zlacker

Competition is what keeps private corporations well behaved. Governments are monopolies and thus unchecked.

>>nickpp+(OP)
Governments are checked by the wavering legitimacy of any given representative within the government. In our system, we have a direct check on that legitimacy through elections.

Meanwhile, corporations frequently do not have to compete, having either become a monopoly or having agreed upon "standards" without which they insist solvency in their given area would be impossible (as they rake in untold riches in profit). The only check on that power is indirectly through refusing to transact with them en masse. However, as long as their credit is good, they can continue to exist and operate with impunity.

In the end, the question is of the accumulation of which currency determines who is "good" enough to run your life: political clout or money.

Franklu, people who have to be nice to me tend to do better by me than people who just happen to have a lot of money.

>>nickpp+(OP)
Governments are checked by the democratic process. And competition is not working as well as it should. There are plenty of corporate monopolies, Varsity being one of the most obvious at the present time.

>>n4r9+Qe
Neither is perfect but we can easily see that private competition works better by far by comparing the results: all the modern life products and services vs the mess that governments and governmental services are in various parts of the world.

>>nickpp+hi1
The question is not which is more efficient, but which is more responsible with power.

>>n4r9+kl1
Governments have incomparably more power and thus their abuses are incomparably worse: famines, pogroms, wars, asset confiscation, incarceration, murder.

Companies are controlled by the market, it's governments we need to worry about and find ways to control and regulate.

>>nickpp+nn1
Still, the question is not which currently have more power, but which is more responsible with that power in a democratic society.

Companies are remarkably good at finding ways to control the market. That's why antitrust legislation is needed to protect consumers.

>>n4r9+2w1
The only unbeatable way companies control the market is through government-granted monopoly. Any other way is eventually defeated by the market itself.

Every government intervention in the market will benefit established players and will hinder startups and thus the markets's self-regulating mechanisms.

>>nickpp+PB1
This is an extreme counterexample, but doesn't the fact that the government will prosecute large companies that order hit squads to assassinate startup employees count as an "intervention"?

There are many other cases where I'd be very uncomfortable trusting these so-called "self-regulatinf mechanisms", e.g. the abolition of slavery, child labour, and racial/sexual employment discrimination.

>>n4r9+Fs3
All that is illegal behavior. Markets require the rule of law too and nobody is disputing the role of governments to implement and uphold the law.

>>nickpp+oq4
Price fixing is also illegal behaviour, but my impression is that you're more relaxed about that?

>>nickpp+oq4
Moreover, none of those things were always illegal. There was a time where it was not obvious that they should be illegal. Yet, despite the relatively laisez faire economics of the 19th century (in the UK at least), these behaviours were not simply self-regulated away. That required government intervention in the form of passing laws and ensuring that the law was followed.