Corporations of the Future
This chart is play, to help understand some implications of various modes of economic organization, drawing especially from science fiction. The emphasis here is on evil organizations, but you’ll see they all aren’t bad. Several, offer significant hope. There will be further postings on both the dangers of bureaucracy and the possibilities of new (and very old) thinking about organizations.
In many ways, the archetypical joint-stock company, in both its power and hypocrisy, is the East India Company. Founded December 31, 1600 in London, it lasted until 1874. They had their own flag and their own armies. They conquered India. There was nothing “free market” about them which is no surprise. Companies don’t like the free market, they want to control their markets, destroy their competitors, and bully their supplies where they can’t take them over for a vertical monopoly.
Corporations, as we know them, are no more inevitable than monarchies, and deserve to join them in the dustbin of history.
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So why not include such venerable fantasy companies as Acme (Roadrunner), Spacey, Spacey Sprockets (Jetsons), Globex (The Simpsons), and Mom Co. (Futurama)? Because they aren’t really fleshed out, but rather serve as joke lines in themselves.
Corporations that act as prosthesis for superheroes (Wayne Enterprises, Stark) or supervillains (OsCorp Industries, LexCorp, LutherCorp) or something in between (Wonka) are also not in this chart.
Nothing too realistic is included. So no Initech from Office Space or Hooli From Silicon Valley. The real companies in this chart are not realistic, when you get down to it. They are improbably fantasies that somehow became real.
I also have not used any companies from pure games storylines either, mainly because I’m not a gamer and I couldn’t do them justice with only secondary research. So missing are Hyperion (Borderlands), Page Industries (Deus Ex), and Abstergo Industries (Assassin’s Creed), along with many others.
This chart is play, to help understand some implications of various modes of economic organization, drawing especially from science fiction. The emphasis here is on evil organizations, but you’ll see they all aren’t bad. Several, offer significant hope. There will be further postings on both the dangers of bureaucracy and the possibilities of new (and very old) thinking about organizations.
In many ways, the archetypical joint-stock company, in both its power and hypocrisy, is the East India Company. Founded December 31, 1600 in London, it lasted until 1874. They had their own flag and their own armies. They conquered India. There was nothing “free market” about them which is no surprise. Companies don’t like the free market, they want to control their markets, destroy their competitors, and bully their supplies where they can’t take them over for a vertical monopoly.
Corporations, as we know them, are no more inevitable than monarchies, and deserve to join them in the dustbin of history.
*
So why not include such venerable fantasy companies as Acme (Roadrunner), Spacey, Spacey Sprockets (Jetsons), Globex (The Simpsons), and Mom Co. (Futurama)? Because they aren’t really fleshed out, but rather serve as joke lines in themselves.
Corporations that act as prosthesis for superheroes (Wayne Enterprises, Stark) or supervillains (OsCorp Industries, LexCorp, LutherCorp) or something in between (Wonka) are also not in this chart.
Nothing too realistic is included. So no Initech from Office Space or Hooli From Silicon Valley. The real companies in this chart are not realistic, when you get down to it. They are improbably fantasies that somehow became real.
I also have not used any companies from pure games storylines either, mainly because I’m not a gamer and I couldn’t do them justice with only secondary research. So missing are Hyperion (Borderlands), Page Industries (Deus Ex), and Abstergo Industries (Assassin’s Creed), along with many others.