Government has the power of the state to force their wills on people. Please tell me a scenario where an adtech company will gain the ability to take away my rights and property the way the government can?
The government has a “monopoly on the legal use of force”.
Look no further than Florida to see what an overzealous government can do when you disagree with them or the police that raided a newspaper office because they reported on police corruption.
I’m much more worried about when the police are behind me because “I don’t look like I belong” in my own neighborhood than the Google car mapping my street.
Companies can use anti-competitive behavior to curtail your rights in all sorts of ways. Look at America's storied history with company towns. Free speech doesn't get you very far when being blacklisted from the company store means you starve, or your company scrip that you've been being paid in is no longer accepted to keep you housed, or they pay the Pinkertons to beat you senseless for using the word "Union". The reason we don't have that anymore (well, except for that last one Amazon) is government regulation.
The government at least has the obligation to appear as if it's beholden to your will and rights. Corporations have no such qualms.
So please tell me a realistic scenario where Google goes from an adtech company to one that can take away my freedoms and shoot me with impunity?
Also please tell me a scenario where Amazon takes over all retail?
If you haven’t been paying attention, the justice system and political parties gerrymandering hasn’t even been trying to act like they are behaving fairly.
The governor of Florida has actively been punishing companies both big and small that have been speaking out against him.
There are numerous examples of private corporations or non-governmental actors engaging in violence, with or without state support or sanction. There are the 100 million souls lost, respectively, to the British East India Company's occupation and administration (as a private entity, with military powers) of India, of the transatlantic slave trade by numerous private commercial operators, and of the genocide against the indigenous populations of the Americas, again much by privately-chartered corporations (as the original British colonies were). There are extant mercenary forces such as Constellis (formerly Academi, formerly Xe, formerly Blackwater) in the US, or the Wagner Group presently transacting genocide in Ukraine. There are oil companies who have initiated coups, paramilitary actions, and assassinations throughout the world. There is the Pinkerton Agency, still extant, and with a storied role in violence against labour and civil rights movements. There are railroads, with their own (private) police forces, which are in fact registered as law enforcement despite being nongovernmental.
The truth is that there is no clean distinction between State and Private use of force, lethal or otherwise. What there is in government is, one hopes, legitimacy and accountability to the citizenry rather than to creditors and investors.
The government has a “monopoly on the legal use of force”.
Look no further than Florida to see what an overzealous government can do when you disagree with them or the police that raided a newspaper office because they reported on police corruption.
I’m much more worried about when the police are behind me because “I don’t look like I belong” in my own neighborhood than the Google car mapping my street.