These days worry has taken over a lot of people’s lives over the power of corporations. They seem to gain more rights on a regular basis and can now donate as much as they want to candidates for the highest offices in government. One might say, based on the record of the past, that a corporation with deep enough pockets can basically buy the government and have it pass the laws it needs to thrive.
Let’s take a step back and think about that last statement. That statement treats corporations like a living breathing entity and most people would not think of inviting Microsoft or GE over for supper like you would you a friend or family member.
Which brings me to the crux of this entire argument: What constitutes life? If life can be viewed as some sort of carbon based entity that has distinct parts which serve different functions, has intelligence and a certain set of views and opinions based on information it has gathered over its lifetime (which is a really cold, but accurate definition of a human being), then corporations are alive. Well, the big ones are anyway.
What do I mean by corporations are alive? They are definitely carbon based. They individual parts are people and people are carbon based so by simple transience corporations are carbon based. There is also the constant talk of a corporation’s carbon footprint. Most of the other carbon based life forms on this planet expel carbon as a bi-product, and so do corporations.
Large corporations have many divisions, each of which are super-specialized and which perform specific functions. This of the amount of specialization of HR or IT or janitorial services. They cannot be switched out to perform can other’s jobs any more than a liver can pump blood or a spleen can take in oxygen and push it to the bloodstream. If we consider each department of a corporation as an internal organ of a living being, then corporations are quite complex lifeforms.
Corporations also possess intelligence. Now, some may argue that the intelligence comes from the individuals who work for the corporation, and that if the “bright boys” who come up with ideas and who manage corporations (note that “bright boys” is an old expression, not a comment on gender) were to leave then the intelligence would also be gone. That is true, but some serious head trauma could probably render Albert Einstein into Forrest Gump. So, if one perceives the intelligence of a person as coming from the arrangement of their synapses and the intelligence of a corporation from the arrangement of persons into teams, then the parallel is undeniable.
Finally, we come to opinions. People have opinions. Jeff Gordon is the best NASCAR driver, no Dale Earnhart Jr. is, NASCAR sucks. Obama is going to save the world, no wait, we’re all going to be communists, he’s the anti-christ. I have heard these views expressed by people I know over the last few days and they serve as vivid examples of how varied the opinions of lifeforms can be on very specific subjects.
Certain corporations put environmental friendliness above all else, some pollute as much as needed and care only for profits, others yet do what they can while protecting their bottom line. These seem like opinions to me. Corporations learn from studies of other corporations, government laws and regulations and from personal experience. This is similar to the concept of learning that individuals use and as such I think we can assume that corporations gain knowledge and form opinions just like all other lifeforms (they are just more efficient than the average NFL fan or literature buff).
Where does this leave us? Have we created life? Are corporations the next evolution of life in the universe? Will we all just become numbered cells performing a menial task in the great machines that we have created? Let’s stay away from the melodrama, but it does make one think.
This thought experiment does bring up an interesting idea. In the past people were anchors and businesses were transient. We come and go, we start businesses and they succeed or close. But not anymore, businesses have now become too big to fail (or so we are told). Corporations wield influence over congressmen and governors and hey maybe even presidents (I have no way of knowing one way or another).
I foresee a future where governments become less important than corporations and where governments exist to prop up and help corporations.
This is not a bad thing or harmful, corporations, just like all living things do best when they take care of their parts. If you have a cancerous lung, you get it removed, but if you don’t smoke in the first place, maybe you don’t get cancer in the first place. In the same way, a car brand owned by a big car manufacturer might need to be shut down, but it would be best for the manufacturer if they manage the brand better so they can have more products to sell to a larger variety of people.
We worry about corporations wringing us dry, but the truth is that those corporations end up shutting down since their customer base has been wrung dry. The truly successful corporations find a price point where the consumers can continue to buy without ruining themselves (repeat business is the key to success today as in the past).
I for one welcome our corporate overlords and look forward to the day when I can work my way up to the synapse center of the corporate body (you know the part of the corporate body that receives the most resources like the brain does in the human body). I suggest that we all take a good hard look around us and not cling to old ideas more than we need to. The future can never be stopped, it can only be fought fruitlessly. The Greeks learned this, the Romans learned this, the Byzantines learned this, the Han learned this. But they all learned it through failure. We should learn before failure comes and claims us like barbarians and revolutionaries raping and pillaging.
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