What will happen to the world if all large corporations are eliminated and replaced with small businesses?

Question

What will happen to the world if all large corporations are eliminated and replaced with small businesses?

Answer 1

More money would come to the common people, instead of being filtered and diverted to the wealthy first.

Answer 2

1: Everyone's pensions would suddenly become worthless. The majority of large corporations are actually owned by you and I, or rather our pension funds, who take our contributions, and buy shares in businesses.

2: There would be a redistribution of wealth out of the West (North America and Europe) towards the East (Asia, South America and to a lesser extent Africa.) One of the reasons that most things in the UK cost LESS than they did 10 years ago (OK, not less than they did last month) is that the larger corporations are able to squeeze down prices by buying in huge bulk.

3: There would be a pretty much immediate STOP in the development of new products in high-tech areas (computers, mobile phones, medicine). The majority of products in these areas - everything from Aspirin through to DVD players - have been invented by companies who spent huge amounts of money on development because they knew they'd be able to make millions of sales.

4: Most things would go UP in price dramatically, as a result of which, we'd all consume a lot less.

The reason that companies GET to be big is because large numbers of people CHOOSE to buy from them.

No-one holds a gun to your head and MAKES you buy the £3 pair of jeans from ASDA (part of WAL*Mart, the world's largest retailer) ... they sell because loads of people are happy with a £3 pair of jeans rather than paying £10 to the local independent.

OK, there are rogue companies who got huge by cheating... but even they only stay there if people carry on buying.

Answer 3

1. Prices would go up because small business cannot get the price breaks from huge quantity discounts.

2. More people would be without medical and dental plans that are subsidized by large corporations.

3. The successful small businesses would grow into large corporations.

Answer 4

The world will become a planet of second class economies and no first class economies. G-8 countries will cease to exist.

Answer 5

Prices would be lowered world wide but also millions of jobs would be lost. no sense in having 10 dollar stores in a strip mall.

Answer 6

Indeed, the smaller companies who are effecient would expand and become giants corporations. From an economics point of view, the markets are not 100% efficient but they are much better than having no market at all. Larger companies are much more efficient and have more negotiating power than small companies due to have much stock they can move. Without going into all the details (you have quite enough already from other good answers), the world would turn into complete and utter chaos. Fortunately, though Corporations are seem sometimes to be something of the devil, we cannot live without them, or at least we won´t have life so good without them. There are not many alternatives though, as the markets are a result of governments deciding to let other people run companies. The only real possible alternative is some kind of autocratic state or communism which I believe has been successfully shown through history not to work.