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Notes -
(Trigger warnings: another AI post; Jean-Jacques Rousseau)
I want to talk about the economy in the face of the AI revolution, but let's go back to the basics first.
What is the purpose of a company? Not the stated one, the original one.
To provide value to its shareholders? Of course not, that's a very narrow view! It's like saying armies exist to kill people.
Do companies and markets provide a decentralized way to coordinate the efforts of large groups of people (choreography vs orchestration)? Yes, but what for?
Do companies and markets exist to maximize the economic output? Many would say yes, but the idea is wrong and will become more obviously wrong the more AI we inject into the economy.
Companies and markets exist to maximize the consumption! They exist so that more people consume more goods and services! The fact that these companies have to pay their workers is not an unwanted side effect, it's a feature! Companies exist to create and distribute goods and services to humans, and markets exist to ensure that each human gets a share that is sufficiently fair.
Both the industrial revolution and the transition to a service-based economy created millions, if not billions of new jobs, but is this an inevitable consequence of free markets? Will AI-fication of the modern economy do the same?
The correct answer is not "yes" or "no". It's "mu". If the economy reinvents itself again and people of the Global North find themselves new jobs, that's fine.
But if we suddenly start running out of jobs, accepting it as the inevitability of the market forces is the wrong way out. The right way out is retiring the market forces, not submitting to them. Creating shareholder value has always been the real side effect.
At its core the company is an entity formed by shareholders in order to generate profit. This is intrinsic purpose of any company, be it modern LLC, East India Company a pirate crew in Caribbean with its own charter, Hanseatic guild in Baltic or mercenary company in ancient Greece. From times immemorial, people banded together and pooled labor, capital and know-how in order to generate profit for themselves.
All of those things you mentioned such as distributing goods, creating markets, creating jobs and whatnot are externalities of certain type of regulated companies. It is a result if you make it easier for strangers to put together capital and create profitable business. But it would in some form work even without that, only it would be more costly and riskier to do that in unstable environment.
I wouldn’t call profit a necessary element. Lots of nonprofits were incorporated under Company House until we started creating special legal containers for them.
“A group of people who band together to do something with limited liability” seems to best cleave reality at the joints.
We mean different things, we have different definitions. To me it seems, that you look more into structure: is it limited or unlimited liability, is it solo owned or a group owned entity, is it for profit or non-profit, is it publicly traded or privately owned etc.
I look more on the function and need this institution serves. I'd consider a local mafia as a company in this sense, it is a group of criminals conducting illicit activities to earn profit. It's legal structure is immaterial to me, companies can exist absent of state. That is my point with OPs rant about what he thinks companies should or should not do - bad luck, companies are not bitches of states, they are manifestation of underlying reality of human nature.
Also profit is necessary component to me, doing something does not cut it for practical reason. For instance banding together with your wife in order to raise children is not a company, it is a different institution - specifically that of marriage forming a family. I guess we can extend the definition if we know what we mean, there definitely is some overlap especially if there actually is family business etc. But it is unnecessary.
Fair but that makes
an assertion and a tautology, not an argument or a rebuttal. I don't mean that in a rude way.
Sure, but I commented on the context that the OP introduced of economic relationships. Not about people grouping together to form a bowling league or moderating Culture Wars online forum etc. That is also an intrinsic social need, but of a different kind.
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