A New Form of Tyranny

Cameron Best 

Mr. Ambrosio 

College Research 

December 23, 2020 

A New Form of Tyranny 

In his novel about a possible future of the western world, George Orwell warns of a totalitarian government that controls every aspect of a society— from the economy to people’s personal lives. Looking back, his prediction seems obviously very wrong. We don’t have a state controlled economy; the free will of the masses has not come under the complete control of the state; our personal liberties remain largely intact (“Guardians of  Freedom”). Yet if we take a closer look, it becomes obvious that the masses are still under the control of a select few in society, albeit in a different form than Orwell predicted. In our fear from totalitarian governments, we have developed and maintained a free market. Many businesses, however, exploit this free market to take advantage of consumers and employees, causing a different type of tyrannical rule. 

Our capitalist economy is set up to encourage competition. In theory, giving consumers the freedom to choose which products to buy encourages innovation, the reduction of prices, and over time results in the best overall product for the buyer (Amadeo, “Capitalism…”). It’s hard to deny some of the successes it has brought us: from Henry Ford’s automobile to the Apple Macintosh, capitalism and the free market has brought us some truly amazing things. Yet it isn’t without some major costs to our society. Corporations put profits first. They are designed to turn a profit for the shareholders while protecting them from liability (“Corporation”). Using the profits of a corporation can be a false indicator of progress. For example, “abnormally high profits can worsen inequality if they are the result of persistently high prices or depressed wages. Were America’s firms to cut prices so that their profits were at historically normal levels, consumers’ bills might be 2% lower” (“The Problem With Profits”). 

High profits can also signal bad conditions for employees, after all, high profits need to come from either high prices or low costs. Low costs can signal poor working conditions or wages. Corporations do not need to give employees raises if the company has a profitable year. They just need to continue to sell their products and satisfy their shareholders. A company that is a great example of this is Apple. They are one of the most profitable companies in the world (“Profitability…”), yet within the past two weeks, they had violence break out a factory in one of their parts manufacturers in India as a result of employees being paid as low as Rs 500 per month (Rakesh). That’s less than $7 USD per month for working a full time job. Apple could make this manufacturer pay these workers more, yet instead they look the other way, because doing something could cut into their profit margin. What is even more frustrating is that recently they have posed as a company who cares about racism and inequality (Cook). In fact, Apple even lobbied against a recent bill being proposed to ban goods made by Uyghur forced labor camps in China (Swanson). Their public image and the effects of their actions are consistently contradictory. And when they do finally make changes to their supply line or company practices, it is only when there is so much public outrage that their sales could decrease if they did nothing. 

When not given to shareholders or CEOs, many corporations reinvest high profits into acquiring other businesses or strategies to further increase profits, including “technology, which has allowed firms to replace workers with machines… [and] globalisation, which has made it easier to shift production to lower cost countries” (“Too much of a good thing”). While the development of technology can be beneficial for the consumer, it can also replace jobs with automation, allowing profits to rise without also providing jobs. Globalization has a similar effect on the American economy, reducing the number of well paying jobs. The result of both of these factors combined is a cycle of ever growing corporations becoming larger and more prominent in our economy without the profits moving throughout the rest of our society. 

Investments into new technologies into workplace technologies are also being used for new workplace surveillance technologies. When employees use a device that is logged on with a work account, they can “take a live look at employees’ screens, capture real-time keystrokes, [and] record video of their activities and break down how they spend their time” (Krouse). This type of surveillance is extremely similar to that used by Winston's workplace in George Orwell’s 1984, where all of his actions were analyzed to figure out his inner emotions (Orwell 107). While the present day consequences of these workplace surveillance tools aren’t quite as detrimental as they were in 1984, they can still cost an employee their career. It is certainly possible for a knowledgeable employee to maintain some privacy from their workspace, but it takes an immense amount of effort and money, since the only real way to maintain privacy at home is to maintain completely separate devices for work and personal use. Many people simply cannot afford to pay for two computers and two phones. 

A traditional capitalist mentality would suggest that high profits from large companies would encourage new companies to form and take the place of the old ones. But that assumes the old companies aren’t rigging the market with their immense amount of power against new, smaller companies. In fact, “if steep earnings are not luring in new entrants, that may mean that firms are abusing monopoly positions, or using lobbying to stifle competition. The game may indeed be rigged” (“The Problem With Profits”). 

When a corporation gets large or profitable enough, they are able to spend money lobbying the government to pass regulations that benefit them. And when there are enough of these companies investing in lobbyists, other groups get shut out. In fact, “for every dollar spent on lobbying by labor unions and public-interest groups together, large corporations and their associations now spend $34. Of the 100 organizations that spend the most on lobbying, 95 consistently represent business” (Drutman). This can prevent the views of the general public from being heard, causing legislation to be passed that favors larger businesses. Making matters worse, in the past few decades many companies have lobbied for bills that directly support them, “bringing government in as a partner, looking to see what the country can do for them" (Drutman). This is different from in the past, where companies tried to distance themselves from government. Now companies try to make the government work for them. 

A free market mentality would again suggest that if the public has a problem with the amount of corporate lobbying, they would vote new people into office, who would listen to more grassroots movements. Over time, the political culture could again change, and new laws could even be passed restricting lobbying. This expectation assumes, however, that corporations have relatively little influence over elections. In reality, corporations do have an influence on American elections. They do this through a few major methods. The use of lobbyists themselves influences elections, since many politicians rely on lobbyists for donations. In order to even get time to talk to a congressperson, there is an expectation that the lobbyist will make a donation to that politician’s campaign (Dunham). This is one reason why politicians don’t want to make laws restricting lobbyists. The other major way corporations influence elections is through funding independent advertising. After the Citizens United court case, independent organizations not affiliated with a particular candidate could make political ads. Since they are not affiliated with the politicians themselves, they do not have to report their donors (“Outside Spending”). The result is that wealthy donors and companies can anonymously donate to organizations that indirectly support political campaigns, influencing political ideas. 

The large amount of influence corporations and wealthy individuals have in our political system means that they have much more control than any other group in our society. In fact, in their paper about theories of economic influence in politics, Martin Gilens and Benjamin Page developed a model indicating that “economic elites and organized groups representing business interests have substantial independent impacts on U.S. government policy, while average citizens and mass-based interest groups have little or no independent influence.” This data suggests that there is a fundamental problem with our democracy since the power is not in the hands of the people. We need legislative reform to limit the power of corporations in government. 

One argument that industries use against additional government regulation is that they can self-regulate instead. History has proven, however, that this is an unreliable way of protecting the people and the economy. The financial crisis of 2008 was largely caused by the negligence of large corporations to properly assess risks when making loans. As a result of putting short term profits above long term economic sustainability, the government had to bail out many banks and millions of people lost their jobs (Amadeo, “2008 Finantial Crisis…”). Just because a corporation is large doesn’t mean it is able to self-regulate. In fact, as shown in 2008, when a corporation becomes large enough and fails to self-regulate, it can cause massive negative effects on the rest of the economy. As Alan Greenspan, the former Federal Reserve chairman, said about the bailout of the banking industry, “If they’re too big to fail, they’re too big” (“Greenspan calls to break…”). When these corporations get big enough, they are able to greatly influence the government while getting away with practices harmful to the vast majority of the American people. 

More recently, big technology companies have also proven that they are unable to regulate themselves. Companies like Facebook, Google and Twitter were founded on the assumption that the free spread of information is beneficial. The best ideas become the most popular, algorithms help them rise to become promoted, possibly to millions of people. These algorithms, however, assume that what is popular is also what is right for society (Marantz, Antisocial… ). They are extremely powerful in controlling what information people see. Changes by a small number of people, whether made by a software engineer or a company executive, are able to dictate the type of information received by a large number of people. Facebook, for example, in many instances decided to keep posts and pages up that were harmful or offensive. They kept these pages up because they generated lots of views; taking them down could take away a sizable amount of revenue. A former Facebook moderator (an employee tasked with finding posts and removing posts that violates the platform’s rules) said, “You can ask for a meeting, present your bosses with bullet points of evidence, tell them you’ve got team members who are depressed and suicidal—doesn’t help. Pretty much the only language Facebook understands is public embarrassment” (Marantz, “Why Facebook Can’t Fix Itself”). Like most companies, the main thing Facebook cares about is its profits. They won’t really change their policies unless there is a threat to their profits or there is government regulation to mandate a change in company policy. 

The ease and low cost of using these platforms for both consumers and businesses has caused the success of technology companies to skyrocket. But this has also caused an increased reliance on a few companies. For example, “Amazon Web Services controlled roughly 40 percent of the cloud market, running the backend for Netflix, Pinterest, Slack and dozens of other services” (Brandom). Another company, Google, offers products that are deemed essential to many businesses, consumers, and organizations, including Harborfields. When Google’s apps were offline for a few hours earlier this year, we were unable to teach or use many web services we consider essential. These technologies are interconnected in a way that increases reliance on a few major companies. If Google changes their terms of service or cost of their product, most consumers have little choice but to agree to continue using their products. 

Giving companies this amount of power has allowed them to collect large amounts of information. A former Facebook employee said, “While we’re all focused on the surveillance tactics of the Pentagon, a handful of companies out of California are collecting data on a scale that would honestly be the envy of any state” (Marantz, “Why Facebook Can’t Fix Itself”). The collection of information could even lead to a cycle of companies using their power to collect information, and then using this information to gain even more power and control over its users. If we aren’t extremely careful about who has access to our data, it can be exploited to manipulate large groups of the population. 

We are moving in a direction where it is not a tyrannical government we have to worry about, but a tyrannical economy and market. In America we like to hail our “free market” as one of our proudest achievements, yet the way it is currently implemented has caused a decline in privacy, truth, and truly free competition. Many people are skeptical of giving their government too much power, as they should be. We have seen what happens in the totalitarian governments in other countries. Allowing one person or small group to control vast amounts of the economy and a person’s data, work, and information source is dangerous. We don’t allow the government to do this, so why would we let a corporation do this? 

Works Cited

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