Comment by Lutger
8 hours ago
> Private companies don’t have the ability to ruin your life in the same way your own government does. They just want your money.
And what happens when your money is gone? What happens when the government has no money anymore because the super rich took it all? Your life turns to shit real fast when you can't afford housing, healthcare and food.
I get when you are in an authoritarian country, or one on the path to becoming so like the US, that the government looks to be the most dangerous actor. But in the west that is still free, its the corps that I worry about the most.
Private companies want your money but they don’t take it. You give it to them in exchange for something.
It feels like I'm force to pay tax which then evaporates into the pockets of private companies like Palantir, though... I mean, you arguably can't even fully participate in the society you pay taxes to help run if you don't have a Google or Apple spycube.
That's the government taking your money and deciding how to apply it. It isn't a private company taking your money.
You’re fundamentally worried about the wrong thing.
It’s an extremely common bias on the left just as the anti-government bias on the right.
Both public and private entities are capable of abusing power.
Only one group however is legally entitled to take 50% of your money regardless of the quality of their product, by holding a gun to your head. They can even take more via the phantom tax of inflation using deficit spending (as is happening now all over Europe). This group is the one you should fear more if looking at it from first principles.
The current runaway deficits across Europe and rising political unrest prove this.
The only thing companies can do to “take” your money is offer you a service that’s better than all alternatives that you chose to buy voluntarily.
If you think that’s the bigger authoritarian risk something is wrong with your mental model of how the world works.