that's why anti-trust laws exist. If we break them up as they grow, we still reap the benefits of economic growth without the dangers of the monopoly.

That worked fine before the modern global economy. Now? It's the death-knell for industry in your country. Without a global government agreement you simply can't bust up megacorps like you used to- they're effectively above the law.

Why does Google hide a bunch of search results in Europe if they are above the law?

It seems to me that your statement is in error.

As I'm sure you're aware, there is some room between "completely law abiding" and "totally above the law", where corporations find themselves quite comfortable.

Corporations are amoral, and so conform to local laws only because it is economically efficient to do so, not out of ideological adherence to principles of justice.

> As I'm sure you're aware, there is some room between "completely law abiding" and "totally above the law", where corporations find themselves quite comfortable.

Great, so don't write "above the law". Hyperbole is annoying and distracts from real, important discussions about these kinds of things.

Omniusaspirer actually wrote "they're effectively above the law", which is hardly hyperbolic, and was directly preceded by a decidedly relevant example: "Without a global government agreement you simply can't bust up megacorps like you used to".

Consideration of the fact that multi-national corporations transcend national law-makers is part of "real, important discussion about these kinds of things", as you put it.

What he wrote is plain false. It's wrong. It's incorrect. Those companies must - and do - respect the laws of the countries they wish to operate in, although clearly they try and wiggle and squirm around them where they can. When push comes to shove, they are most certainly not above the law.

When you write things that are false, it does not help a conversation go anywhere useful.

Your definition of illegal behaviour seems to rest on a very narrow view that unless behaviour is prosecuted then it is not illegal. By this view, corporations are not above the law because when any illegal behaviour is discovered they are duly prosecuted, when laws are available, and if laws are not available then it was not illegal behaviour in the first place. However, Omniusaspirer's contention was that corporations are "effectively above the law", not that they were literally above the law.

The exemplary area in which corporations are effectively above the law is tax arrangements, where multi-national corporations can take advantage of their multi-national status to pay lower amounts of corporation tax than companies in all the national jurisdictions in which they operate.

The corporations are effectively above the law because they are legally paying lower taxes than those other companies. That is, they get preferential treatment by satisfying the letter of the law, but not the intent, that being evidenced by current international efforts to close these loopholes. Such issues can only be addressed by multi-national or even global agreements, as Omniusaspirer said.

So your definition is "corporations are effectively above the law if they do things I think are bad" ?

No, my definition would be that multi-national corporations are effectively above the law if, in a particular jurisdiction, they can engage in behaviour that companies constrained solely to that jurisdiction cannot engage in.

I am glad that we have cleared up the difference between being literally and effectively above the law, but I doubt we'll make any progress towards agreement about what being effectively above the law might mean. As we have already circumvented the HN efforts to avoid debates that aren't going anywhere several times, I guess I'll leave it at that. Have a nice day!

edit: Just to be clear, my above definition would also extend to arbitrary numbers of joint jurisdictions. So if corporation X, doing business in jurisdictions A, B, and C, can engage in behaviours within jurisdiction A that are unavailable to corporation Y, which only does business in jurisdictions A and B, then X would be effectively above the law with respect to Y. This definition seems very natural and clear to me: one group is allowed to do things another group isn't by some special status, ergo, they are effectively above the law.

Google also avoid to pay almost all the taxes it should in EU without anyone capable to stop them. The same thing is done by the others megacorps

Actually, it looks like you, too, may be incorrect, in that they're working to crack down on just that:

http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/ba95cff0-4fcd-11e4-a0a4-00144...

Also, in the United States, Amazon has generally not fared well when it came to avoiding collecting local taxes when local authorities decided to put their feet down:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amazon_tax

As an eu citizen I knew that, and I can tell you they are "working on it" since decades of years (almost since Apple for the first time implemented it around the '80s), Nothing changed because Ireland doesn't want to change its taxation because the corps on its field lobby under the threat to move to another country, and the EU commission has not the power to impose the change to Ireland.

If Google 'should' pay taxes and have not, why haven't they been taken to court? That's tax evasion. Tax avoidance is what sensible people do. You look at the rules, follow them and minimize your tax bill. Google's shareholders also expect no less.

No one can stop them (Google)? Of course they can. It's up to countries to change their tax laws if they think they are not fit for the job.

Sure but that still doesn't address the actual problem and from a certain viewpoint two companies doing the same thing is less efficient than a large company doing it because of economies of scale. So which is it? Do we want efficiency or fairness?

Fairness. When would we ever want anything that is efficiently unfair?

Two companies doing the same thing brings the benefits of competition, which forces down prices, promotes innovation, and actually increases efficiency as they have to be better than their rival. In addition, no reason why both of them cannot be large enough to benefit from economies of scale (think Samsung vs Apple for smartphones).

Maybe we should no longer have elections as there's a lot of duplication between > 1 political parties too

There is an entire field of mathematics dedicated to answering such questions and the answer is a lot more complicated than your simple quip. In fact the way most democracies are set up they are theoretically much less optimal than they could be and in some cases are as good as dictatorial systems because of susceptibility to being rigged. As usual wikipedia is a pretty good starting point: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voting_system.

Would you mind slapping a name on said field of mathematics, because I dig that stuff but only ever stumble upon smatterings of it here and there. I'd love to get to the core of that field. Its like game theory + lots of other stuff. (Sorry for off topic)

It's not one specific subfield but a combination. A good starting place though is probably social choice theory with a bit of a background on Arrow's impossibility theorem: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arrow%27s_impossibility_theorem.

There might be something here: http://zesty.ca/voting/sim/

Awesome. Thank you both!

Indeed :)

This is one of the main criticisms of the capitalist system. If it inevitably results in socialism in disguise then you could have actual socialism.

There aren't many things on that list that we wouldn't be better off without. Is that really what you meant? You're in favour of big oil companies, hedge funds and the military-industrial complex?

The latter is particularly surprising, unless you think 50% of America's budget going on weaponry to fight threats that don't exist is a productive use of capital

I'm not in favor or against any of the things I mentioned. I was just trying to make a point about emergent properties of complicated systems like global economies and nation states.

> unless you think 50% of America's budget going on weaponry to fight threats that don't exist is a productive use of capital

That is flatly not true. Where do you get your numbers?

You're quite right, it's 20%, and still dwarfs other nations. http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2013/01/07/e...

Not as a call for citation as I have some basic understanding, but I'd like to learn more about why those threats are considered non-existent and why the USA keeps fighting them.

> Hmm, then we also need to stop Google, Microsoft, Facebook, Dropbox, TimeWarner Cable, military industrial complex, some big oil companies, a few hedge funds, a few banks, etc. Probably might as well call it quits with this whole capitalism thing.

Now you're getting it! Yes, that is exactly what we need to be doing.

If by "certain kind of economic system" you mean a heavily regulated pseudo free market system, then sure. But don't try to pretend, as I think you are, that regulation isn't the important bit there and that somehow the free market is the cause of these monopolies. The systems of regulation we have today are both not very effective and also generally hugely advantage consolidation, working against the often inherent advantages of fresh startups as competitors.

I hear this expression, "heavily regulated", a lot from Americans but I never understand in context to what? Are you making comparisons to Canada, the EU, China or other countries with different economic systems? Also, how do you further differentiate necessary regulation from overbearing regulation? Surely you aren't suggesting all regulation is inherently bad?

I'm not pretending. I also disagree that a truly and freely competitive system is the answer. I don't think in the entire history of the world there has ever been any kind of free marketplace and the discussion on these matters are very often mired by ideological biases. Economics falls in a weird gray zone buffered by pure economic theory on one side and practical social constraints on the other.

On a related note about the economic system have a look at this: http://www.upworthy.com/9-out-of-10-americans-are-completely...

This is what happens when wealth accumulates at the top of the pyramid. The video is talking about people, but those people are those behind the companies you mentioned (including Google, Facebook, hedge funds and oil companies). The problem with capitalism in my opinion, is that it's not truly capitalism: i.e. it's not the free competition system they claim it to be, but a system which is "more free" for some.

    9 Out Of 10 Americans Are Completely Wrong About This Mind-Blowing Fact

Was Upworthy really the best source for this? The transcript is very nearly useless.

Furthermore, 'true' captalism with a truly free market is quite unrealistic, since it would require all participants to be effectively omniscient and infinitely rational (and even then you would have to compare it to 'true' communism, where no one is ever selfish or lazy)

I think the original source is on a youtube channel: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QPKKQnijnsM . The video aggregates data from multiple sources:

http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2011/02/income-inequalit... http://danariely.com/2010/09/30/wealth-inequality/ http://thinkprogress.org/economy/2011/10/03/334156/top-five-... http://money.cnn.com/2012/04/19/news/economy/ceo-pay/index.h...

How reliable these sources are, I'm not sure. If the information is wrong, I wouldn't blame it on Upworthy, it's a distribution channel after all.

I'm not disputing the video. I haven't been able to watch it yet.

I'm saying we shouldn't be supporting the likes of Upworthy under any circumstances.