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[McTraveller]

My stream of consciousness on this... ultimately I think it boils down to defeatism/futilism which makes people think the only way forward is acquiescence or violence, which I think stems from being isolated. I just can't get behind that view - I think that there really is power in collaborative effort, even against "the big giant corporations." It just takes forming a big enough community to do it.  Basically yes - if you try to do it "on your own" you probably can't.

"Government" is actually a corporation...a collaborative effort of people working toward a goal. Any time you pool resources of a group of people, you get a corporate organization.  I just don't see this "corporations always turn evil" inevitability.  Governments are arguably even more "everyone is fungible" than corporations anyway... at least in my experience.  Maybe I'm missing something about what you mean by "corporation" as opposed to any other type of collaborative effort...if your argument is the goal of the group, then that doesn't have anything to do with the organizational structure but the goal. So it's not being a "corporation" that is evil, it's a goal of profit at all cost that is the problem. And many companies don't have that as their goal.

I also just don't share the idea that you have to punish others to "get ahead."  Yes if there is criminal activity then there needs to be justice, but punishment is not always justice.  The aim of punishment is to hurt; the aim of justice is to restore.  There's a big difference.

What this ultimately requires is that on average society produces more than it consumes, so there is spare reserve.  At the most basic level, an individual needs to be able to make 1+x years worth of food in 1 year, so they can spend x years doing something other than producing food.  That kind of thing.  This is totally orthogonal to "corporation" vs "government" vs any other structure of which you can think.

I do agree we could re-think how we make that "excess production" available to individuals.  I don't think UBI will work; I think a citizens' dividend model is a more robust solution.

I also think people vastly underestimate the power of collaboration. All these claims that "the people" can't compete with organizations that already have supply chains and logistics... I think it's a cultural shift that makes "the masses" believe they can't collaborate. Everyone is so isolated, and apparently has been trained that "it's hopeless, the only way forward is to fight."

[Maximum Spin]

It is not false. Kroger could do that and there is only one reason it hasn't happened to your local store, Kroger doesn't want to start that fight yet.

Look, Kroger (well, we don't have Kroger here, but whatever chain store you like) is not God. This is just defeatism. If local stores still exist and sometimes do not get crushed, then it follows that it is not inherently unfeasible to start a local store if you dislike a chain store.

More importantly, you fail to understand. There's basically zero chance a big chain store could outcompete the local store I'm talking about in the way that Shonus imagined, because it would be incredibly unprofitable. You'd be talking about spending the money to build an entire megastore in essentially the middle of nowhere for perhaps a couple hundred people. Actually a minimum of three since Shonus imagined "covering every approach". The logistics for getting supply to those stores would also be ridiculous.

Frankly, in my area, local stores are winning out over chain stores overall, because there are no economies of scale. One of my nearest towns doesn't even have a chain grocery store at all anymore.

[Robot Parade Leader]

Governments aren't corporations. Not all companies are corporations. It's the structure.

Limited liability
Limited taxes
Limited accountability.

I'm not a lawyer but it is really hard to sue the individual owners. They also pay a lot less taxes to the government, even though they buy the government to control it with lobbying.

Making money is literally their only goal and one thing I know is that the shareholders can sue if it isn't. https://www.cbsnews.com/news/elon-musk-55-billion-pay-package-delaware-judge-ruling/ So basically one of the shareholders sued because they thought some of the management wasn't about company profits enough and part of that was they were giving too much to Musk. This person was not in the majority of shareholders but didn't matter. The corporations have a duty to make as much money for their shareholders as possible.

If they say they have another goal that is just PR and BS. Who is going to hold them accountable to any other "goal?"

In a government that votes you get a vote no matter if you're rich or not. The problem is corporate lobbying and "special interests."

Justice isn't about restoration because how are you gonna restore things? Someone beats the crap outta someone else. What are you going to "restore?" Look at Enron https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enron and how well it is documented that they screwed up everything on purpose because they didn't care. People lost an enormous amount of money including retirement funds, and all the careers, just stuff that you can never get back because it's too big. No one is going to give back all the retirement funds that got lost on that because all the money is gone and no one can.

That's just in cases were nobody died and nobody can restore that. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radium_Girls
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Triangle_Shirtwaist_Factory_fire There's just too many instances of corporate problems and it's all corporate because corporates are given less liability. They know they can't be held to account for this crap and that's why they do risky behavior. They don't care if their workers get maimed or killed on the job unless the government steps in and forces them to care. They don't care if their products are bad unless the government forces them to care. They become monsters when they realize they can get away with so much crap it isn't even funny https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_corporate_collapses_and_scandals https://247wallst.com/special-report/2019/12/20/the-biggest-corporate-scandals-of-the-decade/

Foxconn suicides are in that list as protests of working conditions.
Theranos was in business 15 years without publishing a single scientific study or having one published.

You and I could never pull that level of crap off, but a corporation could.

I get that you're probably not going to see things my way and that's ok. I'm not against collective action. Corporations are a type of evil collective and there are tons more types of collectives out there that aren't evil. When you remove accountability bad things happen and that's what corporations do. In governments that vote, the bad can be voted out as long as people are smart enough. Trump is basically a nightmare for this reason. Usually you would say the bad things a politician did and people would see it a vote them out. For some crazy reason his followers see the bad crap he did and love him more.

I wish you were right. I really do.  I don't want a world with punishment. Take away punishment and the bullies will go wild.