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Comment by terminalshort | Hacker News Reader

Bullshit. I have no control whatsoever over the government. It is completely separate from me. I have 1000x more power over Amazon by my ability to choose to not buy from them than my vote gives me over government bureaucracy. That's why whenever I have a problem with an Amazon order it is resolved in minutes when I contact support. Good luck if you have a problem with the government.

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Amazon are not resolving your issue in minutes because you have power over them. They do it because it is efficient and profitible for them to keep customers happy. Your actual influence over a trillion dollar company is tiny compaired to your influence as a voter. One customer taking there business elsewhere does not affect Amazon in any meaningful way. One vote is counted directly. The gap is between how it feels and how the power actually works. This of course assumes you live in a democratic country.

Your firat two sentences are a total contradiction

Only because you confabulate your personal power with what they really care about.

AMZN shareholders shiver by the sheer control you have over them. Will he return that usb dongle?

Hah. Try the same with Google now. Getting a problem resolved with them as a consumer is a cakewalk compared to the government.

You are a user of Google, but you probably aren't a customer.

How can a user become a customer in a sense that helps them with this? Not a business, an individual user. In any case, you're playing semantics - Google has effectively become unavoidable in daily life yet solving issues with them is at least as hard as with the government.

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