Historical Corporate Power

The East India Company was founded in 1600 and had its own army before it was nationalized. So it is not like big companies is something that never happened before. And as we can see in the US, the state can easily control, cooperate with and even destroy companies, no matter how big they are.

Alas, it's nothing new. Cf. the various East India Companies from the 17th century.

A single company controlled countries _plural_ in those days.Times are not new. Technology is new. Every problem is old.https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/East_India_Company

Capitalism has always been a creature of the state. Kings gave licenses to private individuals to invest, operate, and run public companies. Nowadays it’s more complex but the first step to create any public company is still to apply for a license. Power and money have always flown both ways. I suggest you look into the Muscovy Company. Created in 1555 as the first joint stock company, it was highly influential politically and relied on its political connections to earn profits. Nothing has chan

You can say we have had the very same thing with full state Powers that had nothing to do with Capitalism, since the beginning of History, so putting it on the back of "Capitalism" is kind of tenuous. Anybody or any organization in a position of ultimate power will go in that kind of behavior. Plus, the East India Company was pretty much a proxy for States involved in the area.The point of capitalism is that you are supposed to have a lot more competition because of fragmentation.

Corporate capitalism largely started colonization. Most of the English-speaking colonization of America was started by companies like the Virginia Company, the Massachusetts Bay Company, etc. Most of India was conquered by the British East India company before it turned over its holdings to the British government. The Congo Free State was the personal property of the King of Belgium, not part of or governed by Belgium, for the exploitation of companies he had interests in.

Sure, and here is a counterexample from the 1600-1800s: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/East_India_CompanyLiterally they bought an army and took over India for money.

The East India Trading Company preceded the writing of the First Amendment by some distance, and that company for some period accounted for fully 1/2 of all global trade.Giant corporate entities with incentives intertwined and power competing with established governments have been a thing long before Facebook rose to prominence and long before the US Constitution was ratified.

The largest corporation (not government-owned) in existence today is a microscopically small fragment of the size of the corporate behemoths of 100 years ago, and the corporations of one hundred years ago were microscopically minuscule compared to the largest corporations of 400 years ago.Not only that, but the ancient proto-corporations were not partners with government, they were governments.For about 20 years, the Mississippi Company was worth between $5-7 trillion, adjusted for inflati

Historically in America you could only make a joint stock company if there was some obvious common good component, such as the creation of a common canal to improve trade. The concept of a profit maximizing corporation is the creation of the late 19th century, at least in America. Prior to that most Americans held the independent worker in higher regard than the corporate salaried worker.