The difference is that any power you give the government is automatically amplified. The government has the power of the state, to wield power.
Private corporations have only one goal - to make money. Government is controlled by ideologues. Also because of the nature of both the Senate with two senators per state and the electoral college, the less populous states have far more voting power than their population demands. Their belief system and worldview is completely different than mine - yes I live in one of those states.
It’s not just about the difference on policy issues. It’s about fundamental human rights issues like police power and treatment of minorities, and how many of them believe fundamentally that none straight/non Christian people are an abomination and laws should be passed that discriminate against them.
> "The difference is that any power you give the government is automatically amplified."
that's not immediately obvious. power is divided in government, and ultimately rests collectively in the people. you'd expect the power expressed is exactly the accumulation of the tiny amounts each of us delegate to government. it's not perfect, but all the little divisions and mechanisms of check and balance are there specifically to prevent undue amplification.
certainly the government has coercive power and we must be vigilant, but make no mistake, corporations are power structures that collaborate with and coerce the government into offense against the less powerful (minorities, women, etc.). who but the moneyed owners do you think try to distort and amplify their voice through government? it's not the average person that citizen's united benefits.
the indirection of the corporate form is designed specifically to make it difficult to parse out their influence (and mistakenly place trust in them). they're designed specifically to insulate owners, to the benefit of no one else (governments be damned where they can get away with it).
that there are assholes everywhere, including every corporation, who would discriminate against trivial shit is exactly why you want dispersed power across any structure or institution.
> that's not immediately obvious. power is divided in government, and ultimately rests collectively in the people. you'd expect the power expressed is exactly the accumulation of the tiny amounts each of us delegate to government. it's not perfect, but all the little divisions and mechanisms of check and balance are there specifically to prevent undue amplification.
Two issues:
Power doesn’t rest in the hands of “the people”. It rests in the hands of the Electoral College - which doesn’t represent the people. As evidenced by the different outcome of the popular vote and the electoral vote. It rests in the hands of the Senate which also doesn’t represent “the people” it represents “the states” regardless of the population. The Senate also puts unelected judges on the bench with lifetime appointments and heads of government committees like the FTC, FDA, etc. that write regulations and are also unelected.
The President - that doesn’t represent “the people” because of the electoral college also has undue power over the Justice Department, FBI and CIA - none of whom are elected.
Even if we did have a government that represented “the majority”, that hasn’t worked out well if you aren’t part of the majority.
Coercive power allowed Jim Crow, making homosexual sex (sodomy) a criminal offense and making interracial marriage (miscegenation) a criminal offense.
yes, those are valid criticisms of the distortions wrought on our representative democracy by elitism. people with money and power wanted that layer of indirection (at least since the 1700s) because they feared that the people would actually get what they want, which could include adverse actions against the elite. it was an unfortunate but unavoidable compromise at the time. that, and true direct democracy was practically impossible until the past few decades for a polity the size of a country.
to be clear, i'm not arguing that governments are bastions of fairness and enligthenment, just that they're not much different from other power structures in that any institution (and especially the confluence of those institutions) is a threat to individual liberties and civil rights. however, governments are the primary mechanism of protecting and extending rights and liberties.
the cause of discriminatory injustices like jim crow is not simply the representative form, but rooted in the people themselves--the collective us--as expressed by our differential power and influence. the wealthy simply have outsized influence over all policy, for no discernably valid reason. why should we ever give people who are particularly greedy the power to largely control social policy too?
I would much rather trust people who are motivated by greed than ideology. People who are motivated by greed don’t take rights away from people because of their religion, race, or sexual preference as do people who are motivated by concerns of an invisible being reining hellfire and damnation on the country if they allow “race mixing” and “sodomy”.
I have been in the tech industry for 25 years and never once did I worry that I wouldn’t get a job I was qualified for because of the color of my skin. I’ve interviewed successful at everything from small companies with less than 100 people as “adult supervision” (my current company) to one of the “FAANGs” as a customer facing “cloud consultant” (the company I start at in less than a week).
The tech industry has enabled everyone to have a camera in their pocket to record video and a platform to spread the video to keep police accountable. The government consistently tries to pass laws to make that illegal. It has allowed people to organize against governments in the US via encrypted channels. The government wants a backdoor. We already saw what the government does when it can intercept communications - look no further than what the FBI did during the civil rights movement.
Right now, the President is trying to “shut down Twitter”.
But still in 2020 when my son walks down the street in our neighborhood in the burbs, he’s looked at suspiciously by the police. So who should I trust more the government or the tech companies?
> "I would much rather trust people who are motivated by greed than ideology."
it's ironic that this statement comes off so ideological. why so adamantly either-or?
i guess it's the old upton sinclair saw about it being difficult to get a man to understand something when his (future) salary depends upon his not understanding it?
no one is saying have a lovefest with the government, that they're your good friends. understand and expect more, yes, blindly trust, no. but the same goes for corporations. tech company good guys vs. evil oppressive government is not only simplistic, but simply wrong.
it's not like racist political donors, ardent law-and-order police supporters, and corporate managers and owners are wholly separate groups of people. moreover, greed isn't some singular and exclusive vice of otherwise saintly corporations controlled by completely egalitarian and nondiscriminatory managers and owners. corporations not only condone discrimination and violence, they're inextricably complicit through direct and indirect influence.
people who believe and do shitty things are spread through all institutions, not just some of them. and the way they effect those beliefs is unlikely to look the same in each institution, especially when they're actively trying to hide their actions.
Racist corporations don’t have “coercive” power - including local police with military grade weapons to shoot unarmed people in the back and choke then for nine minutes.
The government already tried to file charges against an activist for “inciting riots” by speaking out in public. Yet and still the President can say the same thing on a public platform and be protected because corporations fear the government.
There was a story just recently where a Facebook user posted Trump’s words verbatim and the poster was banned for inciting riots.
We also have the case of Tim Cook basically kissing the President’s golden ring and standing beside him for photo op while the President was lying about what Apple was actually doing with regards to manufacturing in the US.
i think the difference is that you see the government as a coherent body acting in unison under the direction of the president, and i see a bunch of thugs using both the government and corporations (and other institutions) as tools to oppress in many different and loosely coordinated ways.
i actually don't think trump is an overt racist per se, only a highly self-centered opportunist who advances the white supremecist agenda because he couldn't care less about anyone but himself. an equal opportunity disregard, if you will. not a defense though, he's more suited to prison than office.
Its not just the President and it’s not just Republicans. It’s also Democrats like Clinton who got “tough on crime” and instituted policies that disproportionately affected minorities and naive Black politicians[1] who were dumb enough to think that the government was the answer to crime that was hurting their communities and that police would be used for something more than “border patrol” to keep minorities out of places where “they didn’t belong”.
[1] For context, before I get downvoted to oblivion and flagged for being a “racist”, please read my previous comments. I am Black.
yes, democrats have been complicit, sometimes overtly, sometimes inadvertently. the idealogy around policing and use of force transcends party, institutions, and even race itself. policing needs to be completely reformed and its funding largely funneled to community building and support rather than use of force against minorities.
there was a great story recently on latino usa[0] about josé tomás canales, a texas representative from 100 years ago who fought against the racist impunity of the texas rangers on the texas border. the lawyers for the rangers, knowing that the national media was trained on them in a time with little national media, magnified the threat and danger of the border and mexicans to turn the country toward support of the racist use force by the rangers. a hundred years later, we still curry in that bullshit.
Private corporations have only one goal - to make money. Government is controlled by ideologues. Also because of the nature of both the Senate with two senators per state and the electoral college, the less populous states have far more voting power than their population demands. Their belief system and worldview is completely different than mine - yes I live in one of those states.
It’s not just about the difference on policy issues. It’s about fundamental human rights issues like police power and treatment of minorities, and how many of them believe fundamentally that none straight/non Christian people are an abomination and laws should be passed that discriminate against them.