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Comment by groundlogic | Hacker News Reader

I feel like they are separate tasks. Companies should be apolitical. Governments should be political. Governments should actively set limits for what companies can and should/should not do.

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I agree with this 100% in theory. However companies have more power over government than any other entity, even the entire population in aggregate. Companies are more political than governments.

The people are ultimately the customers of business and the most effective way to changing political policy is by influencing said business.

Ideally government and business should be like church and state or oil and water but this is not the reality we live in.

A solution: break up the Alphabet companies and Amazon/AWS.

How can you influence the government to do this when companies have more influence than you?

By voting...

A vote doesn't change anything. If you want change you need to influence a multitude of voters. What kind of entity has that influence in the United States? Corporations.

If there was a candidate that fit the profile of what you desire. How would you even be aware of that candidates existence? Usually through some news organization, youtube video , television, google search.... all avenues that are given to you by a corporation.

And what if structurally (perhaps due to emerging technical and social constraints), companies increasingly outmaneuver governments? If technologists like us (those doing much of outmaneuvering) advocate companies being apolitical, then won't we then live a world with less and less moral courage within our institutions? (And institutions shape the cultural milieu in which we operate as individuals.)

It's a bit of separate issue, but as I wrote in a separate comment: It's on the governments (in this case the US government) to break up these companies into less powerful smaller parts.

Companies can't be apolitical by international law.

That's why we have to block requests for service to places like Crimea and North Korea.

Why should companies be exempt from the laws in the places where they operate?

How can something like an international megacorporation that holds SO much power over the lives of so many people be apolitical?

Through the magic that is called legislation. (And if the megacorp is too big, break it up.)

Companies are not abstract entities living in an ether: they're made of, and managed by people.

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