[tastyfreeze]

You're dancing around a point.

> for-profit companies who are weighing the value of a good relationship with me versus one with the US government

For-profit companies shouldn't need or care about a relationship with the US government beyond selling the same product they do to everybody else. That is my ideal. How to get there is the contention. You would like to give the for-profit company to the US government and thus removing the relationship. I would like to see the power the US government has over for-profit businesses reduced and preferably eliminated. Giving banks to the US government results in less private sector and a larger government. A larger government makes more people dependent on the success and benevolence of the government. History has proven unequivocally that governments cannot be trusted to remain neither benevolent nor successful. Concentrating power makes the temptation for government malevolence too great. Power will be abused by someone eventually. That is human nature. Concentrating power is just creating a ticking bomb. The way for more people to succeed is to reduce dependence on government and distribute power among businesses that serve only their customers. Business that are reliant on the trust of their customers will think twice about betraying that trust. If their customers ever learn of their betrayal it means the death of their business in competitive markets.

[int_19h]

Large banks, and, more broadly, any large company is also concentrated power, though.

[tastyfreeze]

True. But large companies don't have the power to jail you, or worse, for crossing them. History has shown how hellish living under a powerful malevolent government can be.

[int_19h]

The only reason why they don't have that power is because the government jealously guards it. In places where that's not the case, what would stop them?

[tastyfreeze]

Nothing. That is why we gave government the power to make and enforce laws and limited power elsewhere.

[int_19h]

And how stable did that configuration prove to be?