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Comment by animal_spirits | Hacker News Reader

I watched Julian Assange’s recent talk at the Council of Europe and his testimony on the insanity that the U.S. Government put him through [1]. This makes me come to a different conclusion than the article.

> In the digital realm, companies’ control of information, unfettered agency, and power to act have almost overtaken that of governments.

Why is it assumed that governments will act better if the power to control information is in their hands? We see this time and time again that the control over information is the most manipulating force a tyrant can wield. Why should we trust government over companies? At least with a publicly traded company we can sell stock faster than we can elect new leaders.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=idphGmY3QRM

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For US companies and its citizens, trading stock enough to send a message and make a difference is in the hand of the top X% of people. Those same people don’t have to worry about the same things we do. Their income tier makes them operate fundamentally differently. When you have a team of lawyers on call you can get a lot done quickly. For us companies depend on us deeming it not worth our time and money for a chance to right a wrong. On top of that companies are at times misusing or breaking the law for decades before they are taken to justice. And that justice is more and more just the cost of doing business.

I could go on and on, but I would rather face down one tyrant than an army of them. But the way things are going, we might be facing both soon.

> Why should we trust government over companies?

Democratic governments have some form of accountability to those elected, if none other than periodic elections. If you are fortunate enough to live in a country which has free and fair elections, then vote.

Companies do not have such constraints and operate strictly in self-interest.

Does government not act within self interest? The self interest of the company is to provide the information that people want. The self interest of the government is to provide the information that keep the citizens voting for who controls the politicians. And who controls the politicians is a profitable game for big corporations.

I understand companies act within their own self interest. But the problem is when we provide government with enormous power it becomes within the self interest of companies to influence government rather than provide value to society.

> self interest of the government is to provide the information that keep the citizens voting for who controls the politicians

Now expand your model to one where the government, politicans and citizens aren't monoliths.

> who controls the politicians is a profitable game for big corporations

It's a pertinent game for everyone. That's the point of democracy. It's still a profitable game in a dictatorship. It's just that while democracy gives a peanut-gallery seat to even the most disinterested citizen, autocracies hoard those seats for the deserving.

How do you end up in a position where governments aren't monoliths? You decentralize the power. Adding more and more state control concentrates power into the monoliths.

> You decentralize the power. Adding more and more state control concentrates power into the monoliths

“State control” isn’t a monolithic lever. You can have a theoretically powerful but weak state if power is properly shattered. This is the lost art of designing democracies. (Not just throwing elections at every problem.)

This is the current situation in the United States. The problem with this is that when you have shattered/distributed state power, they work to achieve opposing objectives. On one hand we have massive subsidies provided to the fossil fuel industry while at the same time spending millions on research in renewable energy. Recently we had huge subsidies to growing tobacco while also funding programs to stop people from smoking. This is ineffective and inefficient use of money. Now, this would happen with private companies as well, but the difference is that private companies have no means to force individuals to pay for their costs the way state government does. The state can threaten you by means of force or jail to pay for both of these conflicting endeavors through taxation. Whereas you only give money to private enterprises voluntarily, where you find value in their goods or services.

Companies do not have such constraints and operate strictly in self-interest.

With companies I have options to not engage at all. I don’t have that option with the government.

They operate under the constraint of my ability to take my business elsewhere. This gives me 1000x more leverage over companies than my vote will ever have over the government. The worst customer service nightmare i have ever been through is nothing compared to the time the IRS incorrectly calculated that I owed them thousands more in taxes. My vote does not constrain them in the least.

i love going to hackernews and reading comments from people who are confused about the difference between democratic franchise and stock ownership

Because companies make decisions based on who has the most money. 90% of Americans have basically no control of those decisions. And companies interfere with democratic control of the government. Getting things out of the way of democracy seems good to me.

Again, how would that be different if government had the power to control information? Its human nature to do things that benefit yourself. At least if its not centralized then you have competition which gives people a choice of where they want their information coming from.

Who does the government listen to when making decisions?

Influence and power follows a power distribution. This is an age old problem.

We already know that organizations (whether public or private) eventually devolve into a bureaucracy where the goal is the growth of the organization itself.

We see this with the government - how often does the government ever remove laws? Or reduce size? Very rarely.

It seems to me that if the goal is to ensure one is not coerced, whether by business or government is not to try and create mechanisms to ensure coercion is only benevolent, but rather to ensure they never have the power to coerce people in the first place.

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