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Notes -
Epistemological status - Straight brainstorm.
To what degree has the role of colonizer been taken over by the multinational corporation?
I've seen Steve Sailer repeat a theory (fairly certain he doesn't claim it's original to him, but I would have to do some internet searching to determine who he credits it to) that we may be past an era of conquest due to changes in what makes up the economic value of a place.
Ie, in 1850, most of the value of a place was the natural resources of a place, the farmland, the mines underneath it, that sort of thing. So you could fight a war on top of it, and if you won it, the economic value of what you won would remain largely intact.
In contrast, most of the economic value of a place these days is the human capital contained in a place. So if China decided they wanted to invade California (to pick an absurd example) they might militarily conquer it, but in doing so, all the engineers would flee, the urban centers would be destroyed, you could do it, but you couldn't do it and keep the economic value of what you won intact.
Instead, it makes more sense to try and extract what you can out of economic trade, that sort of thing.
Extending the analogy a bit, maybe political control over a place isn't particularly important as long as you have other levers to get what you want out of a place.
As long as Apple or Nike can set up a sweatshop (slightly tongue in cheek, but hopefully the point stands) in your country, and expect their property rights relatively respected [1], who cares if the local official has to write reports that need to be sent to Parliament or the State Department or not. The powers that be are able to get what they want out of a place, if anything, they're saving money having to pay for fewer bayonets.
[1] I guess at some point in the past there was real risk that multinational companies would have their investments expropriated by local governments, I guess maybe that was a larger risk when the USSR was giving support to various Marxist revolutionaries? That seems like something that's less of a risk than it used to be. Possibly due to levers like the IMF and World Bank and that sort of thing. Idk, I might be out in front of my skates in terms of knowing what I'm talking about.
Been taken over, past tense? East India Company glares at you. The wars leading to Britain's biggest colonial conquest got started when their multinational corporation got pissed about a big tax hike.
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I see where you're going with this, and it does seem different than imperialism circa 1900, but it might be worth considering that some of the first major joint-stock companies were the (British) East India Company and the Dutch East India Company, well known for governing areas that are now independent nations (India, Pakistan, and Indonesia). Although I don't think modern corporations are engaging in quite that level of governance.
Minor quibble, but what counts as a major joint stock company?
If we are talking strictly of chartered joint-stock companies, it would be at least half a century before the Dutch East India Company with the Muscovy Company; squint a bit and we can kind of say that “some of the first major” joint-stock companies were also colonial enterprises.
But if we use a looser definition, joint-stock companies - in the sense of joint ventures with tradeable shares owned by multiple people, with owners/shareholders abstracted from the management - would have existed in Europe for at least two centuries at that point, and in China for at least some three centuries, if not more. Those earlier incarnations - European or not - were very much so not colonial enterprises. Is the charteredness of the operation what you are banking on with “major”?
(I’m not sure I have a substantive issue with your point per se, just factual ambiguity.)
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Yeah, the parallel occurred to me as well,
Maybe where I'm trying to go is that original colonization was driven by economic adventurism,
Maybe that economic adventurism hasn't really gone away,
But these days involves more getting the right signatures to lock Foxconn into producing iPhones at a favorable rate, and less getting people do things at gunpoint.
Or maybe you'll miss out on the economic value of getting Foxconn to produce iPhones at favorable rates if you start by waving around guns?
Idk, I don't have a theory fully fleshed out in my mind.
I think to get into the economic and corporatist aspects of modernity and value extraction from third world countries, you want to get into leftist critiques of the IMF/WTO/proposed TPP and the Bretton Woods system more generally. If you're interested in fleshing out your theory more. To use your outline:
starts with
inasmuch as a prerequisite to Foxconn producing iPhones is membership in the overall global economic system, dominated by dollar exchange, rule of law, respect for private/corporate property, etc.
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