One of the main reasons I was drawn to Shadowrun years ago was because of its dystopian vision of a world run by corporations. It was Big Brother writ large, where there was not one brother but a cadre of world corps civilly battling to control an ever-growing populace. Plus ca Change, as they say. One day I woke up, the 90’s were gone, fiction still pushed the image of corporate global dominance, and that Shadowrun myth seemed a lot closer to reality.
The name Blackwater has faded into legend. The company, formed in 1997 by Erik Prince, began as a private security firm and erupted into an army outsourcing corporation, taking its place beside KBR and Lockheed Martin as one of three primary drivers of the global military-industrial complex. Blackwater became Xe who became Acadami, conveniently masking its identity from the public under the glamour of public relations. Conventional American thinking tells you that you want to be able to control the media message, because the media message buys you votes. This is the same reason that British Petroleum calls itself Bp (to make it seem more international or even American for the American market) and why hedge funds caught in scandal often rename themselves, divesting themselves of notoriety and responsibility of action. All of these actions add up to one thing, the growing power of corporations in the world.
Too big to fail was a catch phrase of the housing market crash. At some point it was decided that the collapse of major corporations would damage the country more than allowing these corporations to be responsible would damage the country. Ironically, the same people screaming for our dollars to help the corps were the people screaming for us to stop being a welfare nation. I supposed welfare is only welfare if it is helping people and not corps.
I say all this to provide a glimpse into my thinking about the corporate machine. There is a certain inevitability here that you see played out largely in comic books and syfy channel tv dramas. In Japan, many swear fealty to their corporation from birth. How long before that becomes standard operating procedure for us? Heck, I suspect we are a lot closer than we all realize.