A corporation doesn’t have the power of the state to threaten to take away property or liberty.
What corporations don't have is any obligation to cede to the public demand or be held accountable for their actions. There's no democratic control, no way they can be fired by the voter nor do they have any responsibility of transparency.
Voting systems, red light cameras, municipal water, nearly every aspect is controlled by private corporations shirking responsibility oftentimes for decades. Polluting a town's water supply and walking away pretending they didn't - there's even many well known movies about things like this with academy awards. Often the criminals get away with it having hid under the legal fiction of the corporation.
If a secretive unaccountable private corporation determining the outcome of an election and claiming the audit trail is a trade secret doesn't ruffle your libertarian feathers then there's something seriously wrong.
What you claimed is yet another silly thing I've been hearing my whole life. It's totally wrong. Any inspection would immediately reveal this
How well has that whole accountability thing worked out for the police department and the American military? The justice system?
There's no democratic control, no way they can be fired by the voter nor do they have any responsibility of transparency.
Nor can judges with lifetime appointments.
Voting systems,
Where conservative states consistently disenfranchise minority voters by closing polling places, passing voter id laws but then make it harder for minorities to get an ID and they count gun registrations as valid Id but not college IDs...
Polluting a town's water supply and walking away pretending they didn't
See the government run water supply in Flint Michigan.
Still, why corporations are internally so much better by nature than governments, in that world-view, I don't see.
Humans can be real bastards and governments aren't magical solutions just as corporations aren't magically evil.
The question is about who can be held more accountable, who can be more feasibly removed from power and what kind of institution can be more promptly remedied.
We as moral actors could potentially change the laws of governance probably far easier than we could form a corporation to defeat ExxonMobil in the marketplace. Both should be easier, but that's another discussion.
Both governance and private capital are imperfect and both deserve criticism. Being a fan of either is a mistake.
This is less true than you might realize. Consider that if a friend of yours is on Facebook, they might upload photos of you and tag your name, allowing Facebook to build a profile of you regardless of whether you use Facebook or not.
Consider that credit rating agencies buy your loan history in order to rate you as a customer, regardless of whether you check your credit history with them or not. Consider that Google buys your credit card purchase history to build a profile of you.
Consider that Google takes pictures of your house regardless of whether you search for it on Maps. Consider that GM and Ford collect and sell your location data from your vehicle. Note that vehicles that don't do this are getting more difficult to obtain because the price of vehicles is becoming increasingly subsidized by surveillance.
Technology is ubiquitous. Not all technology is a product sold to consumers, and you don't always have a say in how it's used. GDPR covers all of the above situations. Its effect on websites is peanuts.
> A corporation doesn’t have the power of the state to threaten to take away property or liberty.
Automated systems are currently part of the decision-making process in hiring, firing, choosing to loan, choosing to rent, policing, and determining prison sentences. A corporation that offers "fraud detection" services has a surprising amount of power over your liberty and property.
Why isn't there a law to prevent this while there's a law that accomplishes nothing except guarrantied annoyances? Is not the government that makes laws?
Questionable, and to the extent that this is true, it is because of power given to governments to ensure those rights.
Corporations on the other hand are effectively vestigial 21st century monarchies, with all the cost and benefits that comes with that.
I've ran a few small ones and believe in private industry. I'm not anti corporation, but let's call a spade a spade here. Believing in bullshit never helps you in a competitive marketplace, don't do it.
