[dougabug]

Corporations are legal fictions. They exist through the power and authority of the State, their contracts are enacted and enforced through agents of the Courts. Corporations are manifestly not free to organize as they will.

Is it economic freedom to have one choice for Internet broadband? For healthcare? Unregulated monopolies should supply us with food, water, power, and all other essential utilities/needs? Welcome to the age of thousand dollar a pill medicine. Every communication, location, every purchase, every mouse click or swipe duly tracked, recorded, and data mined. To imagine that as freedom merges the Dickensian with the Orwellian.

[grondilu]

> Corporations are legal fictions. They exist through the power and authority of the State, their contracts are enacted and enforced through agents of the Courts.

When I enter a shop there are a few things I can not do. I can't steal, threaten the staff or set the place in fire for instance. That does not mean that the concept of a shop does not exist. Corporations are nothing but an association of people working together and/or sharing the ownership of means of production. The fact that the Law puts a frame around this organisation does not stop it from existing. The concept preexists to what Law says it is.

If you deny it it's probably because that suits your political views so I don't have much hope in changing your mind about it.

PS. Someone who has a job also makes a contract that is enforced by the State, so do you think employment is a legal fiction as well?

[dougabug]

You certainly can steal, threaten the staff, or set the place on fire. To the extent that shop and its people are recognized and protected by laws and government agencies such as the police, you'll likely face serious repercussions. But say the shop is liquidated in Chapter 7 proceedings by Bankruptcy Court, appeals exhausted, ownership of all assets transferred, the building condemned. The shop no longer exists, and in fact may be lawfully demolished.

You could setup a table in the middle of a busy intersection, put some items on it, and declare it to be a shop. That does't make it a shop (or for that matter yours).

What is "ownership" absent law? Is it something you can measure, like gravity, velocity, field strength, pH or temperature? Without the law, a manifestation of government, ownership is simply a belief (which is the antecedent of the law).

[NoPiece]

Welcome to the age of thousand dollar a pill medicine. Every communication, location, every purchase, every mouse click or swipe duly tracked, recorded, and data mined.

You are exactly describing the world today, as provided by our big government.

[dougabug]

> You are exactly describing the world today, as provided by our big government.

Of course I am. Orwell would be astounded.

I perceive a false dichotomy of big government vs big corporations. While it may be possible to have one without the other, we have the latter (as you point out) courtesy of the former.

[sergiosgc]

Small countries, like mine (.pt), kind of disprove this idyllic vision of small government. Small governments easily fall prey to large multinationals.

USA's woes with oligopolies may have many causes. A government concentrated at the federal level isn't probably one of them.

[NoPiece]

My rebuttal would be that the oligopolies exist in heavily regulated areas (health, banking, telecom), and that isn't a coincidence. You don't need a big government to protect yourself from multinationals, you need a non corrupt government.

[willvarfar]

How would "small" government change it?

Being a European living in a country with a "bigger" relative government (as I understand the way Americans use the term) but with free healthcare and a big data mining debate ongoing, I'm a bit at a loss...

[NoPiece]

A smaller government wouldn't have a $52.6 billion budget for the NSA & CIA to data mine.

A drug company can only charge a $1000 for a pill because the government is blocking competition by granting patents. Effectively creating a micro monopoly. Small government with extremely limited or no patents would allow competition to fix the $1000 pill.

It is industries like healthcare and telecom, where the US has both very large companies and very big government that we have the worst outcomes.