you answering your own objection there?
Is this something you know firsthand or something you think you know because a huge amount of money has gone into spreading that message for political purposes? Anyone who’s worked for or with a multi-national knows that they’re hardly as efficient as the marketing would have you believe, and anyone who’s looked at libertarian media knows that it’s almost entirely funded by rich people seeking tax & regulatory reductions, banking on you confusing their interests with your own.
Speaking of competence devoid of context misses the point. They are resembling each other greatly in the sense of misaligned incentives with their "users", which supersedes run-of-the-mill competence in terms of importance in this context. I'm not going to give points to some moron who is swimming competently in the wrong direction.
> MNCs also don't force you to pay taxes or buy their products.
An oddly naive comment given all that has been written about how Amazon operates, to give one example.
> Corporations as viewed from the inside are wildly incompetent [...]
Corporations have varying levels of efficiency. MNCs are by and large _fairly_ competent.
Of course, if you see them from the inside, there's still enough weird and incompetent stuff going on.
Compare to how western militaries have their fair share of screw ups, but they still wipe the floor with non-western militaries, whenever there's any conflict.
There's plenty of studies comparing the quality of management in local companies versus multinational corporations. See eg https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/n1/pub/11f0019m/11f0019m2020008...
yeah, because the only kid bigger, told them to knock it off, as to not hamper their own racket.
If you think a mega-corp won't go AWOL and attempt a Banana Republic/Dutch East India Company again, but with more proxies, lawyers, SAM's, and corrupt officials to "YAS" them into integration, then you really haven't been paying attention to what globalization is really about.
The US had to ask for money back from the oil barons.
Bezos/Musk/Zuck/{untold billionaires} will have much better bargaining chips when they possess the monopoly on surveillance, money, and influence, and have proxy chairs at the U.N.
And I bet those countries would be better run in every way.
