I remember watching RoboCop as a little tyke, and I was rather indifferent to the fact that OCP (Omni-Consumer Products) owned the city of Detroit. I know it was all fiction, but OWS got me thinking. Could a corporation actually buy a city or a county, maybe a whole state? How might it work, and what would happen to the citizens of the state being bought?
Well corporations, by using money and influence, own all of the capitalist economic system and therefore own all of the political system so why would they need to buy anything?
Well, I mean that corporations don’t just come out publicly and say, “We own this state.” . They don’t extend the US an actual offer of purchase. Think, what if Apple just suddenly decided to buy California? As in, they send a rep to DC, and say, “We, Apple, Inc., would like to buy California.”, then show how much they are willing to pay. Oil companies in Texas might do the same, and buy Texas. Then say these Corporations that owned states could start to build up armies. They could use these armies to occupy other states, and also do sales deals with other Corporations, until the United States looks very different from what id does today.
I’m not sure the official Deed or Certificate of Ownership is actually located in DC.
What do you mean by “own”? Could they buy all the land in a state? Buy up every business? I suppose theoretically. It would be highly unrealistic as a practical matter. Vermont is the state with the lowest GDP at $26.4 billion. There are 97 companies in the Fortune 500 that have higher revenue. That still doesn’t mean that 3M or Exxon-Mobile can afford to buy up all the assets of any state.
No corporation could afford to buy all the assets in every state. I think the idea is whether they could buy the apparatus of government. Could GE buy the State of Vermont, e.g. the state house, government departments and related assets, etc.?
The answer, I think quite obviously, is no. A state government isn’t a sellable thing; it’s a sovereign, constitutionally established entity.
There is this, which is probably as close as it’s ever come, but it’s not quite the same as the OP is asking (see last sentence in quote).
Owning a whole state, would be very complicated, but Disney controls a substantial area of central Florida as the Reedy Creek Improvement District. This is apparently very convenient for them, since they don’t need approval from the local government for their development plans.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reedy_Creek_Improvement_District
Depends on your definition of corporations and city/states, I presume. Sealand after all is a single corporation. Israel (or at least most of it) is actually land bought or taken over by a private trust that somehow turned into an arm of government. Universities, for example, have “corporate personalty” and also have significant autonomous rule of the land they designate as campus grounds.
I remember Walt Disney had a plan for one of his Disney theme parks, which he wanted to be a futuristic city complete with its own civil infrastructure and so on. It never really went ahead, but they nevertheless retained the legal approval for it like JoelUpchurch said.
There are so many things that are already privatized, who’s to say that government itself can’t be privatized? Our rights bought and sold like stocks, and everyone living within that territory is an employee of the corporation that owns it.
State and Federal constitutions mostly.
Employees get paid.
Could these Constitutions be purchased, then? I’m speaking of the actual documents themselves, not just photostatic copies.
Sure, but so what? The actual pieces of paper have no legal significance.
East India Company. The Congo society. its been done and it ain’t pretty.
Could a corporation gain effective control of a state? Sure, and it has happened. But buy? Who are they going to buy it from? Nobody (individual or corporate body) owns a state, so nobody is in a position to sell one.
I guess the lands that don’t have houses on them are owned by the government, like National and State Parks, but no corporation wants to buy a National Park.
Everybody is focusing on states, but cities (at least here in the US) can be, and have been put up for sale. There was a tiny city in here in Oregon trying to sell itself a few years ago. I can’t remember the name, but I’ll get it from my wife and post it later.
Anyway, during my Google search I found this USA Today article from 2008.
I don’t know if any companies specifically bid on that city, but if a city is for sale, I don’t see what a company couldn’t bid on it.
I don’t remember if this is the town I was thinking of, but here is a CNN mention of the town of Otis for sale
And it was put up for sale again in 2004. cite. OK, it was the city I was thinking of.
After Lex Luthor made him erase Otisburg from the new California map, he slipped it in north of the state line.
There are a few ways that a company could “own” the state:
- They could own all, or substantially all, the property in the state. E.g. if you want to live in California, you have to rent from Apple because they own all the land. But this doesn’t get rid of state and local government, and theoretically the voters could find a way to pass laws to seize the land from Apple and redistribute it.
- They could control the State via a political machine or something.
- They could somehow gain actual control of the sovereignty of the state. E.g. perhaps an arrangement similar to a Proprietary Colony. In this situation, California residents would pay taxes to Apple, iTunes would be part of the the Parks and Recreation department, and Apple could suspend your Apple California Driver’s License for violating the Mac OS EULA. Oh, and it would be a felony to use Windows or Linux. And, of course, when you went to register your child for school, the local Apple School Manager would force you to sign a Terms of School Service agreement.