In the long term, but in the short term unscrupulous corporations far outnumber unscrupulous governments and they act much, much faster to adapt to new technology.
Absolutely. But the rookiest cop isn't currently trying to track my whereabouts, abuse my privacy, stick a bunch of AI down my throat and in general isn't trying to make my wallet any thinner. Bill Gates and the more modern versions of Bill Gates are doing that and more.
Bill gates (when he was actually in control of the company) can, and did, sic the governmental apparatus on people. IE, large enough corporations, that are entwined enough in your life, are empowered to use exactly the government "rookie cops" you are afraid of.
Or do you forget the raids against music and movie pirates?
Reading less news does not shield you from the real world. I thought I can survive in the private world respecting the law and limiting my government interactions.
That worked until my kids started school and my parents' health deteriorated. I was in for quite a shock. Crappy infrastructure was the least of the problems! Luckily there are private alternatives but they are crippled by law and they can't cover everything.
The world at large is even worse. There are about 200 countries on the planet. How many of them have functioning democracies? I am betting around 10% or less?!
Perhaps using the world at large was not the best way to word what I was saying. I was implying the parent post was talking about a specific country that the OP lives in.
I suspect the issue here is that most of HN folks live in western countries with mostly working democracies. For the most part we haven’t experienced how bad governments can get.
Whether or not western style democracies are immune to going really bad, remains to be seen. Some days I’m optimistic, some days not so much.
I've lived in dictatorships and non-functional democracies, in spite of that corporations have done me far more harm than those states ever did. I do realize they have that power and I do realize it gets abused and regularly so. But the fact is that people get abused by corporations all the time and by their governments less frequently if ever. But when they are abused the consequences are likely much worse.
> I've lived in dictatorships and non-functional democracies
Same here. Corporations at worst got a bunch of (unearned) money off of me. My "democratic" government can (and tried to) put me in jail, disallow me to make my living from my field of choice, controls my (and my children's) education and is trying to kill me every day with an incredibly bad (government-run, of course) infrastructure and healthcare.
The communist dictatorship I grew up in killed a bunch of my relatives and tried hard to grind my family (and me) into the ground. I was lucky with the fall of the evil ideology.
There are multiple examples of companies destroying someones life. Nintendo has gotten people thrown in jail for modding things that they purchased and owned, certain corrupt CEOs have sued people into bankruptcy oblivion etc.
All of these are possible because they've created the government you live under.
Bullshit. Bill Gates can easily afford to make me unemployable, which destroys my life a lot more effectively than locking me up for a few days. Worst case I can move to a different country and get away from the cop, but that won't make me safe from Gates.
- He could drag up and publicise something you wrote at some point and make you one of the "today's twitter main character" people. (Last I heard Justine Sacco was still unemployed). If he did this by paying a competent PR firm, you'd never know it wasn't just something that happened by coincidence
- He could get linkedin to quietly drop or deprioritise your job applications
- He could get outlook to quietly drop your emails, or mark them as spam, or show an unprofessional profile picture. You'd never know why you weren't being hired.
- He could put something bad on the "credit report" (different from your actual credit report, and no practical way to see it for yourself) that Experian etc. send to potential employers. Again you'd just silently not get hired and never know why
- Given the silicon valley wage-fixing scandal happened and the punishment was minimal, there's probably an old-school blacklist he could put you on if he was feeling retro
> Who has he done this to?
We don't know. Unlike governments, private entities have no accountability (as long as they have money to burn); investigative journalists aren't going after them, FOIA doesn't exist for them...
Is kinda nothing set against government wage fixing laws.
> old-school blacklist
I'm sure there are informal blacklists. But I've been in tech all my life, and nobody ever handed me a blacklist and said "don't hire these people". There are a zillion companies in the US, any such pervasive blacklist will inevitably become common knowledge.
