Companies dont have our interests in mind any more than the government, but we can vote the government out.
Companies are easier to not do business with. Governments only get voted out if enough people agreed to vote with you. Also, only one of these groups generally has the ability to use violence against you, and if the other group has that ability, it is only because the first allowed it to be delegated.
Some companies, however at a certain point, it becomes extremely difficult to not doing business with specific companies.
For example: describe how you would stop doing business with Equifax.
Also, how would you stop doing business with Google. You cannot simply stop using the search engine or Gmail. You would have to block (or stop using) websites using Google Analytics, stop using sites/services that use Google's Cloud, etc.
I can't speak to every area of their business, but as a credit consumer: You freeze your Equifax credit report and only work with lenders who will accept pulling a report from a different agency.
There are companies with which it's not only difficult not to do business with, but impossible.
Even a person that is not using the internet at all will still have some of their information sucked into the gaping maws of Facebook and Google through their social circle.
But despite how bad all of this is, it is still an easier thing to accomplish than deciding to avoid your government. In the end, if I'm willing to isolate myself enough, Google won't have my information. But even if I go totally off the grid, the government will still make demands of my and if I refuse them they will seek me out, using agents who are armed and who have far more leniency to use violence to make me comply.
I'm not trying to say that one can easily avoid large corporations. In some cases it would require significant changes. But for as hard as it is, it is still easier than trying to avoid the government who wants to do something with/to you that you don't want done.
Monopolies are hard to avoid doing business, and some form of proportional representation reduces the number of people who have to agree with you before you change the makeup of a government.
Try telling people who have only Comcast to not get off the Internet, or people with only one nearby grocery store to boycott it.
Both require strenuous oversight, and without a govt capable and willing to constrain that oversight, you wind up wint an economy like the 1890s robber barons, which needed to be broken up by Teddy Roosevelt
Regardless of the personal cost to not doing business with them, they won't send an armed force after you that will kidnap you. But with the government, if you want to grow a plant on your own property that they don't agree with, they will. That makes a massive difference.
I see it differently. Everytime I reach for my wallet I'm voting.
On the other hand, the government "market" has been cornered by two parties. We get to vote for their henchmen & henchwomen who (self) serve their parties - parties that are bought and paid for by forces we can't see nor control - more than the citizens who elected them.
With rare exception, my wallet has more power than your vote. Anyone who tells you otherwise needs a good history book.
Yes, the one you're thinking of included. Before she stepped on any bus, Rosa Parks volunteered to be the spark that the NAACP needed to accomplish their long-term goal of putting Civil Rights in the headlines. The leaflets were already printed and the picket signs were already made. The Montgomery Bus Company capitulated days after the boycott was announced, but the NAACP refused to end it until Parks' case had gone all the way to the Supreme Court and civil rights was dominating the headlines. It was a bit part of a grand political opera, and the Montgomery Bus Company was never the true target, just the excuse. The boycott wasn't effective, the campaign was effective. The wallet was just a stepping stone to the big prize: the vote.
Nothing can stop an anti-consumer corporation with monopolistic power except government intervention. Roosevelt didn't bust trusts by politely recommending alternatives.
- Perhaps. But how often does the gov play a role in creating that monopoly? And sustaining it while the monopoly deepens it grip?
- Perhaps. But with rare exception (i.e., your example?) my wallet is still more powerful than your vote.
- Perhaps. But given the Snowden revelations, in the case of Google, whose side do think the government? Even if by chance the gov does something (to Google) its not going to address gov's key role in these situations.
What do you think is more likely to happen? Companies losing market share because people stop spending money with them? Or government being voted out with meaningful change coming in to replace it?
I just dont believe arguments made from the Koch brother's books about how companies are preferable are made in good faith, and saying them like they are matter of fact is not intellectually sound.
Both are giant entities that dont give a single crap about individuals.
