From 2011, no less. Like, the past 12 years alone refute the prediction of corporate decline.

The comedy here is that he says this decline started in the 1990s. Since then corporations haven't really done anything have they? There hasn't been fundamental changes to every part of our lives driven by corporate decision making, has there?

I'm not much of a r/latestagecapitalism fan myself, but there is something to important to explore in the history and concept of the corporation, and I'm disappointed every time someone brings it up and fails to make any of the important points.

Somehow, at some point in the past that I haven't been able to precisely identify, everyone decided that corporations were legitimate "things", and started acting as if they should be. And I'm not sure why. We see practically nothing either in common law or in various national constitutions that authorize governments to create the damned things. It's quite bizarre, and more than a little dangerous.

Stross likens them to gigantic, slow-as-dirt artificial intelligences designed explicitly with psychopathic motives. And most of the time it feels wrong to try to dispute that.

Corporations are governments. At some point you say "we want this operation to be run via rules" so you make some rules and form a government that runs under those rules. You usually will need a license to form a sub government from whatever larger government you will be operating under.

Related, think how a town incorporates in order to form their own local government.

This analogy breaks down rather quickly. The government is a government because it has a monopoly on violence to enforce its rules. Even your tiny little village can constitute a police force that can arrest, subjugate, and in the face of extreme resistance, kill.

No corporation is authorized to do that in any circumstances at all.

While I certainly invite criticism of these entities, bad criticism benefits them.

>The government is a government because it has a monopoly on violence to enforce its rules.

That's the definition of State. Governments are just administrative bodies.

These words of yours are synonyms.

If there were a state without any government (some lawless anarchy), the idea that the "state" could still have a monopoly on violence is laughably asinine.

You must be from some European country where "government" means something like "Congressional session" or whatever. I have little interest in wading through all that semantic nonsense.

The separation is useful. Corporations are governed. There's no debate to be won, we're talking about understanding society better. Put your guard down, man...

Corporations absolutely are able to use violence to enforce their rules, although just like public governments they have to be fairly large before they can start getting away with it. think security guards, railroad cops. etc.

The state's monopoly, qua Max Weber, is on the claim to the legitimate use of violence. That is, the right and legitimacy of that right, is restricted to the state, or an entity acting in the effective capacity of a state, whatever it happens to call itself.

Absent this, one of three conditions exist:

1. There is no monopoly. In which case violence is widespread, and there is no state.

2. There is no legitimacy. In which case violence is capricious.

3. Some non-state power or agent assumes the monopoly on legitimate violence. In which case it becomes, by definition The State.

The state's claim is to legitimacy. A capricious exercise would be an abrogation of legitimacy

Weber, Max (1978). Roth, Guenther; Wittich, Claus (eds.). Economy and Society. Berkeley: U. California Press. p. 54.

<https://archive.org/details/economysociety00webe/page/54/mod...>

There's an excellent explanation of the common misunderstanding in this episode of the Talking Politics podcast: <https://play.acast.com/s/history-of-ideas/weberonleadership>

The misleading and abbreviated form that's frequently found online seems to have originated with Rothbard in the 1960s, and was further popularised by Nozick in the 1970s. It's now falsely accepted as a truth when in fact it is a gross misrepresentation and obscures the core principles Weber advanced.

> Somehow, at some point in the past that I haven't been able to precisely identify, everyone decided that corporations were legitimate "things", and started acting as if they should be. And I'm not sure why. We see practically nothing either in common law or in various national constitutions that authorize governments to create the damned things. It's quite bizarre, and more than a little dangerous.

Corporate personhood happened because of one law reporter.[1] It's a very strange story.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Santa_Clara_County_v._Southern....

your appeal for people to not read it made me curious enough to read it. why are you so scared?