Corporate Reductionalism

Corporations aren’t real. NGOs aren’t real. Government’s aren’t real. These are some statements that, to the observation of most, are plainly false. People shop at Walmart and eat at McDonalds. People donate to the FSF and heed the World Economic Forum’s words. You likely pay taxes to a Government, federal, state, provincial, local, or other. All these institutions do exist in effect, but the categories they belong to are not real categories due to the fact that these categories lack utility and can instead be reduced to one category of great defining utility: organization.

Denial of the Categories

These organizational types all have a couple of things in common:

1. All organizations listed have regulatory branches and executive branches.
2. All organizations listed have shareholders interested in the success of the institution for one reason or another
3. All organizations listed have capital in some form. Rather that capital is violence capital, property capital, labor capital, monetary capital, social capital, or some other form of capital does not matter.
4. All organizations listed have some form of will that those in charge wish to exert

These four factors (likely not exhaustive) are common between all organizations and are the more pressing, root factors for why a group does something rather than the specific methods an organization uses to exert or obtain capital. McDonald’s corp shouldn’t be defined by its willingness to sell patties, but rather what selling those patties gives to the shareholders. The American government shouldn’t be defined by being a regulatory body over the American continent, but rather by what those regulations do in terms of keeping shareholders happy and who is proposing and executing those regulations. It’s not irrational to think that if McDonald’s corp and The American Government swapped places, with congress now running McDonald’s policies on meat buying and The Executive Board of McDonalds defining the tax rates for U.S. citizens, there would be little change at all in terms of the four core aspects of an organization at play, the only thing that would have changed would be the sentiments, mentalities, and knowledge base of those in charge, in effect, it would be a change in the labor and intellectual capital that the two organizations hold. A change in labor capital is by no means a great change. Over time, the two organizations could readjust to their new roles and we could see Senators experts in the field of turning meat into profit and the logistical managers of the McDonalds corp ensuring the American Highway system runs smoothly. It’s not an implausible idea, although I would not bet on the successes of such ideas due to the massive knowledge drains suddenly caused.

Why do we define these groups as different?

Simply put, the form of capital desired by the shareholders and the execution of the will of the shareholders is the source of the confused differentiation. These two facts are the most dominantly observed by a lay man and exist, for the most part, in effect rather than cause. No one is wrong in saying that “McDonalds is a private company” or that the “FSF is a non-profit”, but people are wrong in intuiting that the FSF doesn’t have shareholders and profits while McDonalds simply does. The only difference between these two organizations is the profit that is pursued. The FSF is after ideological, social, and influence profit rather than the monetary and property profit that McDonalds is after. Both are organizations wish to protect their interior by giving the most benefit to the shareholders involved. The FSF claims its shareholders are the users of computers, McDonald’s shareholders are those who happen to own stock. Both wish to, in some way, maximize profit for these groups. This difference in profit desires is where we get our discrimination. The problem occurs when people assume that these differences in profit motivations some how change the core model of how organizations work. For some reason, people believe that non-profits can’t profit and will ignore their doings despite their great influence. On the contrary, private businesses are given the most attention due to their less socially sensitive wants for profits. Governments are also seen as non-profits as well, so much so that any form of profiteering in government is frowned upon. Due to this frowning of government profiteering, profiteering is now less explicit. Instead of a King taking his share of the taxes for personal profit, he is instead using his power to push his agenda upon the people or benefiting business partners and friends in legislative deals.

Half-Baked Libertarianism

Libertarians, at least the half-baked, libertarian party libertarians, who don’t recognize this fact of reducabability when it comes to organizations will categorically fail to stand up for their ideals. Libertarians, generally, are for the conservation of liberty (with liberty being the non-regulation on a people, group, or other form of subject). Governments clearly are regulators so they’re most often attacked by the libertarian cause, rightfully so, but the private corporation is given a free pass, and in some cases defended, for some strange reason. The private corporation is as much of a regulator and arbiter of trade and social ability in its borders as the government. Many companies, such as Google, Microsoft, Apple, Twitter, Facebook, all use their private powers in highly liberty offensive ways: blocking free speech, suspending free commerce between individuals, engaging in the monitoring of people en masse, and other activities that should rightfully anger a libertarian. Worse yet, the excuse of “don’t use the company” hardly counts anymore as many of these companies are as imperialist in nature as a government is: They drive up requirements for technological usage, embrace, extend, and extinguish competition, and seep deep into otherwise neutral or public intuitions. These companies, like all organizations, have incentive to expand and will do so with all their might if it means protecting their capital and appeasing their shareholders. The only reason that most libertarians don’t get up in arms about this fact is that they take a difference in capital pursuit as some form of significant discriminator; because companies want money rather than direct regulatory control, they are fine. Putting aside the regulations that exist inside the usage of these products and the rapid expansion these companies are making, this is still a problem. The influence money alone can have on regulatory institutions is insane. Companies can easily buy out governments or influence the truth-bearing institutions with their money. Speaking of truth bearing institutions, NGOs and other organizations are also never under fire by libertarians despite being even worse than governments in some cases when it comes to regulating sensitive aspects of discussion like “what is allowed and not allowed to be said”.

Conclusion

There is no difference between NGOs, Governments, and Private companies. Due to this, all should be seen in the same way as it comes to hostility of the form and their power; If you hate a government because it can regulate, you ought to also hate NGOs and Corporations for it too. If you have Companies because they are exploiting people for capital; then your hatred for the government and the NGOs should be just as equal. Maybe you don’t categorically hate these groups, if you don’t, then you should ensure that the profit motivations of these groups align with your groups: there should be no protected organizations for their profit motives; governments shouldn’t be free from scorn when they go against your values, neither should NGOs nor Companies too.