AHC: Corporation with sovereignty

[Rush Tarquin]

Your challenge is to make a corporation so powerful, it actually has a de facto monopoly on coercion within a given territory. It cannot be acting at the behest of a state a la the British East India Company. The territory needs to be where it's base of operations is. It can relocate from a developed country to a developing country to achieve this, a la Kramer Associates. The POD should be post-1900 obviously. Bonus points if it manages to develop nuclear weapons.

How would such an entity function? What would it be like to live in?

[Jape]

Isn't this complicated by corporations counting as human beings in law? A person can't be a de jure country

[Rush Tarquin]

Originally Posted by Jape

Isn't this complicated by corporations counting as human beings in law? A person can't be a de jure country

De facto, not de jure. Sovereignty as a political reality, not a legal construct.

[azander12]

Here's an interesting one, something that I think a lot of people won't think of. In this, the 1953 coup against Mossadegh in Iran succeeds, but leads to somewhat more popular unrest. With this, Mossadegh attempts to retain power, and calls on his supporters to arm themselves to restore Iranian sovereignty. The Iranian military cracks down, but parts of it split and join the National Front's militias. Iran starts to look something like modern Syria. The Anglo-Iranian Oil Company begins to finance private militias of its own, as well as paying the army's salaries. The entrance of a third side into the conflict, in the Soviet-backed Tudeh Party, escalates the civil war. An Anglo-American military intervention finally re-establishes order, although Azeri-majority areas in the north come under the control of the USSR and are annexed. The Shah is restored and, under Western pressure, he grants the AIOC limited legal sovereignty over Iran's oil-producing provinces, with separate courts for foreigners and the civil service and policing outsourced to company thugs. As sizeable private militias and much of the army still answers to the oil barons and their supporters in Western governments, the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company holds effective sovereignty over parts of Iran, and politically dominates the rest

[Simreeve]

Originally Posted by Rush Tarquin

Your challenge is to make a corporation so powerful, it actually has a de facto monopoly on coercion within a given territory. It cannot be acting at the behest of a state a la the British East India Company. The territory needs to be where it's base of operations is. It can relocate from a developed country to a developing country to achieve this, a la Kramer Associates. The POD should be post-1900 obviously. Bonus points if it manages to develop nuclear weapons.

How would such an entity function? What would it be like to live in?

Does 'United Fruit' in any of the banana republics qualify?

[Premier Taylerov]

This was something I contributed to the Political Ideology Thread, as a response to 'Polyestics.' It involves this kind of idea, although it doesn't go into a tremendous amount of detail. It was fun to write, however.

Polyesthetics was the colloquial name for the nature of governments of Europe and elsewhere in the latter half of the twentieth century, in what is otherwise known in politics as the Essigätheric period (or the 'Chemical Age' in North America). After the Great War (1914 - 1919) achieved nothing and merely exacerbated the economies of all of its participants, the continent of Europe was in dire straits. The United States, neutral throughout the war, retreated into deep isolationism, and left the mother continent well alone. As a result, chaos broke out, and as political and economic strife encouraged aggression and nationalism nations began to devise original ways to control their respective issues, and soon governments began to integrate industry closely in order to ensure jobs through a form of perverted semi-nationalization.

The first nation to successfully do so was the Czecho-Slovak Republic. Here, unemployment had risen dramatically within months, and the government encouraged prominent firms to enter into partnership. The most significant of these was Škoda - after the government bought 51% of its stock and brought it into merger, profits soared and national productivity began to rise. Within three years, Škoda was essentially running the government. However, the largest industrial player of its time - and the founder of Essigätheric politics - was the huge petrochemical company I.G Farben. Founded from six seperate companies in 1925 (BASF, Bayer, Hoechst, Cassella, Chemische Fabrik Kalle and Chemische Fabrik vorm. Weiler Ter Meer), Farben easily was Germany's largest company and soon the bankrupt government was playing into its hands. By 1930, the company dominated the government so much that it WAS the government, and it set about with mergers forming into the first hypercorporation. As Royal Dutch Shell and the British petroleum Company entered into merger - essentially creating an inpenetrable political and economic bloc to the west - Farben looked eastwards.

It bought out Škoda - and consequently the government of the Czechs and Slovaks. Any armed resistance was met with brutality under the company's state police force. Austria was bought out, too, and soon Denmark. The western corporations - fearful of a complete Farben takeover - began increasing their shares in Europe tenfold. The Soviet Union, which was completely repulsed at the whole idea, promptly invaded Poland and the Baltic, and the free companies of the west were forced to combine their forces to take out the anti-capitalist behemoth.

By the 2000s, Essigätheric politics (with its immersion of state and company) had swept the world. The United States was deep under the successes of the Pan-American World Corporation, Brazil was run by CVRD, South Africa split between a corporate 'junta' of diamond and gold minings companies using black slave labour, Japan was knee-deep under technological companies, and Australia almost exclusively the territory of the Rio Tinto group. However, polyesthetic governments were coming to a violent end. The global recession - arguably triggered by too much competition - saw the collapse of some of the world's largest companies. Starting with Scandinavian giant Skandia-Ikea and progressing through to the Central Pacific Bank, riots broke out everywhere and unemployment rose almost 6000% across the world. The great corporations of the past were gone.

[The Oncoming Storm]

As well as oil companies what about De Beers? It had a lot of power during the Apartheid era and owned the entire Sperrgebiet in Namibia.

[King Gorilla]

Originally Posted by Simreeve

Does 'United Fruit' in any of the banana republics qualify?

For that matter, what about the Congo Free State?

[MSZ]

The Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation is a possible candidate. It already de facto has judicial power over owned property, in that its guards employed by it (more closer to PMC's mercenarys) can actually shoot people on sight when tresspassing on its property. Not 'self defense', but in fact there is a legal 'shoot first, don't ask questions policy'. This is dictated by security reasons, to prevent terrorists from attacking pipelines or private drillers from damaging it. But I imagine that if the PMC employed by them actually have that kind of power, then extending that policy to other 'crimes', illegal not according to standing law, but the company's internal regulations is possible (especially in Africa).

[abc123]

Union Miniere du Haut-Katanga pretty much qualifies.



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

[President Al Bundy]

The I.G. Farben might have become so powerful in a victorious Nazi Germany that might have set up their own state in the areas of the former Soviet Union. Perhaps a slave state where the "Fatherland" can outsource their dirty jobs, and where the SS keeps "order".

[SergeantHeretic]

This would not work.

A private corporation as such is one of two organisms, either a symbiote or a parasite.

This means it cannot exist in and of itself it needs a larger political and or social entity to support it.

Lately corporations have been becoming more and more lethally parasitic of the countries and populations that support them, which is where you get things like the 2008 financial collapse.

This means that a corporation is by definiton incabable of the foresight, co operation and mature conduct that charecterizes a functional nation.

[MSZ]

Originally Posted by SergeantHeretic

This would not work.

A private corporation as such is one of two organisms, either a symbiote or a parasite.

This means it cannot exist in and of itself it needs a larger political and or social entity to support it.

Lately corporations have been becoming more and more lethally parasitic of the countries and populations that support them, which is where you get things like the 2008 financial collapse.

This means that a corporation is by definiton incabable of the foresight, co operation and mature conduct that charecterizes a functional nation.

That's rather.... harsh, don't you think? Corporations are motivated by greed - not only their own, but those of their shareholders. They are legaly obliged to maximize profits every year, often even at the expanse of possible profitable investments which are not financed becouse the financial calendar requires them to show a profit annually (and an investment made which had not yet returned itself is for a few years what shows up as 'expenditure', easily translated further as loss). So corporations existing "by itself" as you call it may very well be much more efficient than those present ones, as they are more likely to take the long-term in the account. Think about small family business which don't have to anwser to stockholders the question "why haven't you made more money this year" - they often last generations, being passed on from father to son thanks to not having those shackles on them.

So a corporation with actual sovereignty might be a not-terrible idea, as it would thus have to take care of the people they 'sovereign' over. They would be customers, which might be better to 'slave' as many dictatorship treat their people...

[SergeantHeretic]

Originally Posted by MSZ

That's rather.... harsh, don't you think? Corporations are motivated by greed - not only their own, but those of their shareholders. They are legaly obliged to maximize profits every year, often even at the expanse of possible profitable investments which are not financed becouse the financial calendar requires them to show a profit annually (and an investment made which had not yet returned itself is for a few years what shows up as 'expenditure', easily translated further as loss). So corporations existing "by itself" as you call it may very well be much more efficient than those present ones, as they are more likely to take the long-term in the account. Think about small family business which don't have to anwser to stockholders the question "why haven't you made more money this year" - they often last generations, being passed on from father to son thanks to not having those shackles on them.

So a corporation with actual sovereignty might be a not-terrible idea, as it would thus have to take care of the people they 'sovereign' over. They would be customers, which might be better to 'slave' as many dictatorship treat their people...

My goodness, that is a rosy picture of Coprorations.

Regardless, I judge corporations the same way I judge people.

By their ACTIONS.

It's not my fault that those actions mark them as parasites harmful to any nation acting as the host organism.

[whitecrow]

Originally Posted by SergeantHeretic

My goodness, that is a rosy picture of Coprorations.

Regardless, I judge corporations the same way I judge people.

By their ACTIONS.

It's not my fault that those actions mark them as parasites harmful to any nation acting as the host organism.

Hey, the OP never said anything about the corporation-nation having to be a GOOD government .

[hfegelein]

We already have enough trouble with corporations having personhood; if corporations had some form of sovereignty, I think things could get dystopian real fast.

[LHB]

This is sounding a LOT like the backstory for Shadowrun.

Stealing from that if you get a sufficiently radically reactionary SCOTUS bench lined up you could get a situation in the US where the Supreme Court rules corporations as legal persons have the right of self-defense. That could then be used as a stepping stone to extraterritoriality making corporations de facto states.

That would also be hideously ASB, probably spark off a tsunami of popular backlash, and take a generation or two to make happen.

[Phyrx]

Originally Posted by SergeantHeretic

It's not my fault that those actions mark them as parasites harmful to any nation acting as the host organism.

As bad as corporations can be, I think things'd be quite a bit worse without them. No companies means the state runs the economy. People tried that once or twice. Didn't work too good.

Originally Posted by Premier Taylerov

riots broke out everywhere and unemployment rose almost 6000% across the world

Read this as "unemployment rose to 6000%". Not sure how that works. Maybe the economy's so bad it's spreading to other universes?

[MSZ]

Originally Posted by LHB

This is sounding a LOT like the backstory for Shadowrun.

Stealing from that if you get a sufficiently radically reactionary SCOTUS bench lined up you could get a situation in the US where the Supreme Court rules corporations as legal persons have the right of self-defense. That could then be used as a stepping stone to extraterritoriality making corporations de facto states.

That would also be hideously ASB, probably spark off a tsunami of popular backlash, and take a generation or two to make happen.

Problem with that hypothetical ruling is that a legal entity can't be the target of what you may call a "violent crime". So it couldn't exercise self-defence. And any action meant to harm or terminate a legal entity would be covered by the commercial/business laws, being actually legal. That shadowrun scenario was bullshit from the start.

A "sovereign corporate state" would have to have a "force monopoly" on property it owns and going against the regulations of the corporation there being an offense punished by either the 'state justice system' or 'corporate justice system'. The former is more possible. A general provision of forcing people to abide by the rules of a corporation once entering its property and punishing if not done de facto exists - public transportation has rules regarding ones behaviour when for example in a bus - doesn't matter if the bus is ownsed by a private or state company. So I imagine that expanding the rights of what would serve as guards would be a first step. Then a state could introduce a general provision of allowing guards to detain suspects (imaginable). This would allow a corporation to introduce "internal regulations" and use state police for pursuing breaching them.

A corporate state would have to climb to power on the back of state power, not by challenging it. Use its institutions for its own goals while exempt from public control. But once it would achieve it, and surpass the power of the state, it no longer would be pursuing wealth as its primary goals - it wouldn't need to. And if it did, then I imagine such a megacorporation would most likely employ most of those people, who would probably be happy to have higher wages. And maybe even hold its shares. So it could be a great dictatorship with complete control over virtually all wealth - or a great democracy where everyones vote would have power equal to what they contribute, and making their decisions on who leads risking their own money - a very poweful motivator.

[Sicarius]

Originally Posted by Jape

Isn't this complicated by corporations counting as human beings in law? A person can't be a de jure country

Legal personhood is by no means an intrinsic feature of corporations, and even in the US it came about largely through happenstance.