8 ms·

> Interestingly, in the past, the US federal government actively made efforts to keep private organizations from becoming too dominant. Yes but one can't just

> Interestingly, in the past, the US federal government actively made efforts to keep private organizations from becoming too dominant. Yes but one can't just ignore the federal government itself, as if this wasn't an organization. In this framing of small organizations kept small by the government the largest organization is the State. Indeed in this framing the State's job is to control other organizations. While a democratic state is different than a private organization in that it derives legitimacy from its voters, I'd be hard pressed to say that the state is sufficiently different from any other large organization. We can certainly see this now in the US in highly polarized times where the State bears opposition from half the country depending on who is in power. I think this "anti-monopoly" framing is a bit dangerous as it smuggles a political position into a much more complicated situation. There is an overall decline in the West of small association groups. More and more of these groups happen on Discord voice chats and are divorced from the real life constraints that offer a more "grounded" character. And I think this issue has been written about much less than the "anti-monopoly" one. Even if you fervently believe that the State needs to play an aggressive role in policing private organizations, I think it's more thought-provoking to think about ways to encourage more grassroots organizing.

yannyu 1y ago
Yes, but also we've eroded state and city rights in favor of federalism and standardization in the US as well. It's arguable that many steps in that direction have been for the better, but the consequence still remains that we've eroded the power of smaller organizations as a result. You're correct to note that this phenomenon crosses all aspects of life in the US, whether talking about churches, PTAs, book clubs, business, forums, fraternities, and politics. There is hardly a part of our lives anymore that isn't intruded on by national narratives anymore. There is a very fundamental question of why that is, why it's allowed, and who benefits from it.
- nradov 1y ago
  Cities (and other types of local governments) never really had any legal rights on their own. They have always been creatures of the states.
- deleted 1y ago
  [deleted]
- bigstrat2003 1y ago
  Federalism is having power divided, so we have gone away from federalism, not towards it. And I personally believe very strongly that it has been disastrous for our nation to do so.
  - dripdry45 1y ago
    I would argue. This is too brought a stroke. Federalism has been stripped away, yes, but if it had been done with some other rules in place and notifications so that smaller organizations can effectively pick up the baton, I would argue it could have worked better.
  - int_19h 1y ago
    In US context it's somewhat ambiguous because of the historical use of the term "Federalist" to denote supporters of the new Constitution (which was more centralized than the Articles of Confederation) and "Anti-Federalist" to denote the opposition.
- AnthonyMouse 1y ago
  > Yes, but also we've eroded state and city rights in favor of federalism and standardization in the US as well. It's arguable that many steps in that direction have been for the better, but the consequence still remains that we've eroded the power of smaller organizations as a result. Oh, that one is easy. The original US constitution gave the federal government the right to preempt state laws in matters within its enumerated powers, but placed strict limits on what those powers are, and created a check against federal overreach by creating the US Senate, which originally had its members elected by state legislatures who would thereby send Senators disinclined to let the federal government usurp their powers. Then populists amended the constitution to cause US Senators to be directly elected, and since US Supreme Court Justices are confirmed by the Senate, that in turn allowed them to replace the Justices with ones who would do things like read the inter-state commerce clause as covering non-commerce happening entirely within a single state. Having eliminated any meaningful constitutional restrictions on federal power, federal officials were then captured by large corporations to enact federal regulations that only those large corporations can comply with, and to erode any federal constraints on corporate mergers while still preempting the states from imposing them either. You can't give the central government the authority to do something and then expect them not to. If you don't want them to do something, you need something actively constraining them from doing it. Which was the US Senate until it wasn't.
  - Eisenstein 1y ago
    I am not criticizing your historical explanation or your comment, but I would like to make a footnote: Sometimes narratives like these which lay out a simple cause-and-effect between political decisions and modern outcomes can make people think that reverting the situation is a solution to modern outcomes, but that is rarely the case. Everything evolves, and the solution to modern problems is to find a solution that works within modern constraints.
    - AnthonyMouse 1y ago
      There is more than one possible structure to sustain an active constraint against power grabs, to be sure. But a Senate elected by the state governments was effective in doing it for as long as it was in place. There are other things that could work instead, but sometimes the old thing only stopped working because it stopped happening. And either way you would still need the something else to be used instead rather than continuing the status quo which is objectively not achieving the intended purpose.
pipo234 1y ago
> Yes but one can't just ignore the federal government itself, as if this wasn't an organization True, though (at least in principle) a democratic government is a very special organization because it (again, in principle) exists only because it's the people's will.
- Karrot_Kream 1y ago
  I think when we think about our social fabric and the empowerment that individuals feel, that this is more of a theoretical rather than practical argument. All of the disenfranchisement, the feeling that your individual participation doesn't matter, the inability to steer the goals of the organization around your individual opinions, these are all just as present in a large state. Sure a democratic government derives its legitimacy from the people's will but not from your will, and that is the role of the small community organization.
- int_19h 1y ago
  This is more propaganda than reality, though. Most democratic societies today have evolved out of very non-democratic ones gradually, in a process where the elite had given up some of its privileges to prevent losing all. One of the tricks involved in that process was the notion of a "popular mandate" - not that this isn't a thing, but genuine cases of it are far less common than politicians using the fact that more people voted for them as some kind of argument in support for some specific policy of theirs. In practice the difference between a democratic and a non-democratic society is more quantitative. In a non-democratic society, people still have a check on the government - they can revolt, and, being far more numerous than any security apparatus that can be maintained over a long time, the rulers therefore cannot simultaneously piss off too many people at the same time. So the bar is pretty high, but not entirely insurmountable. In a democratic society, the people also get an option of protest voting, which provides a safety valve that bleeds off a lot of effort that would have otherwise gone into potential violence, but at the price of making this kind of "voter revolt" less costly to participants and thus more likely. However, representative democracy is still pretty bad at accurately reflecting population preferences - it still takes a lot of abuse before protest voting becomes prevalent enough to alter election results. And then, of course, new mechanisms were developed to "manage" democracy - more efficient propaganda, mostly. Thus, in practice, governments can indeed be treated mostly similarly to other organizations in this regard.
roughly 1y ago
> While a democratic state is different than a private organization in that it derives legitimacy from its voters This is exactly the key core distinction. The purpose of the state is to be the most powerful organization in the room - to constrain other actors. It’s imperative, therefore, that it be democratic and representative. Notably, part of the instinct to break up other large organizations is to prevent them from assembling enough resources to have a supersized impact on the state - the problem with monopoly is that monopolies buy out their competition and neuter regulations, the problem with wealth disparity is the ultra wealthy are sufficiently powerful to move the state in the direction they want it to go. I agree with you generally regarding reducing the overall size of governing bodies and I agree with Terrence about the benefits of small organizations and the drawbacks of large specifically around the investment and perceived ownership of members of those organizations, but having a small state fundamentally requires having small organizations everywhere - and anti-monopoly, antitrust, and anti-wealth concentration - because for the state to be democratic and representative, it must be the most powerful organization in the area it covers, otherwise it’s just a tool for the more powerful to use.
- Karrot_Kream 1y ago
  I'm actually not advocating for a reduction in the size of government bodies and I'm a bit frustrated about it. I'm not advocating anything about the size of government bodies (though naturally I have my feelings.) I'm confused why people seem to be intuiting this. I'm in fact doubly frustrated because I feel that people seem to be injecting modern political points into something that I feel predates many of our modern problems. My point is: the social problems of disenfranchisement that come from large organizations are a property of their size. They may differ in that they're volunteer based, profit oriented, non-profit in a capitalist system, democratically organized, or several hundred or thousand more distinctions. But I'm going to feel just as disconnected from my national government as I will from the workings of Google as a small shareholder as I will from the NBA as someone that plays pick-up on a basketball court. The experience of going to a minor league baseball game is much more personal than going to a major MLB game. To me the important issue is: the US specifically and the Anglophone West more broadly is seeing a decrease in its small institutions. This decrease predates the modern internet and social media landscape (see Bowling Alone.) I have many, many questions around this. Why is this happening? What is its effect on society? How can we reverse this? Is this something we can reverse? It's an important issue to me because this trajectory is very different outside of the Anglophone West. Japan for example is not seeing the same decline in its small organizations as the US is, despite population reduction. If anything Japanese life is dominated much more by huge conglomerates than US life.
cs702 1y ago
I'd agree that too much concentration of power in any single organization, public or private, without any checks or balances, is a bad idea. As the saying goes, power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Historically, the executive branch of the US federal government has been kept more or less in check by (a) the legislative and judicial branches, and (b) voters.
winkeltripel 1y ago
I find both sides of this discourse have value: the federal loss of regulatory powers WRT corporations, and getting grassroots going again. I feel like my neighborhood streets are not places anymore, they're entirely liminal. Nothing happens in these spaces, no playing or working, except as strictly necessary.
monkeywithdarts 1y ago
I really like the direction this thread is going. I've wondered if Left and Right in the US only see half the problem: one side fears corporate/wealthy/majoritarian power, the other fears government power. If you allow two assumptions: (1) Power and money generally lead to more power and money (2) Government and corporate/wealthy power are a revolving door (regulatory capture, pay-to-play politics, etc). ... then someone who is skeptical of abuses of power should be wary of both government and corporate/wealthy power. But that seems like an untenable position — you can't check the one without muscling up the other. Is there a way to maintain a small, decentralized, local-oriented government that can still check the power of corporate/wealthy/majoritarian impulses and provide a social safety net?
- wizzwizz4 1y ago
  Don't the anarchists think they have ways to check both state and government power, while promoting human welfare? (I'm unfortunately unfamiliar with anarchist philosophy, so I don't know what their proposals are.)
  - monkeywithdarts 1y ago
    I also don't know much about anarchist philosophy; would love some insight here if anyone can speak to that. But if the US (same applies to other countries) became an anarchy today, then entities like Goldman Sachs and Constellis (formerly Blackwater) are going to fare much better than most. So a naive "burn it all down" anarchy doesn't seem an answer. UPDATE: I remembered Noam Chomsky is sometimes called an anarcho-syndicalist but never looked up what meant. Turns out that is exactly the kind of "anarchism" that answers my question. (New concept to me, so not sure in what sense this might be called anarchism. No central government?)
    - wizzwizz4 1y ago
      Real-life anarchists aren't proposing the naïve "burn it all down" anarchy. Apparently that's just a media thing. (Some claim it's authoritarian propaganda, but I suspect it's just writers going: "we need a bad guy who wants to destroy society, but they need a reason, and we've had too many religious extremists: let's make this one an anarchist!"… though maybe this is a false dichotomy? Someone's probably written a book about it.) Oh, hey, the first text I picked from the Anarchist Library answers the question in my previous comment! https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/alex-stefanescu-relationship-anarchy-dreaming-in-the-belly-of-the-whale https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/alex-stefanescu-rela... > A revolution would be necessary to topple a political regime. But, if your starting point is the rejection of authority, if you don’t need “permission”, you don’t need the revolution either. Anarchy starts not with a bang, but with a whimper — not with an announcement on public television that it is the time to dismantle hierarchies, but with our collective work to slowly build something on the lack of the hierarchies themselves. I'm not sure I understand the rest of this document, but this bit seems straightforward.
deleted 1y ago
[deleted]
AnthonyMouse 1y ago
> In this framing of small organizations kept small by the government the largest organization is the State. Indeed in this framing the State's job is to control other organizations. That isn't necessarily the case. Suppose there was only one federal law: It's illegal for any entity to have more than 15% market share in any market. If you do you have 30 days to figure out how to break yourself up so that isn't the case, e.g. by putting half your factories into a separate company and selling it off. You get to figure out how to do it, it's just that if you have more than 15% market share on two days more than 30 days apart in the same 5 year period, you get unconditionally fined into oblivion. You don't even need government prosecutors, just make it a strict liability offense that gives customers the right to sue for 100% of revenue. Companies can start planning to break themselves up ahead of time once they're getting close to the market share threshold if they feel like they want more time to do something about it. Then the government isn't really doing any kind of central planning, it's just a strict unconditional ban on market concentration and nothing else.
thomasahle 1y ago
> While a democratic state is different than a private organization in that it derives legitimacy from its voters, I'd be hard pressed to say that the state is sufficiently different from any other large organization. If the voting is not a big deal, maybe we should just get voting rights automatically to any private organization over a certain size
euroderf 1y ago
> think it's more thought-provoking to think about ways to encourage more grassroots organizing. You could start with a shorter standard work week.
onethought 1y ago
Government organisations try to produce public good. Private organisations try to produce profit. This is why “running a government like a business” is flawed, and treating all large organisations as the same, is also flawed.
bccdee 1y ago
> Yes but one can't just ignore the federal government itself, as if this wasn't an organization. The comment you're responding to specifically indicates private organizations. Public organizations are publicly accountable. > While a democratic state is different than a private organization in that it derives legitimacy from its voters Accountability, not legitimacy, is what's at stake here. If the local mining company is polluting the river, there's nothing you do anything about it. What, are you going to take hostile action & organize a global aluminum boycott? No. But if the local government is polluting the river, you can vote them out, at least in theory. Not every democracy is healthy, and failed democratic states are certainly little better than private organizations. But a healthy democracy is substantially different from any other institutional framework, and democratic governance is the only real alternative to private oligarchy.

yannyu 1y ago

Yes, but also we've eroded state and city rights in favor of federalism and standardization in the US as well. It's arguable that many steps in that direction have been for the better, but the consequence still remains that we've eroded the power of smaller organizations as a result. You're correct to note that this phenomenon crosses all aspects of life in the US, whether talking about churches, PTAs, book clubs, business, forums, fraternities, and politics. There is hardly a part of our lives anymore that isn't intruded on by national narratives anymore. There is a very fundamental question of why that is, why it's allowed, and who benefits from it.

nradov 1y ago
Cities (and other types of local governments) never really had any legal rights on their own. They have always been creatures of the states.
deleted 1y ago
[deleted]
bigstrat2003 1y ago
Federalism is having power divided, so we have gone away from federalism, not towards it. And I personally believe very strongly that it has been disastrous for our nation to do so.
- dripdry45 1y ago
  I would argue. This is too brought a stroke. Federalism has been stripped away, yes, but if it had been done with some other rules in place and notifications so that smaller organizations can effectively pick up the baton, I would argue it could have worked better.
- int_19h 1y ago
  In US context it's somewhat ambiguous because of the historical use of the term "Federalist" to denote supporters of the new Constitution (which was more centralized than the Articles of Confederation) and "Anti-Federalist" to denote the opposition.
AnthonyMouse 1y ago
> Yes, but also we've eroded state and city rights in favor of federalism and standardization in the US as well. It's arguable that many steps in that direction have been for the better, but the consequence still remains that we've eroded the power of smaller organizations as a result. Oh, that one is easy. The original US constitution gave the federal government the right to preempt state laws in matters within its enumerated powers, but placed strict limits on what those powers are, and created a check against federal overreach by creating the US Senate, which originally had its members elected by state legislatures who would thereby send Senators disinclined to let the federal government usurp their powers. Then populists amended the constitution to cause US Senators to be directly elected, and since US Supreme Court Justices are confirmed by the Senate, that in turn allowed them to replace the Justices with ones who would do things like read the inter-state commerce clause as covering non-commerce happening entirely within a single state. Having eliminated any meaningful constitutional restrictions on federal power, federal officials were then captured by large corporations to enact federal regulations that only those large corporations can comply with, and to erode any federal constraints on corporate mergers while still preempting the states from imposing them either. You can't give the central government the authority to do something and then expect them not to. If you don't want them to do something, you need something actively constraining them from doing it. Which was the US Senate until it wasn't.
- Eisenstein 1y ago
  I am not criticizing your historical explanation or your comment, but I would like to make a footnote: Sometimes narratives like these which lay out a simple cause-and-effect between political decisions and modern outcomes can make people think that reverting the situation is a solution to modern outcomes, but that is rarely the case. Everything evolves, and the solution to modern problems is to find a solution that works within modern constraints.
  - AnthonyMouse 1y ago
    There is more than one possible structure to sustain an active constraint against power grabs, to be sure. But a Senate elected by the state governments was effective in doing it for as long as it was in place. There are other things that could work instead, but sometimes the old thing only stopped working because it stopped happening. And either way you would still need the something else to be used instead rather than continuing the status quo which is objectively not achieving the intended purpose.

pipo234 1y ago

> Yes but one can't just ignore the federal government itself, as if this wasn't an organization True, though (at least in principle) a democratic government is a very special organization because it (again, in principle) exists only because it's the people's will.

Karrot_Kream 1y ago
I think when we think about our social fabric and the empowerment that individuals feel, that this is more of a theoretical rather than practical argument. All of the disenfranchisement, the feeling that your individual participation doesn't matter, the inability to steer the goals of the organization around your individual opinions, these are all just as present in a large state. Sure a democratic government derives its legitimacy from the people's will but not from your will, and that is the role of the small community organization.
int_19h 1y ago
This is more propaganda than reality, though. Most democratic societies today have evolved out of very non-democratic ones gradually, in a process where the elite had given up some of its privileges to prevent losing all. One of the tricks involved in that process was the notion of a "popular mandate" - not that this isn't a thing, but genuine cases of it are far less common than politicians using the fact that more people voted for them as some kind of argument in support for some specific policy of theirs. In practice the difference between a democratic and a non-democratic society is more quantitative. In a non-democratic society, people still have a check on the government - they can revolt, and, being far more numerous than any security apparatus that can be maintained over a long time, the rulers therefore cannot simultaneously piss off too many people at the same time. So the bar is pretty high, but not entirely insurmountable. In a democratic society, the people also get an option of protest voting, which provides a safety valve that bleeds off a lot of effort that would have otherwise gone into potential violence, but at the price of making this kind of "voter revolt" less costly to participants and thus more likely. However, representative democracy is still pretty bad at accurately reflecting population preferences - it still takes a lot of abuse before protest voting becomes prevalent enough to alter election results. And then, of course, new mechanisms were developed to "manage" democracy - more efficient propaganda, mostly. Thus, in practice, governments can indeed be treated mostly similarly to other organizations in this regard.

roughly 1y ago

> While a democratic state is different than a private organization in that it derives legitimacy from its voters This is exactly the key core distinction. The purpose of the state is to be the most powerful organization in the room - to constrain other actors. It’s imperative, therefore, that it be democratic and representative. Notably, part of the instinct to break up other large organizations is to prevent them from assembling enough resources to have a supersized impact on the state - the problem with monopoly is that monopolies buy out their competition and neuter regulations, the problem with wealth disparity is the ultra wealthy are sufficiently powerful to move the state in the direction they want it to go. I agree with you generally regarding reducing the overall size of governing bodies and I agree with Terrence about the benefits of small organizations and the drawbacks of large specifically around the investment and perceived ownership of members of those organizations, but having a small state fundamentally requires having small organizations everywhere - and anti-monopoly, antitrust, and anti-wealth concentration - because for the state to be democratic and representative, it must be the most powerful organization in the area it covers, otherwise it’s just a tool for the more powerful to use.

Karrot_Kream 1y ago
I'm actually not advocating for a reduction in the size of government bodies and I'm a bit frustrated about it. I'm not advocating anything about the size of government bodies (though naturally I have my feelings.) I'm confused why people seem to be intuiting this. I'm in fact doubly frustrated because I feel that people seem to be injecting modern political points into something that I feel predates many of our modern problems. My point is: the social problems of disenfranchisement that come from large organizations are a property of their size. They may differ in that they're volunteer based, profit oriented, non-profit in a capitalist system, democratically organized, or several hundred or thousand more distinctions. But I'm going to feel just as disconnected from my national government as I will from the workings of Google as a small shareholder as I will from the NBA as someone that plays pick-up on a basketball court. The experience of going to a minor league baseball game is much more personal than going to a major MLB game. To me the important issue is: the US specifically and the Anglophone West more broadly is seeing a decrease in its small institutions. This decrease predates the modern internet and social media landscape (see Bowling Alone.) I have many, many questions around this. Why is this happening? What is its effect on society? How can we reverse this? Is this something we can reverse? It's an important issue to me because this trajectory is very different outside of the Anglophone West. Japan for example is not seeing the same decline in its small organizations as the US is, despite population reduction. If anything Japanese life is dominated much more by huge conglomerates than US life.

cs702 1y ago

I'd agree that too much concentration of power in any single organization, public or private, without any checks or balances, is a bad idea. As the saying goes, power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Historically, the executive branch of the US federal government has been kept more or less in check by (a) the legislative and judicial branches, and (b) voters.

winkeltripel 1y ago

I find both sides of this discourse have value: the federal loss of regulatory powers WRT corporations, and getting grassroots going again. I feel like my neighborhood streets are not places anymore, they're entirely liminal. Nothing happens in these spaces, no playing or working, except as strictly necessary.

monkeywithdarts 1y ago

I really like the direction this thread is going. I've wondered if Left and Right in the US only see half the problem: one side fears corporate/wealthy/majoritarian power, the other fears government power. If you allow two assumptions: (1) Power and money generally lead to more power and money (2) Government and corporate/wealthy power are a revolving door (regulatory capture, pay-to-play politics, etc). ... then someone who is skeptical of abuses of power should be wary of both government and corporate/wealthy power. But that seems like an untenable position — you can't check the one without muscling up the other. Is there a way to maintain a small, decentralized, local-oriented government that can still check the power of corporate/wealthy/majoritarian impulses and provide a social safety net?

wizzwizz4 1y ago
Don't the anarchists think they have ways to check both state and government power, while promoting human welfare? (I'm unfortunately unfamiliar with anarchist philosophy, so I don't know what their proposals are.)
- monkeywithdarts 1y ago
  I also don't know much about anarchist philosophy; would love some insight here if anyone can speak to that. But if the US (same applies to other countries) became an anarchy today, then entities like Goldman Sachs and Constellis (formerly Blackwater) are going to fare much better than most. So a naive "burn it all down" anarchy doesn't seem an answer. UPDATE: I remembered Noam Chomsky is sometimes called an anarcho-syndicalist but never looked up what meant. Turns out that is exactly the kind of "anarchism" that answers my question. (New concept to me, so not sure in what sense this might be called anarchism. No central government?)
  - wizzwizz4 1y ago
    Real-life anarchists aren't proposing the naïve "burn it all down" anarchy. Apparently that's just a media thing. (Some claim it's authoritarian propaganda, but I suspect it's just writers going: "we need a bad guy who wants to destroy society, but they need a reason, and we've had too many religious extremists: let's make this one an anarchist!"… though maybe this is a false dichotomy? Someone's probably written a book about it.) Oh, hey, the first text I picked from the Anarchist Library answers the question in my previous comment! https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/alex-stefanescu-relationship-anarchy-dreaming-in-the-belly-of-the-whale https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/alex-stefanescu-rela... > A revolution would be necessary to topple a political regime. But, if your starting point is the rejection of authority, if you don’t need “permission”, you don’t need the revolution either. Anarchy starts not with a bang, but with a whimper — not with an announcement on public television that it is the time to dismantle hierarchies, but with our collective work to slowly build something on the lack of the hierarchies themselves. I'm not sure I understand the rest of this document, but this bit seems straightforward.

deleted 1y ago

[deleted]

AnthonyMouse 1y ago

> In this framing of small organizations kept small by the government the largest organization is the State. Indeed in this framing the State's job is to control other organizations. That isn't necessarily the case. Suppose there was only one federal law: It's illegal for any entity to have more than 15% market share in any market. If you do you have 30 days to figure out how to break yourself up so that isn't the case, e.g. by putting half your factories into a separate company and selling it off. You get to figure out how to do it, it's just that if you have more than 15% market share on two days more than 30 days apart in the same 5 year period, you get unconditionally fined into oblivion. You don't even need government prosecutors, just make it a strict liability offense that gives customers the right to sue for 100% of revenue. Companies can start planning to break themselves up ahead of time once they're getting close to the market share threshold if they feel like they want more time to do something about it. Then the government isn't really doing any kind of central planning, it's just a strict unconditional ban on market concentration and nothing else.

thomasahle 1y ago

> While a democratic state is different than a private organization in that it derives legitimacy from its voters, I'd be hard pressed to say that the state is sufficiently different from any other large organization. If the voting is not a big deal, maybe we should just get voting rights automatically to any private organization over a certain size

euroderf 1y ago

> think it's more thought-provoking to think about ways to encourage more grassroots organizing. You could start with a shorter standard work week.

onethought 1y ago

Government organisations try to produce public good. Private organisations try to produce profit. This is why “running a government like a business” is flawed, and treating all large organisations as the same, is also flawed.

bccdee 1y ago

> Yes but one can't just ignore the federal government itself, as if this wasn't an organization. The comment you're responding to specifically indicates private organizations. Public organizations are publicly accountable. > While a democratic state is different than a private organization in that it derives legitimacy from its voters Accountability, not legitimacy, is what's at stake here. If the local mining company is polluting the river, there's nothing you do anything about it. What, are you going to take hostile action & organize a global aluminum boycott? No. But if the local government is polluting the river, you can vote them out, at least in theory. Not every democracy is healthy, and failed democratic states are certainly little better than private organizations. But a healthy democracy is substantially different from any other institutional framework, and democratic governance is the only real alternative to private oligarchy.