
Tech giants have as much money and influence as nations - hunglee2
https://members.tortoisemedia.com/2020/01/06/day-1-apple-state-of-the-nation-2/content.html?sig=3Da9Giih1ATNXZEbc0Gqtf-UPHEEStMIOjMY5AFMW8Q
======
tomrod
So do several religions. As well as mafioso or cartels.

I think of these groups as "states-in-waiting." Should their regional
government grow too corrupt or too weak, they fill the void.

[1] [https://www.quora.com/What-is-the-net-worth-of-the-
Catholic-...](https://www.quora.com/What-is-the-net-worth-of-the-Catholic-
Church)

[2] [https://fox13now.com/2018/05/30/mormonleaks-lds-church-
contr...](https://fox13now.com/2018/05/30/mormonleaks-lds-church-controls-
billions-of-dollars-in-investment-funds/)

[3] [https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/2660520/joaquin-el-chapo-
guzma...](https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/2660520/joaquin-el-chapo-guzman-
mexican-drug-lord/)

~~~
bagacrap
To transition into something resembling a government would not be very on
brand for Apple. If anything they seem likely to blast off into space and
colonize Mars with all the cash they've mined and stockpiled here.

~~~
xenospn
How would that benefit their bottom line?

~~~
ravenstine
By having a planet where only Apple products are available and the inhabitants
are a part of their cargo cult, maybe? hah

------
epicgiga
Problem is that states usually have constitutional safeguards that keep a safe
balance of power between citizen and state.

Not so with these companies. Step out of line and they can unperson you like
that, and you can't vote on their leadership. And increasingly entire
livelihoods and social existences are tied into them.

This is why you're seeing states start to get so aggressive with them. The EU
fining billions out of them on an ongoing basis. Dragging them before
Congress. Etc.

They're not only starting to rival them in power, they're starting to flex
power over them -- playing a kingmaker role as they form the platforms on
which elections are being won and lost.

If the tech giants win, we lose. They've already shown willingness to
coordinate with each other. The non-poaching agreements and the Alex Jones
case.

Our defences from power have always been the existence of multiple states
(e.g. refugees) and democracy. They would be beholden to neither. Able to
destroy social lives and livelihoods at the click of a button, with no defence
and no safeguards.

"Computer says no", to your life.

~~~
SllX
The difference between a sovereign nation-state and a corporation is that a
nation-state has a legal monopoly on sanctioned violence within their
jurisdiction. Those constitutional safeguards are necessary because otherwise
they could search, seize, detain, arrest, imprison, torture and kill with
impunity.

A tech company can deplatform you with impunity, but they’re not inflicting
any real violence in the process. Corporations are still agents of real
people, and those people are still subject to the laws of nations.

~~~
topologistics
Taking away somebody's right to make a living with their chosen profession or
otherwise participate in commerce is economic violence.

Say you have built up a following of people over many years and you are making
thousands of dollars a month from YouTube, and they they decide to shut you
down overnight, I bet it's going to feel like violence when it comes time to
pay bills and you no longer have any of that income you have become accustomed
to.

~~~
indigochill
>Taking away somebody's right to make a living with their chosen profession or
otherwise participate in commerce is economic violence.

The thing is, no company is taking away a creator's right to their living.
They may take away the opportunity to make a living on that company's
platform, but there's a distinct difference.

YouTube (or Twitch, etc) are providing a service to content creators, that
service being hosting and broadcasting their content. Service agreements come
with clauses about termination of service. A content creator should never put
all their eggs into a single basket lest that service cease to support them
for whatever reason.

~~~
holoduke
Should this, should that. I have heard this so many times. If you are a app
developer and became successful on the Google playstore, but not on iTunes
store then who are you to say that you should never put all your eggs into a
single basket. This would never be a deliberate choice. Fact is, that many
business lost everything due dragonic decisions made by big tech companies.
Unacceptable. That's why those companies need to be split up. Regions like
Europe need to restrict massive US invasion and come up with their own
alternatives.

~~~
pb7
Even if YouTube (or the Play Store) was its own entity, they can still prevent
you from publishing on their platforms on a whim. You solve nothing by
breaking them up.

Don’t hold your breath on Europe coming up with dominant consumer tech anytime
soon.

~~~
BlueTemplar
Indeed, they need to be either shut down, or banned in Europe. You can't let
companies have more power than nation-states !

------
spectramax
Another way to think about this topic is that China's CEO is Xi Jingpin.

There are a few distinctions between calling China a company and calling Apple
a nation:

\- A nation uphelds the law whereas a company uses proxies (lobbying) to make
laws

\- A nation has diplomatic rights, a company has to abide by export controls

\- A nation has a treasury, has control over interest rates and can prosecute
violators, it ensures a level playing field. A company has equity and can fire
employees, but has to maximize profits (shareholder interest) and
eliminate/beat competition.

\- A nation has hard physical military and ability to go to war, a company has
office security and HR

\- A nation can prosecute criminals, a company can layoff people.

I don't think this analogy provides any interesting insight into Apple besides
drawing loose connection between secrecy and censorship.

~~~
elfexec
> Another way to think about this topic is that China's CEO is Xi Jingpin.

He's more like the chairman. He sets the direction that he wants china to go
in, others execute his plan.

> There are a few distinctions between calling China a company and calling
> Apple a nation:

Nobody is calling china a company and apple a nation. People are talking about
money and influence. Apple certainly doesn't have the money and influence of
China or the US. But it has more influence than most smaller or even midsized
nations.

\- A nation has a treasury, has control over interest rates and can prosecute
violators,

Banking cartels/central banks like the Fed control interest rates. The
treasury mints money and collects taxes.

> \- A nation has hard physical military and ability to go to war, a company
> has office security and HR

So has companies. Companies have even fought wars against each other.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carnatic_Wars](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carnatic_Wars)

> \- A nation can prosecute criminals, a company can layoff people.

Governments prosecute criminals. Companies have been able to try, punish and
enslave people.

~~~
thaumasiotes
For another example, the British Raj originated when the British East India
Company conquered India. There's nothing historically unusual about a private
company operating its own military force.

------
rusk
This made me laugh ...

> “Many employees don’t like Apple Park [the company’s new headquarters]
> because it has very few private offices.

... nice one Jony ... design a brave and “beautiful” open plan workspace for a
paranoiacally _secretive_ organisation.

Says it all really.

~~~
culturestate
> ... nice one Jony ... design a brave and “beautiful” open plan workspace for
> a paranoiacally secretive organisation.

I feel like it's worth pointing out that Steve Jobs was still running Apple
when this building was designed. I don't work for Norman Foster so I have no
way to know how much changed internally after he died, but I doubt the balance
shifted _too_ wildly given the logistical constraints of massive construction
projects.

As an aside - and I don't mean this in reference to office layouts - were I in
charge of a global consumer products company that competes in multiple
cutthroat markets, I'd want to foster a corporate culture of extreme openness
and collaboration _inside the walls_ but absolute silence _outside._ That's
not exactly what Apple is today, obviously, but it's within the realm of
possibility that it's their goal.

~~~
dmitriid
> I'd want to foster a corporate culture of extreme openness and collaboration
> inside the walls

Open space offices are entirely othogonal to this idea.

~~~
culturestate
How so? I'd argue that while open-plan offices can profoundly affect people's
productivity and morale, they have relatively little impact on collaboration
or communication - I view these more as functions of the team's culture.

As long as your group makes a conscious effort to bounce ideas around and ask
each other for advice, what's the difference between sitting at a table
wearing headphones or in an office with the door shut? Or, for that matter,
everyone being remote?

I can kind of see how you could make a case that open-plan offices change the
dynamic of communication, i.e. they make people less willing to "bother" their
coworkers, but collaboration can (and probably should, most of the time)
happen asynchronously over slack or email or post-it note anyway.

~~~
afthonos
That’s what “orthogonal” means, in this context … :-)

~~~
culturestate
Whoops, thanks for that. I must've read it as 'antithetical.'

------
mark_l_watson
This article was an interesting read, but I think it got the basics incorrect.
Financial elites and corporations increasingly control governments in clever
and effective ways: Few corporations control almost all news media, fragment
population using news media to make (to use the USA as an example) Democrat’s
fear and distrust republicans and vice versa, turn over public assets to
corporations at bargain basement prices, etc.

A bit off topic but: even though I am not a particularly strong Go and Chess
player, I really appreciate reading through good games. Looking at the way
elites have slowly taken over power since the end of the civil war (again
using the USA as an example), with a slow and well played game, I must say
“well played Sirs and Madames, well played.”

~~~
mtm7
This is interesting. Can you suggest any books or articles about the power
climb?

~~~
mark_l_watson
Too many. As a liberal I still find conservatives Kevin D. Williams (The
Smallest Minority, Independant Thinking in the Era of the Mob) and James
Rikards (Currency Wars, Aftermath, etc.) to be interesting and useful. Then
there is Thomas Piketty (Capital in the 21st Century), Douglas Rushkoff
(Throwing Rocks at the Google Bus).

Anyway, these few were enjoyably, but a warning: I have loaned books by the
first two conservative authors to liberal friends and they didn’t like them,
too far outside the bubble they like to live in. I like reading authors that
have differing world views from myself.

EDIT: The Devil’s Chessboard is also a good read, but parts of it were
disturbing to me.

~~~
mtm7
Thanks — I'll give these a try! Each year, I try to read a handful of books
that expand my world views, so these sound great. :)

------
Hasknewbie
"Apple’s market valuation is roughly equal to the national net worth of
Denmark (...). In all but name, this is a superpower"

Denmark is a really nice country. Also, it is not a superpower.

~~~
ginko
It's also not true. Apples valuation is around $365 billion, Denmarks _GDP_ is
around $370 billion per year.

I'd argue a sovereign country's assets are essentially invaluable, but in
Denmark's case there's the interesting historical fact that the US government
offered to buy Greenland several times (and always being rebuffed by the
Danes), so at least there's an estimate for the value of that island alone:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proposals_for_the_United_State...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proposals_for_the_United_States_to_purchase_Greenland#Purchase_price_estimates_of_Greenland)

> If the United States wants it for the strategic value of its property, both
> on land and offshore, and to project military power, the answer is that a
> value of $500 billion is not overly rich

EDIT: I got the numbers wrong. Apple Inc. is currently valued at over $1
trillion (I used Apple's total assets from their Wikipedia page) and they
mention Denmark's net worth which is indeed in that ballpark. I'd still argue
that you can't compare the valuation of a company to the net worth of a
sovereign country.

~~~
jotm
Let's go by the price of land in Denmark. 25,000 Euros per hectare in 2009.
That's for agricultural land.

Greenland does not support agriculture, but it does have natural resources,
and can have a good strategic value. So let's say it's 10,000 Euros per
hectare, a good discount.

It would cost 2.6 trillion Euros, or 2.9 trillion US Dollars.

Everything has a price, I wonder if that would be acceptable for Denmark and
under what conditions.

~~~
grecy
> _Everything has a price_

This idea needs to die. It is simply not true.

It's so stupid to say that, and clearly only people obsessed with money
actually believe it. We're killing the planet in the quest for ever more
money, and tons of people have absolutely no interest in more money. They want
more time and more health.

~~~
jotm
Sadly, it is true. And "price" doesn't only mean money. Maybe a country wants
a longer shoreline in exchange for a piece of mountain land or something.

------
coder1001
Doesn't Apple need the secrecy to survive? Imagine Nokia getting hold of the
specs of the original iPhone early before its release, how would the world be
today?

~~~
distances
Nokia's woes were on software side, not hardware. Building a competitive
software stack proved too slow an undertaking for a hardware company. It was
Android in the end that ate Nokia's pie, not Apple.

~~~
rapsey
Also they only took Apple seriously way too late.

~~~
coder1001
Agree. See my comment above. Having access to info about marketing budget etc.
could have possibly changed that.

------
ncmncm
It is essentially the same at all corporations, always has been.

Lenin was a great admirer of Ford Motor Company. His Soviet committees were
copied directly from Ford.

You could think of the SSRs as divisions, and satellite countries as wholly-
owned subsidiaries.

~~~
awb
I've overheard forms of this many times from C/VP-level execs facing internal
debate: "We're not running a democracy here".

It is interesting that we only see it in government. Most companies are
dictatorships. Some might have a board of directors that is responsible for
voting in it's own members, kind of like a tribal elders system.

It's interesting to see these different forms of decision making producing
different advantages and disadvantages.

~~~
wskinner
The difference is that the natural state of the corporation is to go extinct.
Governments have so much inertia that it often takes a literal revolution to
replace them.

Bad externalities are the downside to dictatorships. The externalities of a
corporation are much more limited, and there is more pressure to reduce them
(from governments, other corporations, and their customers).

Continuing the dictatorship metaphor, this pushes corporations to be more
“benevolent”.

~~~
wrinkl3
Except for those that become "Too big to fail". Banks don't seem to dissolve
naturally all that often.

------
adaisadais
Just finished a wonderful(ly long) biography on Julius Caesar (Caesar:
Politician and Statesman). Caesar was innovative in thinking of Rome as not
just a city state but the beginnings of what would become an empire. Not an
inherently new phenomena but one that has lasting influence to this day.

In the same way our world is now flat. While there is much we do not
understand we do know this: business (Due to the proliferation of the
internet) knows no borders. And the goal of modern businesses that rely on
scale is to do just that.

So, look for businesses to become much more powerful than countries and to one
day become greater than even the greatest of nations.

------
mbrodersen
Governments have a monopoly on violence, the ultimate source of influence.
Tech giants don't. End of story.

------
chrisseaton
I think the title here is missing some kind of punctuation.

~~~
ptcampbell
Agree. Overzealous HN title editing at the best of times.

------
ksec
As an Apple Shareholder I would be furious if the part about Shows were only
for 10 years and not for life are real.

Apple News+, Apple Arcade are forgiving as they are only a few hundred million
bet. Apple TV+ is a multi billions bet, with no short terms or long term goal
or benefits.

------
olliej
As opposed to the Catholic Church? Oil companies? A number of retailers?

Beating up tech companies specifically is getting irksome. There are many
things wrong with our industry specifically, but beating them up over
something true of many industries is <expletive of your choosing>.

~~~
BlueTemplar
They are being brought up more and more because they are starting to become as
much if not more powerful than your examples?

~~~
olliej
but they aren't - there are few examples where laws are explicitly repealed to
aid the tech industry, there a few cases where tech companies have be absolved
of responsibility (or given drastically reduced fines) for their environment
or societal damage.

~~~
BlueTemplar
Only because they haven't been around for long ?

------
aj7
Does Apple have its own army? Can it?

------
AmericanChopper
I think it’s supposed to be a joke, but it’s still a bit contrived. The
governance models of countries and companies are very different. Just about
every company would end up being like some sort of socialist regime. No
democracy, central planning. Perhaps you could argue they’re more like
oligarchies or plutocracies (governed by capital).

~~~
arkitaip
And yet we think it's absolutely normal for companies to be run like
oppressive regimes.

~~~
Razengan
Should your employees take over any company you found?

~~~
Red_Leaves_Flyy
Should one person make life changing decisions for millions?

Why do I even need to ask this?

~~~
AmericanChopper
The answer to that question is obviously yes, but I don’t think that’s why you
thought the question didn’t need to be asked.

For starters there are both elected and non-elected offices in government
where one person will be given the power to make life changing decisions for
millions. This is a perfectly ordinary feature of organised society.

Regarding companies, if you don’t want people who own companies (or their
agents) to be able to decide how the companies are run, then you need to
prohibit either private property, or employment all together.

An employment agreement is simply one party offering labour, and another
offering payment for it, and a company is simply people pooling their
resources together to achieve more than they could alone (companies server
other purposes to, but this is the relevant purpose for this discussion).

An employer is always going to be able to make decisions that are life
changing for their employees, by deciding they no longer require their labor
for instance, by ceasing operations, or relocating, or withdrawing a
product/service from the market.

If you don’t want employers to have the ability to make decisions that impact
the lives of their employees, then you either need to abolish private property
(the ability to offer payment for labor now becomes impossible), or outlaw
employment agreements. Whether an employer has one employee or one million is
really besides the point.

------
yters
What is the big difference between nations and corporations?

------
isoskeles
This is only a problem if you think the state is the most important idea and
institution that should exist.

~~~
throwlaplace
state as republic is absolutely the most important idea and institution that
should exist in a world where there are no longer isolated communities.

