To start with I suppose I am going to have to define Corporate Monarchy. I must admit it is a bit of a catch phrase but it is based on these meanings,
- Corporate – of or relating to a corporation.
- Monarchy – undivided rule or absolute sovereignty by a single person.
The difference here is that the single person is the incorporated body instead of a human. I am not even the first to think of it. A brief search on the Internet comes up with others becoming concerned about the same thing. The concern is fairly simple, corporations are becoming more powerful than governments and don’t seem to be truly accountable to the law any more.
A good example of this was on John Oliver’s Last Week Tonight with McKesson being fined (settling at) US$150,000,000 in 2017 which sounds rather a lot until you realise it is less that 1/1000th of their revenue for one year.
In New Zealand we have Facebook, a company that has continuously been under fire from the New Zealand Privacy Commissioner who eventually lashed calling those behind the company “morally corrupt pathological liars.” Facecrooks keeps a tab on bad news about Facebook and currently has over 1600 articles….yet nothing has happened.
Certainly not in NZ where the Privacy Commissioners teeth were pulled by the Government in the new Privacy Act.
So how could we stop these incredibly large businesses from being unaccountable to the law? That is a question that answers itself.
Limit company sizes
Company sizes need to be limited both in pure dollar terms and market share. When a New Zealand company becomes worth more than $500,000,000 or has more than 25% market share it should have to split. There is no reason companies should be able to become more powerful than the countries that host them or their competitors in the markets place.
Limit personal wealth
In New Zealand the NBR Richlist has roughly 200 people on it with a worth $50,000,000 or above. These people, whether they like it or not, are dangerously powerful in the sense that they imbalance society. No single person should have more than $50,000,000 worth of assets in NZ. It’s doubtful that it is helpful for the economy and it definitely isn’t helpful having $100,000,000,000 of assets tied up by 200 people. If it was spread at $50,000,000 per person it there would be 2000 on the list.
