Why are we assuming that the private sector is any better?
If you want to see what violence the private sector is capable of, look up the Nisour Square massacre : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nisour_Square_massacre https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nisour_Square_massacre
Anyone acquainted deeply with American history would be aware that yes, the government can tend towards authoritarianism, and often goes fully into it. But the American private sector is even more enthusiastic to commit atrocities and enforce the authority of the few on the many.
Why are you assuming that I want the private sector to grow in power? These aren't mutually exclusive.
> But the American private sector is even more enthusiastic to commit atrocities and enforce the authority of the few on the many.
Shows a keen misunderstanding of American history. The US government commits far more atrocities on a yearly basis than the private sector ever has. I could fill up this whole page with links describing absurd infringements on our constitutional rights by the US government, many of them ongoing to this day.
How, practically, do you want to limit government power in a way that doesn't increase the power of the private sector?
I spoke of enthusiasm, not volume. The private sector commits less atrocities insofar as the government prevents them to. If you want a good historical example, recall that one of the main reasons for the American Revolution was that the private sector was angry at the Crown that they couldn't commit as much atrocities and steal as much land from the natives as they wanted to.
>the private sector was angry at the Crown that they couldn't commit as much atrocities and steal as much land from the natives as they wanted to.
Never heard that one. Sources?
It’s a joke.
Playing Devil's advocate, the Declaration of Independence does include the phrase, "He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us, and has endeavoured to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian Savages, whose known rule of warfare, is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions."
Also during the Revolution, the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sullivan_Expedition https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sullivan_Expedition lead to atrocities against the natives and the later acquisition of a large amount of land for American settlers.
I wouldn't consider this in the top 10 motivations for the American Revolution. (In fact that complaint was the 27th of 27 complaints.)
But as a motivation, it was not exactly absent either. And the economic consequences of this particular item did prove, in hindsight, to be immense.
What are the measuring units for enthusiasm?
>The US government commits far more atrocities on a yearly basis than the private sector ever has
This is one of those claims that's basically impossible to prove. I have no doubt you could link hundreds of constitutional infringements, but at the same time some reports suggest ~25% of workers regularly encounter some form of wage theft.
Or let's use this stories drone strikes as an example. Hale's revelation was that the military vastly underreported the number of civilian deaths to drone strikes. But I don't think private contractors would even be required to publish a bs number of casualties caused (I can't find any reporting requirements, but my search was hardly thorough.) Many private injustices can be very effectively hidden.
> The US government commits far more atrocities on a yearly basis than the private sector ever has.
Let's not compare which class of entities is more evil than the other.
We can't ignore that East India Company which ran drugs worldwide or I.G. Farben (maker of Nazi weaponry & Zyklon B), which later became Monsanto (maker or Agent Orange, DDT, etc.), Bayer, BASF. How about Corporate Sponsored "Tobacco Science" extolling the virtues of smoking? What about the various industrial complexes supporting the even more evil government?
With the Government infiltrated by agents who are connected with corporations & vice versa, is there any difference anyways? Are corporations & government inherently evil or are there contexts of corporations & government that are more evil than other contexts? Can criminal factions gain power over the government & corporations? Would corporations & government be less evil if honest people ran them instead of criminals?
Perhaps it's social phenomena, that we all participate in. Of course much if this phenomena is instigated by various cartels managing systems and hacking human consciousness & desire to consolidate power & curtail individual freedom & rights.
Not arguing against your point, I would like to add that the current treatment of Assange was a responsibility of multiple countries working together to take him down - US, Sweden, Ecuador and Australia.
The espionage act which got used against Daniel Hale is also what the US is using in Assange's case.
> Shows a keen misunderstanding of American history. The US government commits far more atrocities on a yearly basis than the private sector ever has. I could fill up this whole page with links describing absurd infringements on our constitutional rights by the US government, many of them ongoing to this day.
On behalf of the oil industry, the USA is committint genocide in Yemen, on contract. Saudi Arabia literally paid Trump for the cost of American troops in Yemen.
pretty much all atrocities done by the US government are in service of politically connected private industries.
> ...private military company contracted by the US government...
Damn the private sector and their evil ... of wait the government was stumping up the cash. Was the government perhaps acting in its private capacity when hiring mercenaries to "support democracy" in oil rich nations?
This is not even particularly a private-public thing (look to the East India company for what a private company is capable of, although the situation was complicated). The invasion of Iraq wasn't a private enterprise. There were private interests involved, but I think most people would agree that is curruption.
The US Government didn't ask Blackwater to kill 17 civilians in Iraq, they decided to do so themselves.
Obviously foreign invasions were not purely private enterprises. But American history is full of private interests pushing for war, the American Revolution itself was caused in large parts by the American private sector being much more enthusiastic to ethnically cleanse the land from natives and steal their land than the crown.
Private interests lobbying the US Government isn't really corruption, it is the way things are sadly intended to work.
My point is that the reason these atrocities are made by the government and not private companies is only that the government prevents the private sector from committing them. So giving power to the private sector instead of the government in general is not a good course of action despite these events because there is no reason to believe it is any less enthusiastic to do atrocious things.
Sorry, I'm not quite following the argument here. We're in a comment thread about it being illegal to reveal the amount of corruption in the US military, how they are not being particularly discriminating in who they are droning over in the Middle East.
You're putting up evidence that they are also hiring vetted thugs and sending them over to massacre people - also indiscriminately. Again, it is probably illegal at some level to report on how many massacres actually happen so presumably this case is more common than people think.
And the take away here is that the government is protecting us from private sector malfeasance? The private sector would never get funding for this sort of insanity! The only reason money is going to this is because paying taxes is mandatory. A tiny minority of people support this bloodshed. They just happen to have plum positions in DC. And even then, only because it isn't their money being used to vaporise brown people.
The whole private sector censorship reminds me of a very good piece by Matt Taibbi:
> "People in the U.S. seem able to recognize that China’s censorship of the internet is bad. They say: “It’s so authoritarian, tyrannical, terrible, a human rights violation.” Everyone sees that, but then when it happens to us, here, we say, “Oh, but it’s a private company doing it.” What people don’t realize is the majority of censorship in China is being carried out by private companies.
> Rebecca MacKinnon, former CNN Bureau chief for Beijing and Tokyo, wrote a book called Consent of the Network that lays all this out. She says, “This is one of the features of Chinese internet censorship and surveillance—that it's actually carried out primarily by private sector companies, by the tech platforms and services, not by the police. And that the companies that run China's internet services and platforms are acting as an extension of state power.”
> The people who make that argument don’t realize how close we are to the same model. There are two layers. Everyone’s familiar with “The Great Firewall of China,” where they’re blocking out foreign websites. Well, the US does that too. We just shut down Press TV, which is Iran’s PBS, for instance. We mimic that first layer as well, and now there’s also the second layer, internally, that involves private companies doing most of the censorship."
https://taibbi.substack.com/p/meet-the-censored-matt-orfalea https://taibbi.substack.com/p/meet-the-censored-matt-orfalea
The private sector doesn’t have the monopoly of violence to enforce its views.
Linking to a private company that was killing for the government isn’t really a great example.
the private sector provides alternatives. government is exactly the opposite. one size fits all and you cant get rid of it.
Lol. Did you even read what you linked. The government hired mercenaries and they were brutally evil. That must’ve been because the government doesn’t have enough power.
Let’s just say Amazon and the government are both equally evil. You get to pick one to have more power. Are you going to pick the one who has given us the wonderful invention called the dmv, or the one who will let me order whatever I want and get it to me in a reasonable time at a reasonable price.
Amazon does a better job at serving the populace than the government does. They both act like rulers, but at least one gives you something worthwhile for it.