From: Emlyn O'regan (oregan.emlyn@healthsolve.com.au)
Date: Mon Mar 24 2003 - 21:33:01 MST
>
> The point at which the largest companies become a governement
> is the point
> at which they use force and violent coercion to eliminate
> competitors and
> maintain a monopoly.
>
> Reason
> http://www.exratio.com/
Well, yes, and I took your point that you have to accept an amount of that.
The problem is, that the temptation for a monopoly (PPF / insurance provider
/ what have you) is going to be very, very large. Who, after all, can stop
them? No one at all, by definition almost. Is there any other action, once
they are of that size, that would continue to increase shareholder profits?
When you have such an organisation in charge, there is every reason to
suspect that it will not have the democratic structure that we expect of
government. Instead, it's likely going to be set up along standard corporate
lines; that is, feudalism. So this whole private policing/armed forces thing
looks, to me, like the short road to feudalism, and very nearly to
socialism; the one company running the show might be pretty difficult to
distinguish from a single party socialist government.
How do you guard against this scenario, imo a very likely one, without the
checks and balances that a system like a modern western democracy requires?
Bear in mind that in the market you can't very easily have such
institutions, the embodiment of the separation of powers, because one set of
powers can buy up another set (ie: you cannot keep them separate).
Emlyn
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