I have just finished reading a very long essay about the history of the corporation. And with it the transition of economics from a relatively zero sum game to one of mutual advantage. You should read the whole thing.
Here are a few excerpts to whet your appetite.
In its 400+ year history, the corporation has achieved extraordinary things, cutting around-the-world travel time from years to less than a day, putting a computer on every desk, a toilet in every home (nearly) and a cellphone within reach of every human. It even put a man on the Moon and kinda-sorta cured AIDS.
And
On the scale of days or weeks, culture, politics and war matter a lot more in shaping our daily lives. But those forces fundamentally cancel out over longer periods. They are mostly noise, historically speaking. They don’t cause creative-destructive, unidirectional change (whether or not you think of that change as “progress” is a different matter).
Business though, as an expression of the force of unidirectional technological evolution, has a destabilizing unidirectional effect. It is technology, acting through business and Schumpeterian creative-destruction, that drives monotonic, historicist change, for good or bad. Business is the locus where the non-human force of technological change sneaks into the human sphere.
And
Steam power though was a scientific and engineering invention. Sailing ships were the crowning achievements of the age of craft guilds. Steam engines created, and were created by engineers, marketers and business owners working together with (significantly disempowered) craftsmen in genuinely industrial modes of production. Scientific principles about gases, heat, thermodynamics and energy applied to practical ends, resulting in new artifacts. The disempowerment of craftsmen would continue through the Schumpeterian age, until Fredrick Taylor found ways to completely strip mine all craft out of the minds of craftsmen, and put it into machines and the minds of managers. It sounds awful when I put it that way, and it was, in human terms, but there is no denying that the process was mostly inevitable and that the result was vastly better products.
Go read the whole thing. There is lots about the marrying of the corporation to the State. Colonialism. The creation of value. Control of the sea. Opium wars and lots more. And best of all. Ideas.
Comments
3 responses to “Space – Time – Perspective”
a better book to read is stephen brill’s tailspin.its about how highly intelligent capitalists use intelligence for evil purposes. remember greed is good? or creative destruction of the rust belt. they use use their intelligence to get around laws designed to protect the people from being harmed by them. such as repeal of glass steagle act then led 2008 economic implosion. and recent allow banisters to seize savings accounts of depositors if they crash the banks again.
Small differences in ability make large differences in outcome. The Pareto Principle. A fact of nature. Not just human nature.
Sometimes also called the 80/20 rule.
20% gets 80% 80/20 = 4
80% gets 20% 20/80 = .25
It is a fact of nature.
In any case the desire for wealth is bad in a zero sum game. In a positive sum game it is very helpful. The article makes that point.
Sorry you missed it.
their is a good book to read on corporations in action in ameriKKKa. “the social history of the machine gun.”