Corporations, making war? Like what, millions of people backing them up? Any source to share to back your argument up ? At most you can say that corporations have been influencing governments to go to War, but a single corporation has not enough leverage to hire hundred of thousands of soldiers to fight. Ultimately War needs State involvement.
Governments dying all the time? Like where? You mean in small countries? I'm talking about developed countries here, with big governments in place. They are very unlikely to die any time soon.
Wow, great, you could come up with a SINGLE example for a company with State-like powers, and that was 200 years ago. And they never waged war on large regions at a time. And let's not forget their expansion was blessed by their own government.
Do you have any recent example of super-powerful corporation waging war around the world by themselves? Any example of corporation launching WW1 or WW2, or even something remotely big as the Vietnam war, all by themselves ?
It's fairly obvious that no corporation nowadays has the financial means to wage war by themselves. It takes 100 billions to wage war in Iraq. Top tier companies make that much in REVENUE, not even profit. How would you expect them to spend so much? Your point does not make sense.
>Wow, great, you could come up with a SINGLE example for a company with State-like powers, and that was 200 years ago.
Read a little history. HE came with a single example, because you ASKED for an example. Read history books on the issue, and you'll find tons of other examples.
From Shell in Nigeria, to United Fruit Company in Latin America, to the big coprs in Hitler's Germany. E.g:
"""Big business developed an increasingly close partnership with the Nazi government as it became increasingly organized. Business leaders supported the government's political and military goals, and in exchange, the government pursued economic policies that maximized the profits of its business allies. Nazi Germany transferred public ownership and public services into the private sector, while other Western capitalist countries strove for increased state ownership of industry."""
There are tons of other examples. Not to mention that the question is quite brain-damaged: corporations don't make war directly, hiring an army and such.
They make them by exercizing political and financial influence. And that is not usually done by a single company: it's done by multiple corporate interests, that pursue their goals in tandem. E.g the so-called "millitary-industrial complex".
>It takes 100 billions to wage war in Iraq. Top tier companies make that much in REVENUE, not even profit. How would you expect them to spend so much? Your point does not make sense.
LOL. They don't spend "so much". That's not how it works. It's like he's explaining that to a ten year old.
Corporations bribe the right persons, create the right conditions, push and influence policy and such, and let the people of a country (or several) fight. That is, what corporations do is diverting governments and politicians, from serving the people, to doing their work for them.
I think the guy that coined the term fascism (Benito Mussolini) was pretty explicit that the government should be bound in the service of big business.
> Read a little history. HE came with a single example, because you ASKED for an example. Read history books on the issue, and you'll find tons of other examples.
You have WAY MORE examples of States leading wars than corporations. Even in recent history. Proves my point.
>You have WAY MORE examples of States leading wars than corporations. Even in recent history. Proves my point.
Not really. It proves it only against a bizarro argument that nobody made, that coporations lead wars directly.
Of course states lead wars. Corporations don't have armies and state like powers except in very few historical situations (namely, in the colonial era, like the East-India company example).
It's not about who "leads the war" or "who fights in it". That's not what we mean when we say corporations create wars.
What we mean is that corporate interests (often of more than one corporation), exert power at states to further their interests, including by war, but also by other kinds of malice (dictatorship, lackeys in government, favorable laws, igniting civil tension, etc).
I guess you never heard about WW1 and WW2 then. Surely this was the corporationgs pushing for Germany to invade France and the rest of Europe, and surely this has nothing to do with political ideologies. This was all the evil corporations at work.
> Corporations bribe the right persons, push and influence policy and such, and let the people of a country (or several) fight.
We are coming back to what I said. Governments wage wars, not corporations. Without government involvement corporations are helpless. Government, ultimately, are responsible for military actions and the usage of force.
People wage wars. Whether they use governments, corporations, churches, or other vehicles to do so is a matter of convenience and what is available -- all have been used. If you shift more power to governments, governments will more often be the choice. If you shift that power away from governments, other choices will take over.
"Peace is not a relationship of nations. It is a condition of mind brought about by a serenity of soul. Peace is not merely the absence of war. It is also a state of mind. Lasting peace can come only to peaceful people." -- Jawaharial Nehru
Dick Cheney was chairman and CEO of Halliburton Company for five years. They made billions of dollars off of the Iraq war alone. A war that we started under fall pretenses. The public was lied to by the Bush administration in order to line the pocket books of major multi-national corporations. You are absolutely delusional if you don't think that corporations sway the government into starting wars.
You should watch the documentary Hubris : Selling the Iraq War. It's on YouTube for free.
If you look elsewhere, I've pointed out that companies take on state-like functions and character when a government monopoly on violence hasn't yet been firmly established. The EIC is one such case.
My problem is that I am arguing a centre line that two schools of thought are misunderstanding. The centralisation of violence in the state serves a useful social function that decentralisation does poorly; but that selfsame centralisation is dangerous and must be closely and jealously guarded.
The first clause of my argument angers certain strains of libertarian and the second clause confuses various kinds of leftists who mistake me for a libertarian.
The best techniques I'm aware of are either a benevolent monarch -- which is ostensibly great until the benevolent monarch dies or is killed -- or by dividing the state against itself in a structured way.
