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by lapcat 1207 days ago
> So the final message seems to be "capitalism is bad, but not as bad as socialism"?

The message is that the power of individual corporations needs to be reined in.

First sentence of the article: "Some multinational corporations are now larger and more powerful than individual nation-states."

Later: "You could argue that in the earliest days of capitalism, something like the concept of free enterprise actually existed: firms of various sizes competed, with even the largest dwarfed in both size and influence by most nation states."

Also: "Unions can act as counterweights to the sometimes terrifying power held by management."

"an increasingly small number of ever-expanding corporate conglomerates dominate the labor market"

1 comments

don't the big unions have some of the same power/control issues because of capitalism? a rich CEO of a union corp on a private jet seems almost worse than a rich tech monopoly CEO?
> don't the big unions have some of the same power/control issues

There's a potential for corruption in any human organization, even democratic organizations. Witness corruption in politics, for example. That's mostly unavoidable, humans being what they are.

The difference is that union leaders are still elected by the union members, whereas corporate CEOs are elected by the stockholders, not by employees. So even given some corruption, union leaders still represent the interests of labor better than CEOs do.

ah, i didn't know that thanks