Corporate imperialism

From the Quicksilver Metaweb.

Stephensonia

Neal Stephenson gave a famous public talk at Computers, Freedom and Privacy 2000 in Toronto, Canada, on his theory of domineering systems, which he proposed as an alternative to concern about only one Big Brother at a time. There being many corporations competing for what they call mindshare and goodwill, not to mention credit, there is probably no small merit to applying Neal's analysis to corporate domination. The phyle (from The Diamond Age) is also a sort of evolved combination of corporation, union and tribe with some guild features; In that universe the phyles and FOQNEs dominate the economy and deal with each other only through global standard Common Economic Protocol. A bit like the WTO. George Lucas at about the same time seems to have included a similar critique in his Star Wars Episode I.

Communal entry

Corporate imperalism arguably emerged in the Baroque era with the Dutch East India Company, the French East India Company, the London Virginia Company, the Swedish East India Company, the Muscovy Company, the Dutch and British West India Companies, the British East Indies Company and Hudson's Bay Company which were given letters patent to expand colonialism directly for profit to (what is now) India, the Carribean, North America, and Canada. These appear to have been critical to the development of the neoclassical philosophy and neoclassical economics, whereas social welfarism and social democracy have tended to dominate domestic politics of colonizing powers in the 20th century.

This history is also key to understanding corporate personhood, management usurpation and the various controversies about that and the shareholder activism and ethical investing and moral purchasing movements. All of which have their origins in parallel in Baroque times.

In this millenium, the ideological conflict over corporate status is stark and often polarized: scoffing phrases such as dollar diplomacy, New totalitarianism, market theology, more neutral ones like "corporate globalization" and alliances of opposing forces like the green movement, "anti-globalization movement" (now called "altermondialiste") describe this corporate hegemony and allege and predict various effects for it and of it. Most notably, the collapse of any semblance of democracy in both colonized and colonizing countries.

Competing theories like oil imperialism emphasize the role of energy economics over the form of organization of the actual productive enterprise.