Comment by pembrook

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.