Comment by mungoid | Hacker News Reader

Comment by mungoid | Hacker News Reader

I cant speak for other countries, but why do American people seem to trust companies more than they do the government? I mean, it is completely known that companies are here to make money, and publicly traded companies are here to please their investors so they will do whatever it takes to do that. They study us, classify us, categorize us, manipulate us. They spend billions in research so they can make that 'perfectly tailored' ad to get us to buy their product. They are constantly buying our data and selling our data, JUST to make their investors happy, and we seem to always just shrug it off.

'Meh.'

I am honestly more ok with the government having this data to keep tabs on me than these hundreds of other companies treating my personal info like it's a trading card.

The relationship with the government and companies is different.

I moved to Norway a few years back, and married a Norwegian man. He has trust in government that me, as an American, simply doesn't have. But to be fair, nearly every time I've contacted government - even being searched at customs and going through immigration - has been a decently pleasant experience. Things just get done. It isn't perfect or anything, but it seems to work.

Whereas in the states, it seemed like every effort was made to screw me over - from the government. Companies, on the other hand, didn't want the bad publicity, so tended to treat folks slightly better.

Another aspect to this is things like health care and infrastructure and things like that. Part of the company relationship - jobs, anyway - is healthcare and decent pay. There isn't much of a safety net, so folks rely on companies' and churches' charities to keep them afloat. Americans see companies bring them the things for life where here, a lot of that stuff is simply provided by the government.

I think the reason is that government is vastly more powerful than any single company.

Yeah that's definitely true, and it is what makes me question a lot of why they do what they do and distrust it generally. But would it be better if a company was vastly more powerful than the government?

Actually, I think some companies kind of are in some aspects. They may not have the military, but some definitely have a hand on the reigns.

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