The biggest company you've never heard of.

[Spud17]

A friend recently emailed me this video about a company named Serco...

My immediate reaction was Resident Evil - Umbrella Corp

see also http://www.en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serco_Group

What do you guys think?

[sporkium]

i've heard of serco before, however, on a multi-national playing field, they aren't that much of a threat... yet.

it does bring up the greater question as to if it is wise to privatize prisons, detention centers, illegal alien deportation centers (big ass fucking catapults aimed at the ocean), military supply companies or the maintenance of weapon systems).

in the united states, there are similar corporations in operation, however, none so heavily diversified (with the exception of gm).

i'm sure we are all familiar with the pathology that drives the vast majority of corporations and in particular, the group mentality phenomenon: a group of people who by themselves, would not necessarily do absurdly fucked up things yet, when placed within a group of their peers and with a focus on the bottom line, tend to commit heinous criminal acts.

[srijantje]

are you sure this is genuine?it sounds outrageous to me,specially the part about nuclear outsourcing

[sporkium]

it's a real corporation.

governments regularly outsource maintenance of their weapon systems and energy production facilities as it usually cannot provide the expertise necessary. the majority of technical work on advanced systems is usually provided by the vendor that designed and built the weapons in the first place.

[srijantje]

that sort of makes sense,but if a company has the expertise one would think a government could hire people themselves,should be cheaper and safer [in the long run]as governments don't need to make profits

[sporkium]

do you really want a bureaucrat conducting the service maintenance on a missile defense system or a nuclear reactor? *cough*russia*cough*chernobyl*cough*

it's not as if all the work is done by the private corporations, but a lot of that work is very technical by nature and the amount of time and money it would take to train someone to operate or maintain some of these systems would be prohibitive.

case in point:

stitching up your arm after a zombie attack is pretty straight forward and supergluing it shut even more so... but i'm sure you would rather have a medical professional tend to that... after all, they underwent years and years of specialized education and training to accomplish this.

the same applies to high-tech and applications... the prisons and deportation centers are a different story.

the more any government relies on the private sector to assist with it's everyday functions, the worst off that nation is as the corporation (especially a multinational entity) has no loyalty to anything besides it's shareholders... or, to be more precise: the bottom line.

[srijantje]

exactly ,loyalty to it's share holders,that's why in the long term govs should built up their own expertise,but instead they think of short term profit by selling off assets to private sector[money gone ,asset gone]

[sporkium]

i couldn't disagree more. i like innovation and i want the government to keep it's filthy tax sucking hands off of progress. the private sector has led to some amazing innovations such as nuclear energy, recordable media, the internet, digital watches, air planes... the list goes on and on.

a government should allow their countries to develop freely, but not in terms of allowing the private sector to develop their own armies, build their own prisons, and operate the public's services.

case in point: remember robocop? that entire city outsourced their municipalities to the ocp corporation or whatever it was... even their police department was owned and operated by the corporations... and that's not good.

[srijantje]

i agree ,but i would include nuclear arms

by the way,they privatised the railroad system in holland a few years back,since then only troubles

[sporkium]

include nuclear arms in what?