As if we needed to see one more way the supposedly democratic world is a little less so, can we wrestle with one semi-obvious truth: if scale can be a problem with our government, can’t it also be a problem with corporations? Particularly in our government-by-corporation world that we find ourselves in now?
Technology, of any kind, can grow to a size that is undemocratic and then downright inhuman and hostile. I believe it is fair to say cars are an excellent example of this. Over the last century, we’ve seen how cars spread out our people and communities. The result being a population that sees it as perfectly normal to drive an hour one-way every day for work. This is nominally "a good thing" if, I guess, you are a car maker or operating in the auto industry, or a government leader under constant pressure to make sure everyone has "a job" and access to that job.
Land holdings are another size-as-undemocratic-turned-inhuman example. A family with a farmstead that is 20-50 acres can manage and maintain that land for productive use. A family that owns a few houses around town and lives in one while renting the others can manage that for productive use. But a single corporate entity that owns millions of acres across the country? Or an investment firm that owns and "manages" hundreds of thousands of homes across a dozen states? That seems undemocratic and downright inhuman.
Scale is a problem, but most people work to address scale as "a thing to manage so we can do more", not less. We lost focus on balance, as a means of finding the correct ratio between management and stewardship, between production and maintenance.
The problem of scale is that it inherently results in an obvious loss of quality. I define quality as a loss of bodily and economic health, as well as spiritual and cultural health.
