Based on the way society is structured now, yes.
Places like Walmart exist today and practically have a stranglehold on the world's economy. They can either get bigger, or they can die, and the economy with it.

Therefore, big mega corporations are practically an inevitability.

I am actually structuring my career path to run my own mega-corp based around technology in and around the year 2030. Wetware Antivirus and Intrusion Countermeasures. I do not at all wish to be an evil corporation, though I would consider myself true neutral on a chart of law/chaos good/evil, so I'm sure there will be things I do that will piss people off.

>>34
Well, good luck to you, man. If you do succeed, can I have free shit and a pony?

>>40
Yeah, I'm sure we'll have free stuff from our marketing department. You can have enough free pens and lanyards to kill a man, assuming we're still using pens then. In the future, EVERYONE will have a pony.

>>42
Why would I want to do that?

>>43
I dunno why >>42 suggested it, but it's a very beautiful place.

When it comes to mega-corporations, I think they're a natural evolution of capitalism. Shit is going to get big, and we already have pretty huge corporations like Google. Not to the point that they have to police themselves, but you know what I mean.

I can only hope that we'll be able to have competition in the future, because it's extremely scary when a company is the sole provider of something, especially something pretty fookin' important.

>>44
Sit back and relax, Daewoo Group made todays google look like some dinky lemmonade stand. A few bad/dodgey deals and a massive organisation can just disappear.

>>44
>I can only hope that we'll be able to have competition in the future, because it's extremely scary when a company is the sole provider of something, especially something pretty fookin' important.

There are monopoly laws in existence to prevent just that, but if corporations get big enough, as they show signs of doing (In America the Supreme Court said that a corporation has the same freedoms as a US citizen, and can therefore endorse a candidate), the law could always change. The Supreme Court ruling is wierd to me. I can't imagine campaign ads ending with "Drink Pepsi!" Although that is very cyberpunk

>big-evil corp. in the future

NPAA

Mega-corporations are only a natural evolution of capitalism if they are able to capture governments. What I'm saying is that a mega-corporation can not come into existence without being at the beck and call of a government.

We already have this situation to a certain extent. Companies are heavily supported by government entities through direct financial support, regulation that favors the status quo while stifling open competition, and through other means.

Let's take Monsanto. The US government heavily subsidizes agriculture while specifically favoring corn and soy. Monsanto is built on high-yield and pesticide resistant strains of these plants that they have genetically engineered. Corn must be rotated with soy to put nitrogen back into the soil so this strategy helps monsanto's business on both fronts.
The US govt favors them through regulation by requiring that gasoline have a certain level of ethanol (a corn product) while capping the import of sugar, ethanol and corn. By doing this they drive up the demand for and price of domestically grown corn as well as the ethanol and corn syrup made for it. This is because it cannot be replaced by cheap important ethanol (derived in a more environmentally friendly manner from brazilian sugar cane), important granulated sugar or imported corn.

Europe supports Airbus and subdises many other industries.

China subsidizes their industries heavily and commits widespread industrial espionage on behalf of their own technology companies.


In order for true, international, multi-national mega-corporations whose power exceeds that of governments to develop they would have to figure out ways to ally themselves with foreign governments. Thankfully, governments are not likely to support corporations that are not domestic and the development of super-large companies will only lead to government involvement in the open competition of an international marketplace.

We can be certain of this in domestic nations with democracies that fiercely guard their own sovereignty. Nations like China and Russia whose governments have relatively little public accountability would be more subject to siding with outsiders and working with companies to undermine other governments. Furthermore, nations in the European Union who have given up their sovereignty and others who are too weak to assert theirs end up being able to side with foreign power to assert their will over others.

The worst case scenario though would be the eventual division of the world into corporate-statist blocs where companies ally to an extent to capture higehr levels of government and use those governments power to aid them in competition in the international marketplace while exercising monopoly power and stifling all innovation, competition and small businesses in their domestic territory. In order to prevent something like that from happening, it would take a more aggressive use of the monopoly-busting powers than governments have been willing to use in the past 30 years.

tl;dr It would not be possible in the manner that people assume, but it would come through more of a governmental regime with lots of regulatory powers and red tape alongside lots of corporate welfare to protect the established corporations, creating an environment that allows them to ascend to a mega-corporation level status.

In Mexico we already have a Big Evil Corporation.

Its name is Grupo Carso, its owner is Carlos Slim, who is so powerful compared to Mexico's weakly government he's the second president, and he subjugates us by using his monopoly on telecommunications to charge $25/month for one single fucking megabit per second on broadband internet. Only the top 20% of Mexico can pay this, so the rest have to make do with public internet on a kiosk or even dial-up internet. This leads to a terrible digital divide among Mexicans.

>>77
But that's retarded. Surely if he made it more affordable he's end up with more money?

Very likely some bean counter made a pretty chart that showed the company would make the most money for the effort by targeting the top 20% of the consumer market.

I believe the mega corporations will eventually organize their efforts completely to this end, already there appears to be two economies in the United States. The upper economy will be serviced directly by the big companies and the lower economy will be subcontracted out.

There certainly is a culture shift towards respecting corporations. In the 1930s the villains in cartoons were mad scientists, now they are mad executives.

The trouble with megacorporations is a natural problem of capitalism...

http://wiki.stealthiswiki.org/wiki/Credit_Cards#Abandoning_Debt

this technique if done in mass could have strong effect on the economy and thus the megacorps, but rallying people to that cause is rather difficult.

Do you really think that with the growing influence of socialism that any government would let a company grow to Mega-Corporation size? The fact is most of the world has embraced socialism, only those fat stupid Americans hold out because of their cowardice. And even they're starting to see the truth (if only they would throw away the "teachings" of that dead Jew).

The future will be paved with the blood of Capitalist men, women, and children, NOT of the workers as they so want. WE will kill them first, WE will murder their children before them just so they can feel the loss they themselves caused to so many others. Thus the future will be more like Star Trek: a socialist utopia without famine, greed, or Jews (unless you count the Ferengi).

"Hatred is the heart of Socialism" - Che Guevara

"Workers of the world unite, you've nothing to lose but your chains" - Karl Marx

>>94
>>94
>Implying that most of the civilized world isn't capitalist
China, India, ALL of Western Europe (save for france, lol), USA, USA's Hat, Australia, Russia, and most of western Europe all follow some form of capitalism. I don't necessarily like the capitalist system, but it's pretty much everywhere that matters.

That should be "most of EASTERN Europe" at the end. Fuck.

Oh yes, definitely, its inevitable.

Yep I think we will.

Just waiting for the news report about Microsoft's private army any day now...

There already has been one 100's of years ago. East India trading company

>>20 wall-e, in other words... trouble with megacorp/walmart is a family of semiliterate hillbilly billionaires who let their company be run by incompetent kissasses which of course results in worker mistreatment and indifference to customer satisfaction... as long as their prices are consistently low and your expectations are not very high, you're golden! (reduce your self-expectations to where they're already met -Calvin)

>implying that the US government isn't run by mega-corporations that steal, spy, and lie to us on a daily basis.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vFlKJmE4gVE&NR=1

>>94
you sound like ADF, except for the jewish hate.

>>230
I tend to agree with you, but you could try to dial it back a little on the gov't spying/conspiracy theory stuff. it doesn't matter if you're right when everyone thinks you're crazy.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/East_India_Company

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dutch_East_India_Company

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Congo_Free_State