[sparkie]

Governments and corporations are very different. A corporation needs to generate profit. If they don't profit, their shareholders don't get paid! If they continually don't profit, they go out of business and lose the investments they put into the corporation.

Government has no obligation to profit. Quite the opposite. Government enterprises simply spend (other people's) money. If government worked on a profit motive like corporations, everybody would love governments and there would be no complaints. Imagine that instead of paying taxes, you got paid a bonus when your country prospers?

[infinity0]

You're grasping onto ideological straws. Both governments and corporations have to manage their finances, together with non-financial aspects of reality, in order to survive. Smart corporations don't only look at the bottom line on their account sheets.

[sparkie]

They both have to manage finances, but governments are spending other people's money. A corporation is people risking their own money on profitable ventures. How you can think they are in any way similar is beyond me. Governments have little accountability because they are so large, and they can't "go out of buisiness" because they don't have competition. They merely have a quadrennial theatrical show where two "directors" appear to compete for business, but where the shareholders (the taxpayers) ability to actually influence those "business" decisions are almost zero.

If there were a free market for most of the services government takes it upon themselves to provide (by their force on monopoly), the government would be out of business in nearly every area because there would be better competitors offering better services at lower costs.

[infinity0]

> governments are spending other people's money. A corporation is people risking their own money on profitable ventures

This is what you choose to believe, to maintain your internal consistency in your own ideology. From the point of view of the law, it is the government's money after they tax you, and the government believes that it is their money, in order to maintain their internal consistency of their ideology that justifies their legitimacy. They "risk" their money on various government / societal ventures and their "profit" is their continual acceptance by the citizens.

In both cases, forgetting about the ideology, what happens in reality is a transfer of wealth. I have to pay a government in order to live on land that they have physical control of, I have to pay a corporation in order to eat food that they have physical control of, or obtain other essential life resources from them.

Some governments and corporations are so large they can't "go out of business" because they don't have competition indeed. Some are smaller and they have to cater to individual customer / citizen demands more readily.

[sparkie]

> This is what you choose to believe, to maintain your internal consistency in your own ideology.

Dude, they're completely different. A corporation has to provide services people want to use of their own volition. A government takes money off people without asking. They are completely unalike and it shows in how the operate. Risking other people's money is something anyone can do. Risking your own money means you need to make smart decisions. The government are inherently less smart than corporations because they lack the business sense that entrepreneurs have.

Politicians are paid generous salaries, but they're hardly fitting of such salaries for their abysmal performance in their management. If managers in any corporation were like politicians, they'd be sacked! Politicians are unlike such managers because they get to decide their own salaries too. Directors can chose their own salaries because it is their own money they're risking. Politicians are not taking any personal risk beyond their career aspects. They have no skin in the game. (In fact, their incentives are to enrich themselves whilst in office, even at the cost of the taxpayer they purport to represent).

> I have to pay a government in order to live on land that they have physical control of

I noticed you originally put owned, by were right to edit. Most land is privately owned, not by governments. Even most of the publicly accessible land is privately owned easements.

Although government doesn't own all of the land, they are effectively part possessors because they have some rights to it (at the cost of the owner's rights). This is simply more evidence that governments overstep their reach and encroach on people's lives. Ultimately, they rely on that monopoly of force, because given the choice in a free market, those land owners might chose somebody else to be the stewards of their land.

You have to ask, if governments should be the sole providers of stewardship of easements in a geographical area, why shouldn't they be the sole providers of food too? You say that you need to pay a corporation to eat, but shouldn't that service also be subsumed by government? Why even stop there. Let's have full on communism!

Well, that has been tried multiple times and it failed miserably every time. On the other hand, free markets have been tried and they were hugely successful in drastically improving the standard of living for millions of people. The evidence is clear. Corporations generate wealth and then the governments spend it. Anti-capitalists would have you believe the opposite is true.

[infinity0]

> A corporation has to provide services people want to use of their own volition. A government takes money off people without asking. [..] Ultimately, they rely on that monopoly of force [..]

Distinguishing having a de-jure monopoly on force vs a de-facto monopoly on something else is not a useful practical difference to make. Other quantitative aspects of the relationship are more important to the analysis, and you pointed out some of them yourself.

This artificial elevation of this "monopoly on force" pollutes other aspects of your analysis of reality, leading you to say things like "If you're just a lowly employee [..] you might think it doesn't matter to you" apparently without irony.

In some sense, a government does take money from me without asking. In some other sense, this relationship is consensual - individuals with more resources/power are free to move to the jurisdiction of a different government. Similarly, the degree to which some corporations "take" money from people depends on the circumstances. People have to live somewhere, eat something, etc, and this has a big influence on the corporations they must give their wealth to. So distinguishing governments from corporations is not particularly meaningful or interesting, and leads you to artificially exonerate some bad activities of corporations whilst incriminating some good activities of governments.

edit:

> Most land is privately owned, not by governments.

I changed to "physical control" because it was more relevant. Even "ownership" is a (very convincing) "legal fiction" whose power derives from the government's control over that land. If it were not able to maintain this control, another country could invade it. If you were able to actually control the land that you "own", then sure I might have to pay you taxes in order to live on it (or move somewhere else with better tax conditions).

[sparkie]

> Distinguishing having a de-jure monopoly on force vs a de-facto monopoly on something else is not a useful practical difference to make.

It depends how the monopoly comes about. Many de-facto monopolies arise as a result of government intervention in the market. Some of it accidental (unintended consequences of other policies), and some of it intentional (enticed by lobbying money).

Natural monopolies which arise are not necessarily bad, but can be if they are essential and they're engaged in underhanded behavior like price fixing. In these cases, it is right that we have a legal system which can deal with such problems as they arise, but IMO, it's a mistake to try establish broad frameworks which try to deal the wrong causes of the problem (one of the causes of the unintended consequences mentioned above).

There are countless cases of government intervention in markets which ends up favoring big corporations and harming smaller businesses. I'm 100% in agreement that we should do what we can to prevent this kind of government-big-corp collusion. Reducing red tape for startups and ending government sanctioned monopolies (including a drastic restructuring of the patent system) are some examples. Another step towards this would be to greatly reduce the size of government, since the less they're responsible for, the less they can screw up.

> leading you to say things like "If you're just a lowly employee [..] you might think it doesn't matter to you" apparently without irony.

I use those words deliberately and with intentional irony. Employees simply see themselves that way because they feel in a position of powerlessness, even in some top jobs. For example, there are recent stories of game developers wanting to unionize. They apparently consider themselves to be "lowly" employees, if they can't take it upon themselves to demand better working conditions or salaries for skills which are in demand. What hope do we have if some the best paying jobs want to unionize? (Make no mistake, this will start with gaming, but spread to many areas of programming).

Unions have many problems and cause unintended consequences. They create red tape which leads to barriers of entry into the industry, and price fixing ends up becoming accidentally implicit in the market because of the union's interference. If game developers think their working conditions are going to improve under a union, they're terribly mistaken. What will really happen is a good portion of them will simply lose their jobs, most of them will have wage stagnation, and only the most specialized and skilled workers will be able to demand higher compensation.

> Similarly, the degree to which some corporations "take" money from people depends on the circumstances. People have to live somewhere, eat something, etc, and this has a big influence on the corporations they must give their wealth to. So distinguishing governments from corporations is not particularly meaningful or interesting, and leads you to artificially exonerate some bad activities of corporations whilst incriminating some good activities of governments.

Corporations are by no means perfect and bad behavior can't simply be excused. I also don't doubt that government does some "good activities". My complaints are more about the efficiency of how they do so. I believe more competition would lead to better services than government (and corporations) offers in almost all areas. (To be clear, I'm not an anarchist, but the smaller the government, the better).

We also need to look at consumer responsibility though. If consumers are outraged by the behavior of some corporations they do have skin in the game, and can protest the behavior by refusing to pay for their services. As much as I'm not a fan of things like big tech companies engaged in censorship, they're not essential services and if people are outraged enough they'll stop using them. On the other hand, the banking services which are unpersoning people for political views are different story: One, because they are essential, but two, because it is government red tape which prevents competitors from replacing them.

The biggest problem of government is that it simply wants to do more and more. Socialism gradually creeps in a step at a time, mostly unnoticed because each step is small and seems harmless. A few decades later and almost all personal liberties are under assault and top down control has become the norm, instead of bottom up market forces. The constitutional limitations of the US government are invaluable and the attacks on them are a disaster for the whole of humanity.

> individuals with more resources/power are free to move to the jurisdiction of a different government.

There some merit in this, but some governments will also still try to tax you even for earnings you make outside of their jurisdiction. Aside from that, corporations can locate to different jurisdictions, and will locate if taxation is more favorable to them elsewhere. A government therefore, needs to create an environment which is friendly to businesses, else their economy will go sour. The recent democrat fuckup of the NY Amazon deal is a good example of what bad government policy looks like. Yes, Amazon make enough money that they don't need tax breaks, but what favors have the Dems for New Yorkers? Anti-business policies damage the local economy for everyone, not just the greedy corporations.