The Death of the Corporation In America?

I was thinking about all the big corporations that have failed for one reason or another in the last 10 years or so. Enron sort of self destructed, then many others, then Lehman brothers took to many risks and was the "Straw that broke the camels back" that ushered in the mess since about 2007 and 2008 and Bear Stearns had to be bought by JP Morgan Chase. MF Global just imploded with money missing (likely over a billion dollars) and it hasn't been found yet. Then there is Circuit City, Borders, Blockbuster (need I go on). For example, I just wanted to go out and rent a DVD and realized that both Hollywood Video and the Blockbuster that was here for over 20 to 25 years is gone and now I'm not sure where I could (within 20 to 25 miles) rent a DVD? My wife is upset because there are no new bookstores with the selection of Borders where she went several times a week to find adventure, sci-fi and romance paperbacks to relax from the stressors of keeping everything working properly in our lives. And even now the old standby Bank of America is beginning to look shaky if you look at their stock prices compared to all the other major banks. And since Bank of America is literally "too big to fail" everyone wonders if it can survive a potential end to the Euro and the Euro Debt Countries. People used to count on 30 to 35 years and collecting their retirement from their 401k. No more. No one can really count on that company not selling or giving away their retirement in a Chapter 11. Look what happened to all the Airlines with American Airlines the latest among these to file a Chapter 11. If your company ever files a Chapter 11 you can kiss good bye your retirement income and 401k. People who are smart have their retirement income totally in their own hands so their company can't touch it at all these days because of all the Chapter 11 reorganizations. Now, the most secure job in America the post office might do a Chapter 11 as well. Going postal might have new meaning soon as people lose their retirements from working at the U.S. Post Office as well as their jobs. Nothing can be counted on like it once could have been.

I think  in the future this might be called "The Internet revolution" just like previous technological revolutions here on earth. Similar things happened when humans began growing food and living in one place and began fighting to defend their farms and countryside from others. And similar things happened when people began manufacturing with machines run by water and then electricity. People began moving from the country into cities in order to make more money at the factories. Something like this has been happening in China in the last 20 years or so as well.

So, is the corporation dying or is something else happening? I think the biggest change is State Capitalism. And the biggest example of State sponsored Capitalism is China. At first I thought that state sponsored Capitalism was just a fluke or an anomaly. However, because of the number of people in China and because of the age of the Chinese civilization I'm beginning to think it is not a fluke. If we look at China that was protected from other cultures by the Mountains of Tibet and the great deserts and by Siberia on the north, we see a country that has existed ongoing for several thousand years and only has been invaded a few times by the Mongols and the Japanese. As a result we see basically an unbroken unique culture that has stayed basically the same and then spent basically the last 100 years in a reorganization mode in trying to become a part of the technological revolution of the 20th and 21st century. However, what China actually looks like is one state Corporation and this monopolistic State corporation is one by one putting all the other corporations out of business one way or another around the world. I think this is a more useful way of putting it. Because of the rules that China has always played by everyone else always loses eventually. So, if left to its own devices we will slowly see all corporations that are not a part of China slowly fail. I don't think this will be the end result because the rest of the world is not stupid. But, it depends just how fast the rest of the world finds a way to deal with the state corporation of China. The biggest problem other countries corporations have is that their corporations are much younger and less ruthless than the corporation of china is and therefore don't really understand what they are dealing with. However, China has existed basically unthreatened for thousands of years as an ongoing culture. This is something the rest of the world cannot say. So, it should be interesting to see how the rest of the world is going to deal with china. If the world waits too long the world will become a part of China because that is how China has always functioned. And it will also be interesting to see how China adapts to the rest of the world because the rest of the world and China cannot hide from each other like they did for thousands of years anymore.