[HumanDrivenDev]

We've passed that sci-fi trope where corporations now wield more authority than governments.

I have a better relationship with corporations more than governments. A corporation has never harassed me at an airport when trying to leave. If I don't like MacDonalds I can... stop eating at MacDonalds. If I don't like the services the state provides I have to physically remove myself.

[_bxg1]

If you don't like Google and Apple you can't stop using both of them. If you don't like your local ISP you probably can't stop using it. The free market only gives consumers power over corporations when those consumers - through democracy - keep them from amassing too much power via regulatory bodies. Some people act like the government is the threat, but in a democracy the government is the only thing that truly gives you any power.

[lamarpye]

I don't agree. Which is more likely for you to end up in jail? Not buying an iPhone or stop paying your taxes?

[nilskidoo]

I was once served eviction papers by Louisville police over going a full winter without gas in my apartment. It wasn't that I neglected a bill, but that thanks to other obligations I knew I couldn't afford it, so I never opened an account. The landlords understood until the badges showed up, and then wouldn't return my deposit. So I was punished, half a week in jail followed by a couple of homeless months, for not being a customer. It absolutely happens.

And debtors prisons are still a thing: https://www.aclu.org/issues/smart-justice/sentencing-reform/...

[vonmoltke]

> I was once served eviction papers by Louisville police over going a full winter without gas in my apartment. It wasn't that I neglected a bill, but that thanks to other obligations I knew I couldn't afford it, so I never opened an account. The landlords understood until the badges showed up, and then wouldn't return my deposit. So I was punished, half a week in jail followed by a couple of homeless months, for not being a customer. It absolutely happens.

You were not evicted for not being a customer. You were (probably, since I don't know any details of your case) evicted under §156.181 of Louisville's code[1] which requires the capability to heat a dwelling to exist in order for that dwelling to be occupiable. If you have gas heat, that means needing to maintain gas service. You can't waive this requirement by agreement with your landlord because slumlords would abuse that power imbalance to skirt their obligations to keep shit working.

[1] http://library.amlegal.com/nxt/gateway.dll/Kentucky/loukymet...

[nilskidoo]

Legal mumbo-jumob guaranteeing customers for utilities companies. It was obviously livable as I was there for 5 months altogether without issue.

[TheSpiceIsLife]

I don’t understand why this sort of thing doesn’t permit US citizens to seek asylum as political refugees in slightly less fckdup countries.

[ativzzz]

Because opting out of consumerism isn't a freedom that is recognized officially anywhere, nor is it protected like religion or similar things.

[lamarpye]

Your link on debtors prison is referring to people not paying their government imposed fines, which seems the opposite of your point.

We forgot/neglected to make the last payment to AT&T when we switched to Comcast. I am not so worried about the police sending me to AT&T jail. My unaddressed car registration is a different story...

Not clear what happened in your case, the Gas Company notified the police to evict you? Is the Gas Company following a law in which they are required to tell the police?

[ionised]

The government is the one writing the laws in that case.

If there were no government, you would still have the same problems, only now unrestrained corporations would be at the root of those problems.

Government and Corps are no different in the end. They all seek to perpetuate and consolidate their power over the plebs.

[_bxg1]

> Government and Corps are no different in the end.

The only difference between them is that a democracy, at least in principle, exists to serve the people. Corporations expressly exist only to serve themselves. Democracies may face corruption, but there's not even a principle to be corrupted in the case of corporations; in a free market they have no accountability to society.

I suppose you could call co-ops "democratic corporations", in which case governments and corporations are exactly the same, but from that perspective today's corporations would be analogous to oligarchies; they exist to serve their small circle of shareholders. So forgive me if I choose to put my faith in a flawed democratic government instead of oligarchical corporations.

[ionised]

No, I'm with you on this as well.

I trust an elected government far more than any for-profit organisation.

I'm just saying, both are ripe for abuse by tyrants, plutocrats and oligarchs. Corporations moreso though, for sure.

[nilskidoo]

Politicians are paid to push the laws that they do, and not by taxpayers.

[cpursley]

I'm not sure why you're getting down votes. The police power of the state is multitudes more powerful than corporations (who unless are outright monopolies, will do everything in their power to keep you as a happy customer since you have a choice).

[ionised]

The only reason corporations haven't behaved in this way is that at the moment, they can't.

Given the power, they absolutely can, and will.

[chillacy]

No need to speculate, just look at the past behavior of the era of the East India Trading Company and you’ll see that corporations have fought in wars, applied force, basically ran the Atlantic slave trade, etc.

[cpursley]

How would it be in a corporations interest to abuse either their employers or customers in a competitive market? Last time I checked, I have many product and employment choices (with the exception of select industries ruled by cronyism). Last time I checked, Stalinist USSR murdered far more people than McDonalds or Ford.

[_khau]

> How would it be in a corporations interest to abuse either their employers or customers in a competitive market?

Ask AT&T and Verizon. Or Facebook. Or Monsanto. Or Nestle why they behave the way they do towards their customers.

You guys have WAY too much faith the benign passivity of publicly-traded companies. There is a LOT of money to be made in price-fixing, cartels and customer abuse.

And I'm not sure why you're bringing the USSR into this. This is almost a Godwin-like reprieve for those with no awareness of the 10-20 million people a year who die as a result of capitalism and capitalist policies, globally.

How about the US itself? It has murdered almost 20 million people since the end of World War 2 in its efforts to maintain its economic hegemony and take revenge on countries that leave the petrodollar.

The US, most aggressive and expansionist nation of the 20th and 21st centuries, is a capitalist country that can't even provide many of its citizens with clean drinking water.

"Capitalism is the worst system, apart from all the others" is a common refrain amongst those capitalism actually serves. They make no mention of the lives destroyed when a capitalist wants what you have.

But we move off topic.

[cpursley]

I don't disagree with the bad behavior by the US since WWII (and period before it as well).

But you'll need to provide a source for:

> the 10-20 million people a year who die as a result of capitalism and capitalist policies

And are you so sure those are capitalistic policies, or cronyism (the two are often conflated by the hn crowd)?

[_khau]

I'll find sources for my numbers after work, but I recall:

- 8 million due to lack of clean water

- 7.5 million due to hunger

- 3 million from preventable disease

- the millions killed by 'friendly dictators' and their regimes, like Pinochet.

- the unrecorded deaths as a result of national or global depressions, bankruptcies and debt (don't know where to get the numbers for this though)

Capitalism is a global system at this point, apart from the odd hold-out like North Korea etc. A lot of the deaths from lack of clean water and disease are attributable to things like the privatisation of water supply in Bolivia:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Water_privatization_in_Bolivia

Then we have Chiquita, Coca-Cola etc. hiring miltias to crack down on labour movements in Central and South America resulting in countless murders. How did they get away with it?

Most of the deaths caused by capitalism are due something called 'structural violence':

It refers to a form of violence wherein some social structure or social institution may harm people by preventing them from meeting their basic needs.

So, clean water, healthcare and access to medicine. Something that capitalism has failed spectacularly at.

If you're going to say the crony capitalism we have now isn't capitalism then that's as much a No True Scotsman fallacy as people who say true communism has never been tried.

What we have now is capitalism by the very definition of the word. The cronyism inherent in it isn't some transforming influence, it's part of the core.

I was going to write up a massive post but this guys seems to sum it up pretty well if you fancy a read:

https://www.quora.com/What-has-killed-more-people-communism-...

[itronitron]

>> in a competitive market

Not all markets are competitive, and corporations that are operating at the state level are often effectively monopolies.

[cpursley]

I don't disagree. But tech is one of, if not the most, competitive sector right now.

[nilskidoo]

Let's have AWS accidentally decrypt a few more dozen terabytes of DoD datum and then decide.

[HumanDrivenDev]

yeah I thought I might drop in and make a well reasoned point in good faith. the shower of down-votes shows me I shouldn't have bothered (:

HN is a bit of an echo chamber, unfortunately.

[cpursley]

Yeah, for a place with such a high concentration of smart folks, its more often than not, about the "feelz" on here...