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Tech giants have as much money and influence as nations

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Re: Tech giants have as much money and influence as nations

#31

Post by xiler »

spectramax wrote: post #6

Another way to think about this topic is that China's CEO is Xi Jingpin. There are a few distinctions between calling China a company and calling Apple a nation: - A nation uphelds the law whereas a company uses proxies (lobbying) to make laws - A nation has diplomatic rights, a company has to abide by export controls - A nation has a treasury, has control over interest rates and can prosecute violators, it ensures a…

I think the company-country analogy is stronger than you claim.

> A nation uphelds the law whereas a company uses proxies (lobbying) to make laws

Once companies can influence the government, any special abilities of the government (export controls, legal system, etc.) can, at least to some extent, be harnessed by high-net-worth individuals/companies [1].

[1] https://www.cambridge.org/core/services/aop-cambridge-core/c...

Re: Tech giants have as much money and influence as nations

#32

Post by culturestate »

dmitriid wrote: post #22
culturestate wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> ... nice one Jony ... design a brave and “beautiful” open plan workspace for a paranoiacally secretive organisation. I feel like it's worth pointing out that Steve Jobs was still running Apple when this building was designed. I don't work for Norman Foster so I have no way to know how much changed internally after he died, but I doubt the balance shifted too wildly given the logistical constraints of massive constr…

> I'd want to foster a corporate culture of extreme openness and collaboration inside the walls Open space offices are entirely othogonal to this idea.

How so? I'd argue that while open-plan offices can profoundly affect people's productivity and morale, they have relatively little impact on collaboration or communication - I view these more as functions of the team's culture.

As long as your group makes a conscious effort to bounce ideas around and ask each other for advice, what's the difference between sitting at a table wearing headphones or in an office with the door shut? Or, for that matter, everyone being remote?

I can kind of see how you could make a case that open-plan offices change the dynamic of communication, i.e. they make people less willing to "bother" their coworkers, but collaboration can (and probably should, most of the time) happen asynchronously over slack or email or post-it note anyway.

Re: Tech giants have as much money and influence as nations

#33

Post by allworknoplay »

AmericanChopper wrote: post #5

I think it’s supposed to be a joke, but it’s still a bit contrived. The governance models of countries and companies are very different. Just about every company would end up being like some sort of socialist regime. No democracy, central planning. Perhaps you could argue they’re more like oligarchies or plutocracies (governed by capital).

The argument is that they're as powerful, not that they're the same.

Re: Tech giants have as much money and influence as nations

#34

Post by coder1001 »

distances wrote: post #14
coder1001 wrote: post #9

Doesn't Apple need the secrecy to survive? Imagine Nokia getting hold of the specs of the original iPhone early before its release, how would the world be today?

Nokia's woes were on software side, not hardware. Building a competitive software stack proved too slow an undertaking for a hardware company. It was Android in the end that ate Nokia's pie, not Apple.

My feeling is that had Apple not released the iPhone, Android would have probably joined the long list of products that Google killed.

It is competition from the iPhone (and the possible control of search traffic on mobile devices that Apple would have) that forced Google to focus on Android after acquiring it and this lead to the demise of Nokia and the mobile division of Microsoft.

I don't know if Nokia knew the marketing budget going towards launching the iPhone along with other resources planned for its launch would that have changed their view on how serious of a competitor the iPhone is going to be.

Re: Tech giants have as much money and influence as nations

#35

Post by coder1001 »

rapsey wrote: post #24
distances wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nokia's woes were on software side, not hardware. Building a competitive software stack proved too slow an undertaking for a hardware company. It was Android in the end that ate Nokia's pie, not Apple.

Also they only took Apple seriously way too late.

Agree. See my comment above. Having access to info about marketing budget etc. could have possibly changed that.

Re: Tech giants have as much money and influence as nations

#36

Post by pjc50 »

ncmncm wrote: post #25

It is essentially the same at all corporations, always has been. Lenin was a great admirer of Ford Motor Company. His Soviet committees were copied directly from Ford. You could think of the SSRs as divisions, and satellite countries as wholly-owned subsidiaries.

Conversely, Ford was its own colonial power, much like the United Fruit Company or Shell: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fordl%C3%A2ndia

Fordlândia had its own version of Prohibition, and its own little revolt about the cafeteria.

Re: Tech giants have as much money and influence as nations

#37

Post by pjc50 »

coder1001 wrote: post #9

Doesn't Apple need the secrecy to survive? Imagine Nokia getting hold of the specs of the original iPhone early before its release, how would the world be today?

Quite a lot of Apple's success is in the supply chain. They're very keen on the secrecy but I'm unconvinced that they actually need it; it's as much about avoiding the "Osborne effect" as dealing with competition.

Re: Tech giants have as much money and influence as nations

#38

Post by LifeLiverTransp »

culturestate wrote: post #10
rusk wrote: post #2

This made me laugh ... > “Many employees don’t like Apple Park [the company’s new headquarters] because it has very few private offices. ... nice one Jony ... design a brave and “beautiful” open plan workspace for a paranoiacally secretive organisation. Says it all really.

> ... nice one Jony ... design a brave and “beautiful” open plan workspace for a paranoiacally secretive organisation. I feel like it's worth pointing out that Steve Jobs was still running Apple when this building was designed. I don't work for Norman Foster so I have no way to know how much changed internally after he died, but I doubt the balance shifted too wildly given the logistical constraints of massive constr…

Take the mafia, its the ideal example to organise towards- it thrives and works in open spaces like restaurants, construction buisnesses, it exists in plain sight. Yet, the omerta enforces a absolut silence to the outside world. The ideal buisness organization is the mafia.

Re: Tech giants have as much money and influence as nations

#39

Post by raverbashing »

rusk wrote: post #2

This made me laugh ... > “Many employees don’t like Apple Park [the company’s new headquarters] because it has very few private offices. ... nice one Jony ... design a brave and “beautiful” open plan workspace for a paranoiacally secretive organisation. Says it all really.

It's sad really that Johnny Ive's legacy at Apple ends up with that and the stupidly thin keyboards that fail at their most basic task.

SJ was hard and had a lot of stupid ideas, but he also made sure to hire people that knew when to fight him on that. And I think keyboardgate would have been addressed earlier if he had been around.

Re: Tech giants have as much money and influence as nations

#40

Post by elfexec »

spectramax wrote: post #6

Another way to think about this topic is that China's CEO is Xi Jingpin. There are a few distinctions between calling China a company and calling Apple a nation: - A nation uphelds the law whereas a company uses proxies (lobbying) to make laws - A nation has diplomatic rights, a company has to abide by export controls - A nation has a treasury, has control over interest rates and can prosecute violators, it ensures a…

> Another way to think about this topic is that China's CEO is Xi Jingpin.

He's more like the chairman. He sets the direction that he wants china to go in, others execute his plan.

> There are a few distinctions between calling China a company and calling Apple a nation:

Nobody is calling china a company and apple a nation. People are talking about money and influence. Apple certainly doesn't have the money and influence of China or the US. But it has more influence than most smaller or even midsized nations.

- A nation has a treasury, has control over interest rates and can prosecute violators,

Banking cartels/central banks like the Fed control interest rates. The treasury mints money and collects taxes.

> - A nation has hard physical military and ability to go to war, a company has office security and HR

So has companies. Companies have even fought wars against each other.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carnatic_Wars

> - A nation can prosecute criminals, a company can layoff people.

Governments prosecute criminals. Companies have been able to try, punish and enslave people.

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