I think this is spot on. It’s interesting how rhetoric about “liberty” seems to practically serve oligarchy. I suppose an alternative to bans and regulations is to genuinely pursue the elimination of deprivation, orient our collective capacities towards our collective well-being, and then let people do what they will. Anything short of that seems to be a rather false liberty (and a rather false democracy, while we’re at it).
I think we treat the maximization of liberty (in my mind a primary function of government/society, with reasonable limits) as the same goal for both corporations and people, which ultimately is a side effect of treating corporations like people. But these are entirely oppositional goals: Maximizing personal liberty of actual people requires significant binding restrictions on corporations.
In the US we have this overly simplistic narrative of pro-liberty GOP versus anti-liberty DNC which I think badly needs to be separated into pro _personal_ liberty positions (healthcare, including abortion, quality public education), versus anti _corporate_ liberty (environmental regulation, financial transparency, etc).
> as the same goal for both corporations and people, which ultimately is a side effect of treating corporations like people
This is a huge problem the US needs a deal with - corporations are artificial beings that aren’t sentient and, therefore, cannot participate in politics. We might need to litigate that with an LLM to make language broad enough to set this precedent and further protect the rights of actual sentient beings.
> It’s interesting how rhetoric about “liberty” seems to practically serve oligarchy.
It's the typical pattern.
If you don't have rules attenuating the runaway feedback loop - some people get a little more initially (talent, money, luck, whatever), then it spirals into A LOT more, which gives them influence over everybody else, which is oligarchy, and that eventually turns into a dictatorship.
The only way to avoid it is to have strong institutions and regulations stopping the feedback loop.
We knew it thousands of years ago, nothing changed. We seem to have to learn this lesson independently in every newly-created domain. It's time for tech sector.
> I suppose an alternative to bans and regulations is to genuinely pursue the elimination of deprivation
How do you propose to do it without bans and regulations?
> It’s interesting how rhetoric about “liberty” seems to practically serve oligarchy.
This has been a feature of this kind of language for ages. Remember the arguments used to defang Obamacare, which was an already defanged version of some very basic public healthcare system?
There’s different kinds of libertarians, and there’s certainly one kind that is only interested in the freedom to be an asshole.
Note that this kind of “libertarian” also tends to be fine with attacks on women’s reproductive freedom for example, or fine with small local forms of tyranny like the abusive family or community.
> It’s interesting how rhetoric about “liberty” seems to practically serve oligarchy.
Because the USA confuses liberty and libertarianism.
You can tell this is almost universally the case because even libertarians don't think they need to vote for libertarians to reach libertarian goals. They will get them either way.
