[deogeo]

> You should always be worried about giving the government - the one entity that can take away your property, liberty and life more power.

In the day of company towns, your livelihood could be taken away at the whim of the company. A business relying on one of the app stores can be (and frequently is) ruined overnight by getting an opaque, unappealable, unexplained ban. Thousands died in the Bhopal disaster due to lax safety, and people have died being wrongly denied insurance they paid for [1]. Entire governments have been toppled by corporations [2]. "beyond question ... the dominant position of the Standard Oil Co. in the refining industry was due to unfair practices—to abuse of the control of pipe-lines, to railroad discriminations, and to unfair methods of competition in the sale of the refined petroleum products" [3] Oil companies knew their product caused global warming, and that it would have global adverse effects, and actively prevented measures against it to be taken, with lobbying and deception [4].

Thinking the government is the only threat to property, liberty, and life, isn't myopic - it's blind. All of feudalism can be re-cast to just landowners exercising their property rights - if the serfs don't like the terms of use, they can find their own land.

You also seem to be working under the assumption that it doesn't matter what kind of 'power' we give to the government. Just more=bad, less=good. There's a huge difference between expanding environmental protections or social programs, and increasing the length of jail terms, the scope of surveillance, and anti-circumvention laws.

[1] https://fox8.com/2018/11/10/aetna-ordered-to-pay-25-5-millio...

[2] https://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/02/books/review/Kurtz-Phelan...

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standard_Oil#Monopoly_charges_...

[4] https://www.theguardian.com/environment/climate-consensus-97...

[scarface74]

What do you think happens to “social programs” aimed at families if the government defines a family as a man and a woman and not a gay couple? Or less than 50 years ago as a man and a woman of the same race?

These are the same “social programs” that treat drug abuse as a “disease” in rural America but as something to be at “War” with in the inner city. We can even go as far as the same people who hate “subsidies” when it applies to health care love it to prop up farmers.

Even the EPA is more concerned with protecting the affluent neighborhoods than Flint Michigan.

The government has proven time and again that it can’t be trusted to do anything fairly.

[deogeo]

> Even the EPA is more concerned with protecting the affluent neighborhoods than Flint Michigan.

And from this your conclusion is to put lead back into gasoline.

> The government has proven time and again that it can’t be trusted to do anything fairly.

...therefore we shouldn't worry about monopolies, and do nothing about corporate abuses? If you're going to say "vote with your wallet", let me remind you this is known not to work [1].

[1] https://slatestarcodex.com/2017/02/22/repost-the-non-liberta... especially point 2.3.1. But you'd probably benefit from reading all of it.

[scarface74]

How has voting in the election worked? Neither the Presidential election, or either body of Congress has represented the will of the popular vote in the last few elections.

I’m much more worried about getting stopped by the police because I look like I don’t belong in my own neighborhood and the abuses of the “justice system” than I am about “corporate abuses”. It wasn’t the major corporations that were enforcing Jim Crow laws or that are now trying to take the rights from the LGBT community. They were offering same sex couples benefits before the government forced them to.

How many “Christian Conservatives” would love to “Defend Marriage” now? Yes I know the Democrats don’t have clean hands when it comes to either that or the “War on Crime” which escalated under Clinton.

More recently, California passed a law trying to “help” Uber drivers but ended up making it harder for people who actually wanted to be freelancers and other independent contractors. Whether the government is actively malicious or just incompetent, there are usually unintended consequences.

The “War on Crime” was supported by many Black legislators because they were dumb enough to trust the government.