Is it really that hard to measure corporate power? Why not try a few of these metrics:
How much of political spending comes from corporate coffers?
How many paid lobbyists for corporations are there swarming around Washington and State capitals?
How much of the economy is privatized and how much delivered by the government?
What percent of Supreme Court cases are decided in favor of corporations, and what percent in favor of individuals?
What's the average Congressional rating on the Chamber of Commerce's "Spirit of Enterprise" scorecard? The corporations contributing to the CoC don't seem to have much trouble measuring their own power.
What percent of our media outlets are controlled by the biggest 10 players?
If you're having trouble distinguishing your corner bodega from Palantir, Fortune magazinee offers handy lists of 100, 500, or 1000. Tailor your cutoff to suit!
This is a very good point but I would go much further and point out the whole viewpoint seems weirdly underspecified. Whether or not corporations should have somewhat different rules it's not clear why we should assume it's net harmful and it seems absolutely clear there is no coherent theory about what exactly is bad and why (see points below).
Rather, it seems like a way to explain how the world doesn't live up to what you think it should that lets you be angry without blaming individuals or institutions that you have positive feelings for.
To illustrate why it feels so unprincipled;
0) In terms of the power to influence politics shouldn't corporations like the NYT rate at the absolute pinnacle of corporate power? Why aren't news and media corporations the biggest problem of all? If Comcast occasionally weighs in on politics but the NYT does so all the time why isn't the later the greater threat? The government could favor policies that make it harder for such corporations to make money (strong form of the no copyright for news rule) ... seems terrible but implied by the position.
1) Corporations are just one way people organize to achieve certain goals and it seems far from clear they are the ways most likely to create harmful bias. Why should we be more worried about the corporate form that the government funded university or the think tank? The people that work there have direct interest in policy (jobs often depend on government money) and releasing scientific papers, IPCC reports or testifying seems very similar to lobbying but using social status and authority instead of money to persuade.
Sure, those people tend to believe what they say but that's almost always how corporate influence works too. Delibrately telling outright lies is rare, it's usually mentioning what is helpful to you and the people involved usually believe what they say because it's very easy to convince yourself you are the good guys especially because you compare yourself to the worst of the other side.
And dedicated interest groups are literally a corporation with a declared intent to influence politics. Why is it more dangerous if a corporation does a little bit of influence on the side than if they focus primarily on that?
3) What about religion or identities? Those are even more massive organizations that have huge influence on how people vote and will often directly tell legislatures that their immortal soul depends on doing as they say.
Or what about the influence of entertainers on politics and our media ecosystem? Colbert and Oliver wield more power with the jokes they tell than almost any CEO I can imagine -- maybe not on the most polarized issues but they can dictate how most people on the left initially feel about something like the abundance agenda.
4) Why even assume that it is on net harmful. Sure corporations will have some incentives to block certain regulations and create monopolies but, otoh people often have an insufficient appreciation of the true cost of regulations (see building) and at the very largest scale corporations benefit immensely from a stable landscape with predictable policies.
Is it a coincidence that when we limited the power big organizations like corporations we got Trump. Fundamentally corporate influence is a stabilizing force while individual donations benefit the extremists.
I've often argued this as the flip side of the coin from the 2000s-2010s' "small/limited government" rhetoric. Cool, small in what way? Like, you want to reduce the size of the Federal workforce? "Small" as in "limited to the enumerated powers listed in the Constitution"? "Small" as in "involved in 10% fewer areas of life than it is currently"? Or are you one of the "should be small enough I can personally crush it under my boot" types? What areas specifically do you think government should pull out of? Like, we talking lighthouses? Drugs? FEMA?
I think it's equally pathological and thoughtless to pretend that normal people turn into Hitler the moment they get issued an "@____.gov" email address, as it is to pretend that normal people start throwing babies into woodchippers to increase share price $0.01 the moment they form an LLC.
There appears to be a belief that small businesses are inherently good and large businesses inherently bad. This is a grave error in judgment. I have 2 examples, one personal and one from work.
Personally, I tend to enjoy small restaurants. The feel of a 'homey' location. I occasionally went to a bar that I liked (that nailed the small town feel) near my home. Loved it, thought it was good. Soon found out that the owner was a complete jerk, and only hired waitresses with certain breast sizes. A year later I heard he was in jail for sexual assault. I stopped going after I heard the first story, and the second confirmed I would never go again. The steakhouse near my house (a chain with a famous now out of town owner) nails a local feel. So who's the good guy and who's the bad guy?
Another story from business. I of course have had some bad big corporate vendors, but the worst vendor I've ever had was a tiny business in Indiana. I cannot reveal the details but the gist of it is we found a much better price from a more local (but much larger, more 'corporate') business nearby. We informed our old vendor we were leaving. The old vendor got mad, claimed we signed a contract (we didn't), stole a piece of equipment we had given them and made our lives living hell to leave. The even had a guy intimidate our employees as we went to pick up our equipment.
Small corporations are just as capable of screwing customers and vendors over as corporate ones are; I would point out that Donald Trump was not a 'corporate' guy and did just fine conning people over the years.
My reaction is that the moniker ‘corporate power’ is actually referring to the Milton Friedman philosophy of shareholder theory. That the existence of corporations is, and should be, for the entire purpose of enriching that business’s shareholders. The stakeholder theory, by contrast, posits that businesses should consider the interests of several different stakeholders, including their shareholders, but also employees, customers, suppliers, and the community in which it operates. My thinking is that when shareholder theory is waxing, the sense is that ‘corporate power is increasing.’ When stakeholder theory is in ascendence, that indicates a waning of ‘corporate power.’ Point is well taken, that this is very much a vibes-driven concept, but the more that highly visible companies (and companies generally) act consistently with stakeholder theory, I believe the fewer calls to curb ‘corporate power.’ Which, ironically, Friedman would say is an argument to act in accordance with stakeholder theory in order to benefit the shareholders!!
Agree with above comments that there are measures. On this score “The limits of “fighting”
What people who want to see more emphasis on fighting corporate power do have is a list of figures they like, such as Elizabeth Warren and Lina Khan, who have a solid record of taking positions that are highly antagonistic to business leaders.
So while there isn’t an index of corporate power such that we can say which places have succeeded more or less than others at fighting it, there is a group of people with a disposition to wage political battles against business interests.
Here one thing I would note is that most furiously lobbied-over issues in a practical sense just pit businesses against each other. Pharmaceutical companies and pharmacy benefit managers both hire lobbyists and then the lobbyists fight each other. Credit card companies and retailers both hire lobbyists and fight in Congress about swipe fees. It’s important for political actors to try to decide who is right in these disputes, but whichever side you come down on you’ll find some corporate actors on your side.
You can maintain an anti-business affect as a political persona, but it’s not a useful guide to specific issues. And the lack of index in terms of policy outcomes here is relevant. There are backbench legislators who have this as the center of their political agenda, but you almost never see it in an incumbent executive officeholder. If Gavin Newsom or Gretchen Whitmer or Wes Moore or Maura Healey were overtly hostile to business, then major businesses would leave their states, which would be bad. This — capital flight — is the actual issue, not lobbying clout. Michigan wants Michigan-based businesses to succeed and it wants to attract inbound investment.
You might take Zohran Mamdani as illustrating the outer frontiers of what’s conceptually possible here. He’s a self-described democratic socialist who’s talking about cutting red tape for small businesses. He’s kind of spiritually aligned with the idea that Wall Street billionaires are bad, but he’s not trying to run the finance industry out of town.
None of this is to say that you can’t or shouldn’t regulate corporations. It’s just that there are basically two kinds of economies: one where businesses are growing and thriving, and one where there’s no growth and the economy is sputtering. It’s true that there are some communities that have a university campus or a military base as their main economic driver rather than a for-profit business. But these are edge case exceptions that prove the rule. A prosperous place is going to have prospering businesses — powerful corporations — that anchor the economy.”
My mayor Brandon Johnson… is an executive who does antagonize business pretty robustly.
I think a lot of people who say "corporate power" are intellectually lazy and it means nothing to them, but when I think of the phrase, what I mean is the excessive influence of rich tycoons in society. I can name way more robber barons from the late 19th century than I can presidents, and I feel like we're in a similar era now, where the most powerful and influential men in society are the richest. I would like for Musk, Zuckerberg, Ellison, etc to have way less power than they do, similar to how the rise of Rockefeller and Stanford and Carnegie caused the progressive movement. I don't know exactly how to measure this, but I'm sure there are plenty of actual social scientists out there who do.
To me, the useful division is between businesses that seek to succeed through rent-seeking and those that try to succeed by serving a competitive market. The former is bad for the economy, the latter good. The division isn't always clear cut and sometimes, you need to compromise with the former due to political pragmatism. But that's the problem to me, not bigness per se.
Something I resent about about how people posture about being anti-corporate is that even people who work in the higher education, governmental, or non-profit sector still have their salaries ultimately paid by people in the private sector and consume things manufactured, designed, and trucked to them by the private sector. I don't know if Winston Churchill was the first to say this, but "Cultured people are merely the glittering scum which floats upon the deep river of production" is entirely true.
I especially resent New York and DC people who pose as anti-corporate, since NYC's culture, foundation, and higher-education industries were often endowed by industrialists who made their fortunes ELSEWHERE in the US and basically gave NYC and DC art museums while the places that actually produced the product just got pollution.
So much of this talk of “corporate power” is just aesthetics. It’s the old slacker “the corporations man!” impulse dressed up in policy papers. Lina Khan’s appointment to the FTC was very much Elizabeth Warren’s doing, and she was a failure. She spent taxpayer money to sue to stop mergers…and lost…almost every time. Had she been successful, the end result would likely have been harmful to the average American, with higher prices, or businesses failing.
Her alliance with Mandami will probably fail, because she will push the administration to use questionable interpretations of arcane or ambiguous laws and end up losing in court.
At a more basic level, that high level of regulation approach encourages oligopolies, and entrenches the power of the largest companies. Regulation protects those with the resources to comply, hiring more lawyers and lobbyists. Perversely, it is easier for the regulator, since 1 or 2 big players is easier to deal with, but also makes the market more dependent on just those few players, giving them more power. If JPMorgan leaves NYC, that’s a serious problem for New York City.
MY is making this much too complicated. Populists on right and left find enemies, moderates find solutions. Foreigners / ethnic groups on right, economic power (billionaires, corporations) on the economic left, class oppressors of other types on the social left.
If you define corporate power as pricing power, then corporate power is high, but largely due to the tech sector. Operating margins of large companies (defined as S&P 500 companies) are around 16%. The 90s were around 12%, the 2000s around 14% for reference. Tech giants like Nvidia, Google, Apple, Microsoft have operating margins in the 30 and 40 percent range. Consumers would benefit from more competition among tech giants, but that seems unlikely due to high barriers to entry. So the only real option is a heavier regulatory touch to protect the consumer and focused anti-trust enforcement on bad behavior.
"It’s just that there are basically two kinds of economies: one where businesses are growing and thriving, and one where there’s no growth and the economy is sputtering."
Whew! This comes back to earth.
The rest of this leaves me rather chilly.
Quantification is a wonderful tool, but if you are blind to all that is not quantifiable, you might as well be missing one of your eyes. Sure, I can't quantify the amount of spousal abuse to be scored for punching one's wife as opposed to cheating with her sister, but that does not negate the concept of abuse.
As to this particular slogan, corporate power, it's a lot like law and order in that it deliberately covers a lot of resentments in a vague way so as to attract a large tent. That's politics as opposed to policy making. Although the two need to remain congruent, policy making and politics are not the same thing.
But sure, a large tent includes lots of highly questionable allies. There are lots of leftists in this tent I wouldn't want to see in power. However, they aren't the only ones who want our capitalism to be based, as far as possible, on free market competition as opposed to externalizing costs and subverting government.
These comments have been really interesting—does anyone have a good book on antitrust or corporate lobbying they’d recommend? (I’m sure there’s zillions out there so would love a rec!)
File this under "MattY plays stupid because he does not want to understand something".
Is it really that hard to measure corporate power? Why not try a few of these metrics:
How much of political spending comes from corporate coffers?
How many paid lobbyists for corporations are there swarming around Washington and State capitals?
How much of the economy is privatized and how much delivered by the government?
What percent of Supreme Court cases are decided in favor of corporations, and what percent in favor of individuals?
What's the average Congressional rating on the Chamber of Commerce's "Spirit of Enterprise" scorecard? The corporations contributing to the CoC don't seem to have much trouble measuring their own power.
What percent of our media outlets are controlled by the biggest 10 players?
If you're having trouble distinguishing your corner bodega from Palantir, Fortune magazinee offers handy lists of 100, 500, or 1000. Tailor your cutoff to suit!
This is a very good point but I would go much further and point out the whole viewpoint seems weirdly underspecified. Whether or not corporations should have somewhat different rules it's not clear why we should assume it's net harmful and it seems absolutely clear there is no coherent theory about what exactly is bad and why (see points below).
Rather, it seems like a way to explain how the world doesn't live up to what you think it should that lets you be angry without blaming individuals or institutions that you have positive feelings for.
To illustrate why it feels so unprincipled;
0) In terms of the power to influence politics shouldn't corporations like the NYT rate at the absolute pinnacle of corporate power? Why aren't news and media corporations the biggest problem of all? If Comcast occasionally weighs in on politics but the NYT does so all the time why isn't the later the greater threat? The government could favor policies that make it harder for such corporations to make money (strong form of the no copyright for news rule) ... seems terrible but implied by the position.
1) Corporations are just one way people organize to achieve certain goals and it seems far from clear they are the ways most likely to create harmful bias. Why should we be more worried about the corporate form that the government funded university or the think tank? The people that work there have direct interest in policy (jobs often depend on government money) and releasing scientific papers, IPCC reports or testifying seems very similar to lobbying but using social status and authority instead of money to persuade.
Sure, those people tend to believe what they say but that's almost always how corporate influence works too. Delibrately telling outright lies is rare, it's usually mentioning what is helpful to you and the people involved usually believe what they say because it's very easy to convince yourself you are the good guys especially because you compare yourself to the worst of the other side.
And dedicated interest groups are literally a corporation with a declared intent to influence politics. Why is it more dangerous if a corporation does a little bit of influence on the side than if they focus primarily on that?
3) What about religion or identities? Those are even more massive organizations that have huge influence on how people vote and will often directly tell legislatures that their immortal soul depends on doing as they say.
Or what about the influence of entertainers on politics and our media ecosystem? Colbert and Oliver wield more power with the jokes they tell than almost any CEO I can imagine -- maybe not on the most polarized issues but they can dictate how most people on the left initially feel about something like the abundance agenda.
4) Why even assume that it is on net harmful. Sure corporations will have some incentives to block certain regulations and create monopolies but, otoh people often have an insufficient appreciation of the true cost of regulations (see building) and at the very largest scale corporations benefit immensely from a stable landscape with predictable policies.
Is it a coincidence that when we limited the power big organizations like corporations we got Trump. Fundamentally corporate influence is a stabilizing force while individual donations benefit the extremists.
I've often argued this as the flip side of the coin from the 2000s-2010s' "small/limited government" rhetoric. Cool, small in what way? Like, you want to reduce the size of the Federal workforce? "Small" as in "limited to the enumerated powers listed in the Constitution"? "Small" as in "involved in 10% fewer areas of life than it is currently"? Or are you one of the "should be small enough I can personally crush it under my boot" types? What areas specifically do you think government should pull out of? Like, we talking lighthouses? Drugs? FEMA?
I think it's equally pathological and thoughtless to pretend that normal people turn into Hitler the moment they get issued an "@____.gov" email address, as it is to pretend that normal people start throwing babies into woodchippers to increase share price $0.01 the moment they form an LLC.
Hell, "The Groups" are all corporations or LLCs.
There appears to be a belief that small businesses are inherently good and large businesses inherently bad. This is a grave error in judgment. I have 2 examples, one personal and one from work.
Personally, I tend to enjoy small restaurants. The feel of a 'homey' location. I occasionally went to a bar that I liked (that nailed the small town feel) near my home. Loved it, thought it was good. Soon found out that the owner was a complete jerk, and only hired waitresses with certain breast sizes. A year later I heard he was in jail for sexual assault. I stopped going after I heard the first story, and the second confirmed I would never go again. The steakhouse near my house (a chain with a famous now out of town owner) nails a local feel. So who's the good guy and who's the bad guy?
Another story from business. I of course have had some bad big corporate vendors, but the worst vendor I've ever had was a tiny business in Indiana. I cannot reveal the details but the gist of it is we found a much better price from a more local (but much larger, more 'corporate') business nearby. We informed our old vendor we were leaving. The old vendor got mad, claimed we signed a contract (we didn't), stole a piece of equipment we had given them and made our lives living hell to leave. The even had a guy intimidate our employees as we went to pick up our equipment.
Small corporations are just as capable of screwing customers and vendors over as corporate ones are; I would point out that Donald Trump was not a 'corporate' guy and did just fine conning people over the years.
My reaction is that the moniker ‘corporate power’ is actually referring to the Milton Friedman philosophy of shareholder theory. That the existence of corporations is, and should be, for the entire purpose of enriching that business’s shareholders. The stakeholder theory, by contrast, posits that businesses should consider the interests of several different stakeholders, including their shareholders, but also employees, customers, suppliers, and the community in which it operates. My thinking is that when shareholder theory is waxing, the sense is that ‘corporate power is increasing.’ When stakeholder theory is in ascendence, that indicates a waning of ‘corporate power.’ Point is well taken, that this is very much a vibes-driven concept, but the more that highly visible companies (and companies generally) act consistently with stakeholder theory, I believe the fewer calls to curb ‘corporate power.’ Which, ironically, Friedman would say is an argument to act in accordance with stakeholder theory in order to benefit the shareholders!!
I can think of a bunch of other words that have also ceased to have meaning the past few years. One in particular. Anyone else?
Agree with above comments that there are measures. On this score “The limits of “fighting”
What people who want to see more emphasis on fighting corporate power do have is a list of figures they like, such as Elizabeth Warren and Lina Khan, who have a solid record of taking positions that are highly antagonistic to business leaders.
So while there isn’t an index of corporate power such that we can say which places have succeeded more or less than others at fighting it, there is a group of people with a disposition to wage political battles against business interests.
Here one thing I would note is that most furiously lobbied-over issues in a practical sense just pit businesses against each other. Pharmaceutical companies and pharmacy benefit managers both hire lobbyists and then the lobbyists fight each other. Credit card companies and retailers both hire lobbyists and fight in Congress about swipe fees. It’s important for political actors to try to decide who is right in these disputes, but whichever side you come down on you’ll find some corporate actors on your side.
You can maintain an anti-business affect as a political persona, but it’s not a useful guide to specific issues. And the lack of index in terms of policy outcomes here is relevant. There are backbench legislators who have this as the center of their political agenda, but you almost never see it in an incumbent executive officeholder. If Gavin Newsom or Gretchen Whitmer or Wes Moore or Maura Healey were overtly hostile to business, then major businesses would leave their states, which would be bad. This — capital flight — is the actual issue, not lobbying clout. Michigan wants Michigan-based businesses to succeed and it wants to attract inbound investment.
You might take Zohran Mamdani as illustrating the outer frontiers of what’s conceptually possible here. He’s a self-described democratic socialist who’s talking about cutting red tape for small businesses. He’s kind of spiritually aligned with the idea that Wall Street billionaires are bad, but he’s not trying to run the finance industry out of town.
None of this is to say that you can’t or shouldn’t regulate corporations. It’s just that there are basically two kinds of economies: one where businesses are growing and thriving, and one where there’s no growth and the economy is sputtering. It’s true that there are some communities that have a university campus or a military base as their main economic driver rather than a for-profit business. But these are edge case exceptions that prove the rule. A prosperous place is going to have prospering businesses — powerful corporations — that anchor the economy.”
My mayor Brandon Johnson… is an executive who does antagonize business pretty robustly.
I think a lot of people who say "corporate power" are intellectually lazy and it means nothing to them, but when I think of the phrase, what I mean is the excessive influence of rich tycoons in society. I can name way more robber barons from the late 19th century than I can presidents, and I feel like we're in a similar era now, where the most powerful and influential men in society are the richest. I would like for Musk, Zuckerberg, Ellison, etc to have way less power than they do, similar to how the rise of Rockefeller and Stanford and Carnegie caused the progressive movement. I don't know exactly how to measure this, but I'm sure there are plenty of actual social scientists out there who do.
To me, the useful division is between businesses that seek to succeed through rent-seeking and those that try to succeed by serving a competitive market. The former is bad for the economy, the latter good. The division isn't always clear cut and sometimes, you need to compromise with the former due to political pragmatism. But that's the problem to me, not bigness per se.
Something I resent about about how people posture about being anti-corporate is that even people who work in the higher education, governmental, or non-profit sector still have their salaries ultimately paid by people in the private sector and consume things manufactured, designed, and trucked to them by the private sector. I don't know if Winston Churchill was the first to say this, but "Cultured people are merely the glittering scum which floats upon the deep river of production" is entirely true.
I especially resent New York and DC people who pose as anti-corporate, since NYC's culture, foundation, and higher-education industries were often endowed by industrialists who made their fortunes ELSEWHERE in the US and basically gave NYC and DC art museums while the places that actually produced the product just got pollution.
So much of this talk of “corporate power” is just aesthetics. It’s the old slacker “the corporations man!” impulse dressed up in policy papers. Lina Khan’s appointment to the FTC was very much Elizabeth Warren’s doing, and she was a failure. She spent taxpayer money to sue to stop mergers…and lost…almost every time. Had she been successful, the end result would likely have been harmful to the average American, with higher prices, or businesses failing.
Her alliance with Mandami will probably fail, because she will push the administration to use questionable interpretations of arcane or ambiguous laws and end up losing in court.
At a more basic level, that high level of regulation approach encourages oligopolies, and entrenches the power of the largest companies. Regulation protects those with the resources to comply, hiring more lawyers and lobbyists. Perversely, it is easier for the regulator, since 1 or 2 big players is easier to deal with, but also makes the market more dependent on just those few players, giving them more power. If JPMorgan leaves NYC, that’s a serious problem for New York City.
MY is making this much too complicated. Populists on right and left find enemies, moderates find solutions. Foreigners / ethnic groups on right, economic power (billionaires, corporations) on the economic left, class oppressors of other types on the social left.
If you define corporate power as pricing power, then corporate power is high, but largely due to the tech sector. Operating margins of large companies (defined as S&P 500 companies) are around 16%. The 90s were around 12%, the 2000s around 14% for reference. Tech giants like Nvidia, Google, Apple, Microsoft have operating margins in the 30 and 40 percent range. Consumers would benefit from more competition among tech giants, but that seems unlikely due to high barriers to entry. So the only real option is a heavier regulatory touch to protect the consumer and focused anti-trust enforcement on bad behavior.
"It’s just that there are basically two kinds of economies: one where businesses are growing and thriving, and one where there’s no growth and the economy is sputtering."
Whew! This comes back to earth.
The rest of this leaves me rather chilly.
Quantification is a wonderful tool, but if you are blind to all that is not quantifiable, you might as well be missing one of your eyes. Sure, I can't quantify the amount of spousal abuse to be scored for punching one's wife as opposed to cheating with her sister, but that does not negate the concept of abuse.
As to this particular slogan, corporate power, it's a lot like law and order in that it deliberately covers a lot of resentments in a vague way so as to attract a large tent. That's politics as opposed to policy making. Although the two need to remain congruent, policy making and politics are not the same thing.
But sure, a large tent includes lots of highly questionable allies. There are lots of leftists in this tent I wouldn't want to see in power. However, they aren't the only ones who want our capitalism to be based, as far as possible, on free market competition as opposed to externalizing costs and subverting government.
These comments have been really interesting—does anyone have a good book on antitrust or corporate lobbying they’d recommend? (I’m sure there’s zillions out there so would love a rec!)