Size matters: risk and scale

Human organizations are growing in size and risk. We have created some behemoths, such as China's People's Liberation Army with 2.3 million soldiers, Indian Railways with 1.4 million employees or the UK's National Health Service with 1.3 million employees. More commercial organizations are hefty as well, such as Walmart with 2.1 million employees, HSBC with 330,000, Bank of America with 280,000, or JP Morgan Chase with 220,000. As the number of people on the planet approaches 6.8 billion, is it inevitable that their financial organizations should grow in size as well? One could argue that average family size has even...