A large body of text is also known as a corpus.
Both the large groups and the large texts are dead in the sense that they do not change of their own power. They are static and closed to new information.
Both text and groups must be re-animated by the individual.
And even regarding corporate power structures you are only avoiding a certain kind of their possible influences. For example, if a corporation buys up all water supply in your living area you can feel that influence, even if you are not working for them.
Your ideas could be potentially highly beneficial to society, they might benefit everyone including those in power but if it's against their beliefs, you will be punished from all sides.
I also disagree with your perspective on corporations. To me they seem very much alive - in a less recognisable form, more complex than we can grasp with human minds.
I argue mainly because I'd like to keep the term as something free of judgment. A group of people that comes together as a larger body or organism can be quite beautiful too.
Sure, but that doesn't have to be a corporation. There are all kinds of terms that describe that, and they don't come with the clear emotional and interpretational baggage that "corporation" does.
The term honestly isn't free of judgement, it carries with it a _lot_ of associations, and you can't just ignore them and pretend they're not there. Well, I mean you can, but you can't expect others to do the same. They're likely to interpret what you're saying as something else entirely.
For example, try talking about "a corporation of churchgoers" and see what kinds of reactions you get. =)
>For example, try talking about "a corporation of churchgoers" and see what kinds of reactions you get.
I would point out that most churches are 501(c)(3) corporations ;)
No other place frames the question of more or less socialism as big vs small govt. And for that matter I am not even sure the democrats ever frame the question like that.
What you are actually asking is "Are you from my tribe?".
If you wouldn't mind reviewing https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and taking the intended spirit of the site more to heart, we'd be grateful.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35923149
At this point, if I can export my contributions and not have my data locked up here, I will be happy to quit this site.
The problem is bad power structures, not power structures per se. Just because corporations as they exist today have problems doesn't mean that we should give up on organizations of people entirely. It means we need to do the necessary work in philosophy, psychology, economics, business administration, etc. that will enable the creation of more effective and ethical power structures.
You assume that the current condition is not due to everyone already doing what you’re describing as best as they can.
The issue is that they are, but the inherent corrupting influences of wealth, power, and human nature counteracting them to produce the current outcome.
At the end of the day, this is the wheel. And the wheel will keep turning, regardless.
Not understanding that just makes proposed reforms naive or ineffective, and usually the end result is worse.
The end problem is not one that can be actually solved. But the borders can be moved one way or another, a bit at a time.
To take another angle, we could remove humans from the picture entirely. The problem of how to get autonomous agents to work together to accomplish a task is a computer science problem. I don't see a fundamental barrier to solving that problem. Getting humans to cooperate is a special case of that problem, with the extra requirement that you need some domain knowledge in the social sciences to be able to convince people to cooperate. Again, there's no fundamental barrier preventing us from doing that research.
That doesn't mean it's easy. But that's why I'm skeptical when someone claims that the problem is simply unsolvable. Whether intentional or not, people who deny that progress is possible are reinforcing and justifying the status quo.
I'm saying people are a mix of good and bad, and there are various levels of power and wealth inherent to the world, and that causes an inherent tension and level of corruption which you see manifest itself in all power structures around us.
Including corporations.
If you have a CONCRETE proposal for some kind of corporation which somehow counteracts the negative influences of humanity, while promoting the positive ones, while also actually working in real life, then please do propose it.
I'm also noting that those are already influences on the current formation and existence of the structures around us, so assuming that this is a new idea isn't helping anyone.
I'm not hearing anything concrete here though. I am hearing that you don't seem to be aware of the active and ongoing work to stop corruption and produce better outcomes in the governments and corporations that currently exist.
Attempts which sometimes succeed, sometimes get frustrated, etc. It's an active war, always has been, and IMO always will be.
I never said these are new ideas or that there aren't already people working on these problems. You're putting words in my mouth.
I'm a bit confused about what our disagreement is. In my first post, all I said was that corporations and power structures aren't inherently bad and that rather than abandoning those concepts, as OP suggests, we can work to improve them. You disagreed with me and made fun of me for being naive. However, what you're saying now sounds like a different version of what I was saying.
I don't get why you think I need to make a concrete proposal for this. I'm making a general possibility claim, not a prescription. There are many paths to get there, which probably involve a combination of cultural evolution and the accumulation of knowledge in a wide range of disciplines.
That is what I am pointing out is fundamentally naive and impossible.
There is no possible state here where there is a system that is fundamentally incorruptible and fair, because that isn’t what people want, need, or how people work.
Even some options you mentioned (autonomous agents) wouldn’t produce such an outcome, but would just be a tool of despotic behavior (and probably worse than most) as they would be inevitably manipulated or compromised because you don’t seem to understand the nature of the actual problem.
There's something inherently bad about "limited liability" corporations, by their very nature. Because to some degree they free the people in them from "natural justice"; people are able to get away unpunished with bad things that they as individuals couldn't due to shifting liability to the corporation.
For me, the dead world of the labor force takes on a symbolic meaning. Words are like super powers, the have resonance and meaning. Look at the etymology of words and the source meaning will always give you the correct answer to what you are energetically putting your life force into.
corporation (n.)
> mid-15c., corporacioun, "persons united in a body for some purpose," from such use in Anglo-Latin, from Late Latin corporationem (nominative corporatio) "assumption of a body" (used of the incarnation of Christ),
> noun of action from past-participle stem of Latin corporare "embody, make or fashion into a body," from corpus (genitive corporis) "body, dead body, animal body," also "a whole composed of united parts, a structure, system,community, corporation, political body, a guild" (from PIE root *kwrep- "body, form, appearance").
Corporations are dead things. Start small and make choices that slowly shifts your energy to people and things that actual have living essence like small business and endeavors that benefit the common good. We can't do in every part of our life, but just a slight shift can be like a cascade effect over time.