smaller companies lead to a more modular economy
This is a very interesting point, which I would extend to saying that it might lead to a more resilient economy.
The trouble is, scale is such a powerful thing. When you look at industries like the automobile industry, or even inside technology the chip industry, you appreciate that. It's hard to imagine modern fabs being run by groups of less than 100 people, for example. (Interestingly, this is something that might change in the extremely long run as production technology matures.)
Re:You Weren't Meant to Have a Boss
by dropit_sphere on Sunday June 21, 2015 @10:44AM
(#9753620)
There's an argument to be made for larger companies in terms of resilience: they will usually be able to absorb more risk. Modularity of small companies is good for if they fail, but I suspect they are more likely to fail. I don't have an opinion one way or another, just musing.
I always imagined a system where companies could only get so large unless they had a charter for a big project. (Which would expire, and they'd have to break up.)
One important aspect to take into account is the fact that a company 's size is determined also by the size of the market it operates in. In US or China you'll get megacorps while in tiny countries the size will be way smaller.
If we add in the fact that the economies get globalized, all of the sudden you Apple and the like. Any successful startup in a global market, starting out in a large national market will be flooded with capital and still grow to fit the size of their success.
I've always wondered about a debate about limiting the size of businesses. Only state-owned enterprises building or running base infrastructure could be over x,000 employees. What would that world look like?
This is another reason why we should really limit companies to a maximum size. Other reasons are that companies should not become too big to fail, and that smaller companies lead to a more modular economy, where one company uses the outputs of several other companies, instead of having a few MegaCorps with an opaque, internal economy.