World Building A Nation Without Government

[Calcifus]

So, in a world I'm building, there's a city-nation named Pinnacle. What's unique about Pinnacle is that unlike other countries, it was founded and is currently run by a coalition of mega-corporations.

I've run into a little problem, though. How do I create a sensical system of creating and maintaining laws in the city, while still having the mega-corps abide by human rights?

The latter problem I managed to solve by having it so that in order to be recognized as a country in the world (and reap all the benefits), Pinnacle must abide by a charter of human rights. So, that just leaves the first problem. Any ideas?

 

[Omnimon]

I'll admit this is *not* easy ... but just to spitball a suggestion ..... Given that IRL corporations have no compunction to act " with" human rights involved at all .

A corporation is there only for one thing : Maximize shareholder value in any way possible ( Do note i did not say Stakeholder value, so that doesn't mean employees are included ) . If it means using slave or child labor, then do it, after all no one is going to find out easily . If it means destroying lives for profit, then do it. If it means having more people suffer, for profit then do it , since all they'll get is a slap on the hand . After all humans are just a resource , and are not actual living people ( Hence the term " Human Resources ") . Ditto with a whole host of other issues ( be it torture, massacres, etc. ) .

That's the world we live in .....

So with that in mind :

Corporations usually operate because they are there to make a profit .

However anything that does " take " away from said profit, would be discouraged.

With that being said...... The biggest difference between the example I'll give versus what happens in the real world is the fact that...... there are no real punishments if a corporation does indeed do something awful . That and the fact that there isn't anyone that really reports this out in the news these days unfortunately .

So what's missing? Accountability , Awareness and most of all Consequences of said actions .

So the idea i would float for this to work would be to :

1) A extremely powerful AI that issues judgements ....said AI ( for a ......well it is going to be plot device like unfortunately ) ..... would need to be 100% unbiased in making said decisions in a " corporate" court . All corporations must abide by said AI's judgements.

2) Have a very, very powerful press / news corporations. You need to have something that exposes the issues . They cannot be funded by other large corporations, instead there's a slight " tax" that's placed on all transactions . And through that tax, are were news corporations are funded . --- Independent unbiased news which enforces the aspects of accountability and awareness.

You need to have more then 10+ new(s) corporations , as the competition needs to be healthy . The more competition there is for " unbiased, good news" , the better the *end* product will be. --- Competition which helps with independent unbaised news . Because if there is competition, that means that every news organization/ company are striving to become the " best" source of news for said public. ( I'm also assuming that the public wishes to be fully informed , instead of just being intellectually lazy about such matters) .

2a) These news corporations cannot * ever* be funded and/or influenced by other powerful individuals and/or other corporations ( aka no ads , they base their living upon the % of the transaction tax for themselves and of course sales. ) . --- Independence = accountability / awareness

2b) In order to keep said competition healthy, there * CANNOT* be any mergers or buyouts what so ever. ( in any industry ) -- Choices makes for better accountability versus an oligopoly / monopoly

2c) Journalists are rewarded handsomely if they do find issues with said corporations . ( Be it human rights, etc ) . If they do find something , they get a huge % of the REVENUE ( not profit, fyi, revenue is the total amount of sales that a company generates, and that is before taxes and costs ) ..... So its possible for a company to post a loss for that said quarter and/or year due to the fact that a journalist had uncovered that they were using child labor to make their PC parts instead of a profit. --- So journalists have a profit motive to also look for wrong doings that a company has done ( currently they do not in general ) which would help with accountability and awareness by a huge margin . Also, a clawback measure, where if the law is broken, said people who were involved in the actions, would have to pay ( into the news organization's coffers that is ) , the amount of compensation that they earned for that entire time .

2d) And of course there's actual jail time involved for breaking the rules . Not merely just financial penalties . --- Consequences

2e) This would force management at every level to follow said rules that were laid out for the charter of human rights. Simply because its ruinous ( heavy financial penalties that could wreck the company and real actual consequences such as jail time ) and not worth the " revenue" hit that they would take. These actions would also trickle down to the employees at said level as well . --- Consequences

3) A corporation has board members ( those who can fire and/or hire upper management as well ) . Said board members would also include employees ( from every level) that rotate in and out every year or so . Instead of just board members who are also CEO's and/ or upper management . --- helps with accountability and awareness

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1) Or you can have corporations that are " Co-ops' essentially there is no management , everyone owns a portion of the company if they work for the company . Thus if the company takes a huge reputation hit and also takes a huge hit in revenue.... everyone is affected by said consequences ... Ditto if the company posts a huge profit , everyone gets rewarded, not just upper management and shareholders . ( Aka using greed as a motivational force for good... )

2) ( reference the news aspect from before and use that as a guiding reference as well as that powerful AI ..... ) .


Granted these are just ideas, but its not easy to counter balance the power that a corporation has without some kind of government in place. Interesting country set up however o.o .

Given that most " corporation" type countries that I've seen made are usually dystopias or ( they somehow are a force for good which would make it fairly illogical given that they are driven by profit at all costs ....)

and profit ? It doesn't care if your using slave child labor or if your follow labor laws to do the job . Profit is profit.

tl;dr : Need serious consequences for when the law is broken , and hyper awareness to detect it when it does occur for this country to be run 100% the corporations if it is to follow the " human rights" charter.

 

[Shireling]

Depends. If your country is run by just one massive corporation that bilks the public and gives them shitty services, that's just a government. Most likely in a scenario you're talking about, there might be no one "running" society per say. If you go the route of "the blah corporation controls society" it would be a lot like what America is like now, a half-assed bureaucracy, slow, burdensome, wasteful, and inefficient.

Think of it this way, there doesn't always have to be a macro-level entity with a monopoly on force (i.e. control over the police). You could have a system where a bunch of different corporations compete to offer the public goods and services, one of those services being law enforcement. Or you could have a scenario where they have volunteer emergency services and a volunteer police force (like a town watch) as well as a magistrate or some other low municipal official to hear legal cases and then the companies just carry on about their business.