Subnostr

It's not that public institutions can't betray they public interest. It's just that public institutions can be made *democratically* accountable, rather than *financially* accountable. When a company betrays you, you can only punish it by "voting with your wallet." In that system, the people with the fattest wallets get the most votes.

When public institutions fail you, you can vote with your *ballot*.

Cory Doctorow 2y ago

Admittedly, that doesn't always work, but one of the major predictors of whether it will work is how big and concentrated the private sector is. #RegulatoryCapture isn't automatic: it's what you get when companies are bigger than governments.

If you want small governments, in other words, you need small companies. Even if you think the only role for the state is in enforcing contracts, the state needs to be more powerful than the companies issuing those contracts.

Reply to this note

Please Login to reply.

Discussion

Cory Doctorow 2y ago

The bigger the companies are, the bigger the government has to be:

https://doctorow.medium.com/regulatory-capture-59b2013e2526

Companies *can* suborn the government to help them abuse the public, but whether public institutions can resist them is more a matter of how powerful those companies are than how fallible a public servant is. Our plutocratic, monopolized, unequal society is the worst of both worlds.