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?

The raids were done by the government.

Are you familiar with rico laws? Where a cop can notice you have $10,000 in your possession, and just confiscate it, never charging you with a crime?

This is getting silly.

It is? I suggest reading the newspaper.

It would probably be better for you if you read a little less news.

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.

>Reading less news does not shield you from the real world.

The news isn't the real world.

I think this comment is focusing on a specific country rather than the world at large.

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?!

Here's some data: https://www.visualcapitalist.com/state-of-democracy-around-t...

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.