tech companies end up becoming some of the most influential—and valuable—organizations on the planet, with power that rivals or exceeds their nation-states. Let's take Facebook and Google as examples:
Tech-state: Facebook
Population: 2.7 billion (2019)
Capital: Palo Alto
Nationality: Users
Valuation: $720 billion (August 2020)
Founder: Mark Zuckerberg
In total, Facebook has more than 3.14 billion account holders across its platforms, which include acquired companies like WhatsApp, Instagram, and Messenger (Newton, 2020).
Tech-state: Google
Population: 1 billion (2020)
Capital: Mountain View
Nationality: Users
Valuation: $1 trillion (2020)
Founders: Larry Page and Sergey Brin
Google's search engine market share is more than 90%. Considering that there are almost 4.39 billion Internet users, the number of Google users worldwide is nearly four billion. Google usage statistics show Google Photos has over 1 billion active users. There were over 1.8 billion active Gmail users in 2020. YouTube has 2.3 billion users worldwide. This is just a small taste of only four out of the many products Google offers its customers.
ADVANTAGES OF THE TECH-STATE
Tech-states have brought to bear many benefits and positive advancements for humankind, as you may know. In fact, it's possible you may be reading this book with the aid of one of their products. If we were to focus on all their advantages, that could take up the space of this entire book. Therefore, I will point out just a few.
Being so large means these organizations can make big investments in the future and big investments in R&D, and much faster and better than any nation-state could do. Take entrepreneur Elon Musk and his companies as an example. His company Tesla is on a mission to accelerate the world's transition to sustainable energy. Elon and Tesla's big bets of venturing into the unknown world of research and development have proved that people don't need to compromise to drive electric cars. Electric vehicles can be better, quicker, and more fun to drive than gasoline cars. The same daring spirit can be said about his other company, SpaceX. Its mission is to revolutionize the aerospace industry and make affordable spaceflight a reality. SpaceX plans not only to land humans on Mars but also to colonize Mars. Space exploration used to be the work of nation-states; now it's mostly done by private companies and made possible by big investments in R&D. In fact, nation-states are now contracting tech-states to do this work for them, as shown by the NASA/SpaceX partnerships, as well as by many other collaborations like it (McFall-Johnsen and Mosher, 2020).
Furthermore, tech-state companies are better positioned to deliver large-scale services to the market, because they have the tools, resources, and infrastructure to do so. Because of their size, cash in hand, and many other factors, they can survive market slowdowns in ways small companies cannot. This was very evident during the COVID-19 pandemic (Sundaram, 2020).
The pandemic challenged most of us on a personal level; however, business-wise, it hasn't been bad for everyone. Big tech leaders like Apple, Amazon, Facebook, Microsoft, and Google have all seen their market values increase this past year. Furthermore, all of these companies were poised to play a significant role in helping the world recover from coronavirus, using their technological prowess to do everything from tracking coronavirus spread to managing tests and vaccines to improving overall distribution workflows (Newman, 2021).
Tech-state also contributes greatly to the GDP of the nation-state. The world's largest companies are in the technology sector, and four out of five of those tech-states companies have grown to trillion-dollar market capitalizations (Wallach, 2019). As technology use continues to increase, their revenue forecast will only continue to grow.
Clearly, there are plenty of advantages to having these huge tech companies around, and there are many books out there dedicated to the subject. However, this book focuses mostly on the other side of the argument and looks at aspects of these companies that are not serving humanity's best interests. Let's dive into those issues next.
THE UNINTENDED OR WILLFULLY IGNORED NEGATIVE CONSEQUENCES OF A TECH-STATE
It is evident that tech-states have had a remarkable impact on many citizens of nation-states, by giving us access to a treasure trove of things we desire with a couple of taps or clicks. However, for all the good these companies have done, their dominating nature provides an opportunity to completely control innumerable aspects of our lives with no consequences for negative actions that arise as a result of their creations. In the following sections, we look at the unintended consequences of the outsized power of a tech-state.
Proportionality of the Userbase versus Country's Population Size
As noted in the Facebook and Google examples, the sheer size of users on these platforms outnumbers the population of individual states in which they operate.
China has the world's largest population (1.42 billion), followed by India (1.35 billion). The next five most populous nations—the United States, Indonesia, Brazil, Pakistan, and Nigeria—together have fewer people than India.
In a hypothetical example, let's say a nation-state accuses a tech-state of egregious misbehaving. That single country can decide to ban all its citizens from using a certain platform or block it entirely from its airwaves. Yet these technologies will continue to operate just fine and still be profitable. This has been witnessed in countries as tiny as Uganda, which ordered all social media to be blocked in its country (Reuters, 2021), and as big as Australia, when the government introduced a law to make tech-states pay media outlets for their news content and the firms fiercely fought back (de Vynck, 2021).
That's the outsized power of exponential technology and capitalism, which we examined in Chapter 1.
Dehumanizing Customers
Tech changed a small but mighty social norm and the language around how it references customers and clients. They rebranded humans as users. There is an old adage that points out that the two industries that call their customers “users” happen to be illegal drug dealers and tech companies. This dehumanizing language creates the ability to enjoy “user numbers” and dollars coming into the business without taking much responsibility for the human element behind the users. This is an important starting point, and we will see how it plays out in many ways throughout the book. The nation-state is supposed to care about the humanity of its population, whereas the tech-state can comfortably work with users, which creates an emotional detachment. After all, they are just numbers.
It's important to mention that none of the tech-state companies may be doing this out of malice. It started as a benign tweak, but that dehumanizing language has now morphed into a larger problem. Tech-states can get away with this dehumanizing approach to business, and the abuse of the planet in general, because of their enormous power and influence over most nation-states. After all, providing meaningful oversight is increasingly difficult because power has shifted.
Opaque Employee Mistreatment
At the risk of offending some of my readers, I would like to draw some parallels between the tech-state and a pimp. A pimp is a person who controls sex workers and arranges clients for them, taking part of their earnings in return. A pimp knows his workers well, but does not always treat them well. A pimp knows how many tricks each worker can turn each night.