Modern society treats private corporations as the natural engine of progress. We’re told that without them, innovation would stall, efficiency would collapse, and human ambition would wither.
This belief is not just wrong — it’s one of the central myths propping up wage slavery.
Private corporations don’t optimize human progress.
They optimize shareholder extraction.
Anything useful they produce is incidental.
The Biggest Lie: “Innovation Needs Private Corporations”
The most persistent claim is this:
Without private companies chasing profit, nothing meaningful would get built.
History disagrees.
Some of the most complex, ambitious, and transformative projects ever undertaken were built by:
- Public institutions
- State-owned enterprises
- People-funded or mission-driven organizations
Not by shareholder-owned corporations chasing quarterly returns.
Case Study: Indian Railways — Scale Without Predation
Indian Railways is one of the largest employers and logistical systems on Earth.
It:
- Moves billions of passengers annually
- Operates across extreme geographic and economic conditions
- Was built and maintained without profit-maximization as its core goal
Is it perfect? No.
Is it waste-free? Of course not.
But here’s the key point:
The same infrastructure, if privatized, would not magically become more humane, cheaper, or better aligned with public good.
It would simply become:
- More expensive
- Less accessible
- More extractive
Efficiency under private ownership usually means cost-cutting humans, not improving outcomes.
NASA: Innovation Without the Profit Motive
NASA put humans on the moon.
Not because it was profitable.
Not because shareholders demanded growth.
But because society collectively decided it was worth doing.
NASA:
- Invented technologies later commercialized by private firms
- Advanced science, engineering, and human knowledge
- Operated without monetizing every output
Private companies didn’t lead that effort.
They benefited from it afterward.
That pattern repeats constantly.
Private Corporations Duplicate What Society Already Solved
One of the most absurd inefficiencies of private enterprise is redundant competition.
Instead of solving a problem once, society solves it:
- Thousands of times
- In parallel
- Behind closed doors
- With massive waste
Every corporation needs its own:
- HR department
- Legal department
- Finance department
- Marketing department
- IT stack
- Compliance team
All doing variations of the same work.
This isn’t efficiency.
It’s fragmented redundancy sold as competition.
Job Markets Are Artificial Scarcity Engines
Private corporations force humans into adversarial competition for survival.
- Job hunting
- Resume filtering
- Interviews
- Layoffs
- Re-hiring cycles
All for work that society objectively needs.
The absurdity is this:
Society needs the work done — but individuals must beg private gatekeepers for permission to do it.
This isn’t freedom.
It’s rationed access to livelihood.
“But Competition Drives Excellence” — Does It?
Competition drives short-term optimization, not long-term well-being.
It incentivizes:
- Planned obsolescence
- Cost externalization
- Worker burnout
- Environmental damage
- Feature bloat instead of durability
Private corporations don’t ask:
- Is this necessary?
- Is this humane?
- Is this worth the human cost?
They ask:
- Will this increase margins?
- Can we extract more?
- Can we exit profitably?
That logic is structurally incompatible with a good society.
Who Actually Benefits?
Let’s be honest.
- Employees trade time for wages and insecurity
- Customers pay repeatedly for slightly different versions of the same thing
- Communities absorb the damage
- Shareholders extract value without contributing labor
Private equity takes this to its logical extreme:
- Strip assets
- Cut staff
- Load debt
- Exit
Nothing new is created.
Value is harvested, not built.
Progress Doesn’t Require Predatory Ownership
Here’s the uncomfortable truth:
Everything genuinely necessary for human flourishing:
- Food systems
- Transportation
- Housing
- Healthcare
- Education
- Energy
- Communication
Could be built and maintained by:
- Public institutions
- Cooperatives
- Worker-owned enterprises
- Mission-driven organizations
With less waste, not more.
Innovation comes from:
- Engineers
- Scientists
- Builders
- Thinkers
Not from ownership structures that siphon value upward.
Wage Slavery Is the Price of Corporate “Efficiency”
Private corporations require:
- Constant growth
- Continuous extraction
- Disposable labor
That means:
- Insecurity must exist
- Fear must persist
- Workers must compete
- Opting out must be expensive
Wage slavery isn’t a bug in corporate capitalism.
It’s the operating system.
The Quiet Alternative
This isn’t a call to abolish everything overnight.
It’s a call to question a default assumption: That private shareholder-owned corporations are the best way to organize human effort.
They’re not.
They’re just the most profitable — for a very small group.
Once you see that, the exhaustion makes sense.
The redundancy makes sense.
The meaninglessness makes sense.
And so does the desire to step back, reclaim time, and stop donating your life force to systems that burn it for quarterly numbers.
Why This Matters for Freedom
As long as society treats private corporations as sacred, wage slavery remains inevitable.
Real freedom doesn’t come from climbing corporate ladders.
It comes from outgrowing the structures that waste human lives at scale.
Seeing that clearly is the beginning of opting out — mentally first, practically later.