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by Apocryphon 2849 days ago
As shoddy as many of their products are, the corporation that is the state provides far more goods, services, and dividends than any one other company does.
3 comments

Often at far less efficiency but yes I agree, given that, at least in the US, their mission statement is "make things nicer for the citizens."

I saw Reuters on Twitter today say "the social responsibility of a company is to increase profits" so quite a different MO if you buy that.

That's the crucial difference: the state's primary aim is something other than “gather money for self and keep it away from others”.
Is this summarily, or per worker, or per unit of money spent?

Please note that, unlike corporations, governments usually can print money ("quantitative easing" anyone?) and normally finance their expenses by taxing everyone, that is, their services can't be opted out of.

The state has provided me far more value than Google, Facebook, Amazon, and Uber have.

If they want to regulate them, regulate them. If they want to dissolve them, dissolve them. I at least get a vote with the state; I get no such say with large tech corporations. If you would like to opt out of the state, you likely have the skills to emigrate to another country.

Maybe we should break up that monopoly? Is there a word for people who defend every action taken by the state? I know there's Stockholm syndrome but this appears to be more nuanced.
> break up that monopoly

You can avoid creating it. Look at Switzerland. But stable, well-run confederations are rare.

The US, and many other federated states (like e.g. India) do alleviate some of the problems of centralization by allowing different places to be run partly by local rules, and it does make a difference.

I heard many for-profit corporations are run in a federated way, too, because a huge monolith is not very adaptable.

Tax-payer?
I'm a tax-payer and I don't defend everything the government does.

There is only one organization in the US that is forcing me to pay a massive chunk my income towards things I don't even support.

Maybe once Google is capable of doing something like that we should consider breaking them up.

As with everything else, there is a market for states. If you don't like this one you can patronize a different one. The right of exit still exists.

In a participatory republic you have the option of actually engaging in the process and changing policy. Maybe you ought to vote with your dollars accordingly.

Also, there's no action being "defended" here. The American state is not actually prosecuting tech companies for antitrust. The EU is.