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Comment by vosper | Hacker News Reader

They are also considered critical companies for national security / capability reasons and neither will ever be allowed to fail by their respective governments, unless a local replacement exists.

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as much as this place is a temple of the private sector;

most old and big companies exist because of public money

Couldn't agree more. Let's democratize them!

They already have been. Tell me what other industry has as much oversight. The FFA exist with the sole intent of regulating anything to do with air travel. Imagine if the USDA decided that McDonalds had to stop selling Big Mac's because they found 1 that contained listeria, and had to inspect Millions of pounds of meat prior to letting them resume sale. Car recalls exist, but you don't see us stop driving when brakes fail or hackers can hijack your CAN system.

That's not what democratizing means. It doesn't refer to regulation or oversight, but rather to worker ownership and organisation of the group or business in question. Collectively owned / horizontally managed businesses do exist at scale, from farm cooperatives to the Brazilian industrial giant SEMCO.

You mean like when they basically shut down Blue Bell for listeria? That is exactly what the FDA and CDC did.

https://www.cdc.gov/listeria/outbreaks/ice-cream-03-15/index...

What does this mean?

It means that ownership is democratized. I.e. either owned by the workers or by the stakeholders/users.

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