[anamax]

> People in the EU (and Germany in particular) ... have had enough bad experiences with secret police forces,

How many of these secret police forces were private? How many were govt police forces?

Politicians grandstand about the evils of companies, but the actual killing and torturing people is done by semi-popular govts.

[archgoon]

> but the actual killing and torturing people is done by semi-popular govts.

Like the Mafia and Church of Scientology. And Blackwater. The East India Trading Company, or Coca Cola assassinating Labor Leaders in Columbia. IBM helped the Nazi's build the accounting machinery used by the concentration camps, requiring IBM to be well aware what was going on.

In some cases Corporations pay governments to do their dirty work. Sometimes the Government pays the corporation. Other times the corporation becomes the government. Sometimes the corporation just doesn't care. Regardless, can we please put aside this fiction that all the serious evils of the world are perpetrated by governments despite the best efforts of angelic businessmen? Pretending that as long as we keep the government in check all will be fine is idiocy and ignorance of the highest order. Excess power in any concentrated location is potentially problematic, regardless if it's held by 'private' or 'public' sectors. Those are labels for groups of people, nothing more.

[anamax]

"A Single Death is a Tragedy; a Million Deaths is a Statistic"

> Regardless, can we please put aside this fiction that all the serious evils of the world are perpetrated by governments despite the best efforts of angelic businessmen?

No one is suggesting that business is angelic.

However, whenever someone points out that govts kill lots of people, govt apologists leap up to say "corps have killed too", ignoring the differenc in orders of magnitude.

Mote, beam and all that.

> Those are labels for groups of people, nothing more.

Not so fast. Those groups have very different behaviors and motivations.

The worst that you can say about a company is that it will try to make money from you and might take some action to stop you from interfering with its attempts to make money.

Govts regularly commit mass murder for basically no reason.

[tluyben2]

> Govts regularly commit mass murder for basically no reason.

Govts have reasons, one of the most common is to protect or improve the status quo for the leaders. Not very different from companies.

[anamax]

> Not very different from companies.

You're ignoring the orders of magnitude.

Scale is a difference that you have to ignore to apologize for govts.

[tluyben2]

I agree and worse is that most a lot of them actually believe 'the people' actually have a say in this while they don't. Well, at least not with voting. That was not the point though; governments are not doing the stuff they do without reason; there is a reason. It's just not what you would expect and hope from something as massive as a government.

[forgottenpaswrd]

"Politicians grandstand about the evils of companies, but the actual killing and torturing people is done by semi-popular govts."

Well, that's true, and is the reason you can't trust facebook, as the patriot act gives the US government all the data that private American companies have, without you being notified.

[mcpie]

The distinction you're making between private and public is hardly relevant. The gestapo, stasi and FBI are, for all intents and purposes, not very different from private companies trying to perpetuate their own success and maximize their power/profits. The only major difference is that governments own a monopoly on the use of force, making them slightly more dangerous in a physical sense - but not more dangerous in a general 'can cause us a lot of harm' sense (especially since governments are easier to topple than private companies).

[CrLf]

What does "private" mean in this scenario? In most dictatorships, secret police forces may be run by the state, but they serve the private interests that run the state.

[anamax]

> they serve the private interests that run the state.

Oh really? What private interests ran the USSR? China under Mao? The killing fields of Cambodia.

10s of millions of people killed....