I'm not aware of any entity that turns a trillion dollar profit actually. Oh and the US military also has a 20t dollar defense spending *hole*, so a trillion in budget is a drop in the bucket mate.

Billion is the "unicorn" point

A) yes, but knowledge comes with a price, and high quality teachers come with a steep one.
B) Oh, ok. I don't live in the USA, but here in Italy there is a kind of opposite attitude towards rights, basically the constitution says that: the people are capable of everything except x, y and z.
About non-reciprocation: Yes, but the fact is that nothing guarantees that it will be feasible, as the corporations are more powerful than the workers.
C) because with no regulations, there is nobody actually defending your rights.
D MySpace was infinitesimal smaller back then than modern day Facebook.
F) why couldn't they?
Even today, with all of the regulations they still are vastly more powerful than many countries.
F2) that is because the US have the most bloated military budget in the world.
Italy doesn't come close to the USA's, but it still has some of the world's best aircraft.

A) only because the public sector has most of the market share. Make them all compete privately, watch the prices fit the needs of all markets.
B) its a hard way of conceptualising it. America came at it from declaring what its government was not allowed to do, (which originally was basically almost anything)
C) you only have no regulations whatsoever with a state, not without it. Markets are regulated by the consumer, other markets, and competition natively, and can be actively regulated by other companies. Examples abound again in the USA with private testing firms like UL and ieee setting standards and watermarks.

D) same principle applies. There are already upstart companies, and serious issues with the policies in play. Fb acts as if it can exist and own all its content without the users creating its content. The younger generations already dislike it because their parents are there.

F) because the shareholders can get sued without the state, so they won't risk their investments in that company if that company starts literally fucking over customers.

F2) is it actually italy's aircraft, or the eu's? EU army ont the books mate, mind your back before Brussels stabs you in it.

I don't see the economic arguments for waging a war. I see the econ arguments for how to use a war to make money by selling to the people waging war, but making war is a pure cost exercise.

Your argument is "big companies will just wage war". On an armed populace. Who knows their territory better than you. And might be bloody paranoid too and have it mined.

Just in case that thief of a neighbour tries to scrum apples again.

The "McDonald's death squads" meme is a trope, but a funny one.

For the EU to thrive, we need a true leader. Deb8 me!
https://prabook.com/web/show-photo.jpg?id=1502539

A) good point, but education still comes at a pretty high price.
C) that's some pretty huge mental gymnastics right there.
How in the world are there less regulations with a state than without?
D) guess who owns messanger and whatsapp...
F) yes, but the absolute vast majority of the revenue that megacorps make does not derive from investors.
F2) yes, yes they are. The EU does not have a standing army. Although all of it's countries are military allies.
They will not wage war. They will simply use their absolute military superiority to force the populace into serving them.
You assume that the populace is armed and trained.

I also do find it somewhat amusing you seem to thing that, without a state, we will have a state @mikimof2 It's a non sequitur phrased as such, and that's why I question that inevitability. The state is an anachronistic anathema to me, and it is on a trajectory to become irrelevant due to being unable to adapt with sufficient speed.

A) and wages have risen by factors of God knows what over time. Also, some education is made freely available. Check out Royal institution on YouTube, fascinating science channel.

@Lupinate it's the fact that most of the things that you say will regulate companies, like judges and courts physically cannot exist without some kind of governing body.
About divulgation channels, good. Point, but they are not enough to ensure the desired level of instruction for the populace.

C) think about it. States being the de facto monopoly regulator are deferred to for the rules. If they don't make them *then the companies have no rules to follow*. If the state isn't there, the consumers make the rules, as they did with eBay. Everyone thought eBay would flop because seller a would provide buyer b with a crap product, which would be paid for with a bounced check.

D) and? Guess who lost the core people behind WhatsApp? Guess who has proper competing companies who found niches from their and Google's errors?

@mikimof2 there are such things as private courts and Polycentric law. Look up the brehon system.

Why do you need to tell society what to do? We're mostly all adults here in body at least.

Surely we can work that out without some guy in a throne ordering you about?

Is the worry that bad people exist, Ergo you need people to stop the bad people making life worse?

Ah... So you treat the state like a corporation, interesting point of view.
However the economy is regulated by the consumers even now, and the state provides further bounds.
D) the wast majority of the population still uses WhatsApp.

Bingo. All states are companies, they just work by different rules.

About the last argument, basically yes

@Lupinate no they aren't. They work in a completely different way and do cometely different things.

@mikimof2 they really are, but you just don't see it yet. That's fine, but the markets don't treat them as if they are anything but a form of regional monopoly.

As to the "bad people exist ergo state must too" argument there are two relevant quotes I'll start with. The first is plato: *Good people don't need laws to tell them to act responsibly, and bad people will find a way around laws*.

The second I know well but can never remember the source. I think his name was LeFareve : *if people are inherently good, you don't need a state. If people are inherently ambivalent or bad, you dare not have one*.

Your argument, in order to work with consistency, implies that government, a group of people, must prevent bad people from acting badly. But what stops bad people from running the system itself? You've created a focal point of control by centralising the power in the state. Power corrupts, and absolute power tends to corrupt absolutely, so why would creating a means to game all other power sources reduce the risks caused by bad people.

I'm sorry, but it's getting really late in the evening down here, and I would like to go to sleep.
It was a good discussion, and you made some really good points. Bye.

Np. Happy to pick it up again later just ping me.

One last thing for you to consider for tomorrow though. i have to disagree thst customers are actively involved with the regulating of anything much beyond online marketplaces, travel locations, and restaurants. They've deferred that responsibility and the associated ownership of it to the state. That is what needs to change first and foremost in education for me. That and how we consider security too.

We need to learn that, with ownership comes responsibility, and vice versa. Ownership & responsibility is something we should want to have for ourselves, not shun in favour of someone else taking that mantle up for you. And if we can't take that responsibility on, then we should have a proper choice on who we give it to, not a glorified popularity contest where a bandwagon fallacy picks the victor.

We also need to learn that security is everyone's job if you want it done right. You have to be willing to defend yourself, and anyone else who is willing to defend you. Get those two concepts instilled culturally, add with what we have as tech, and watch that culture run rings around the world as the most efficient solution.

All I want is full responsibility for myself, and whomever I choose to accept some responsibility for. I do not want to have to accept responsibility for the actions of any government, which logically I must do if I consider myself a citizen of it. I do not consent to own that level of catastrophic social and fiscal debt to anyone, but it is forced upon me by everyone.

@Lupinate In a nutshell, we need to break Facebook. I had the uneasy feeling, didn't know how we would go about breaking them as a population.

It should be a world investigation but , they slipped away from answering questions Infront of the , cultural committee in the UK. So, it's not like countries haven't tried to do their part on saying -: "it's gotten too big!"

It's just that they don't know which nation he's accountable in. The mergers and our social security was at stake the moment, that merger commenced. Then, to boot, Instagram. The people don't get a say on these things. Its of my opinion , they should , and international transactions need to be transparent. Sometimes , I don't think they need to happen. It should be the government's decision to help companies.

I just think then you can take the banks out the picture. As I prefer this banks to crash and businesses to keep people in work. However , the last world wide crash , they decided to bail the banks. Then , bitcoin was the only way people would ever trust the government and the banks again.

Its a false pretence. As your federal reserve needs topping up. So does everyone else's .

@Lupinate What do you mean by "states" in "states are companies"? How do you define a "state"?

@ETBrooD states, to me, are regionalised monopoly providers of a number of services, but at minimum they are a monopoly for the usage of permissible force & judgement.

@TEABAG!!! fb is accountable to us law first, and any other legal system second. Its also I believe the subject of an antitrust investigation there, as is Google. Fb is on borrowed time unless they change.

People have a lot more power over the market than they think, but unfortunately they rarely use it to its full extent.

@Lupinate In that definition, what does it say about voluntarism? Are you aware that "company" is voluntary?

He means the process for people to take a class action lawsuit against Facebook.

@ETBrooD that defintion of a state has no bearing on voluntaryism save being in violation of it. Voluntaryism claims the only permissible actions are voluntary. Tell me, do you voluntarily support every action your government takes on your behalf? If they do something you don't like or give you duff products, can you demand your money back? If you don't use a service, can you avoid paying for it?

You are beholden to the choices you make. If you choose to give up responsibility to another, and they fuck up, it's still on you too for giving them trust. With a state, however, key questions arise on where one's own responsibility ends and the state's begins. To me, If you can choose to support the system itself by participating in it via the vote, you are also responsible when that system starts failing you and others around you. After all, what right do you have to force someone else to act on your behalf? If no one person has that right inherently, how does the state magic it into existence?

i have no problem with companies *so long as they are voluntary*, but I will always have problems with monopoly providers claiming they are the only option in an area. Me being *born somewhere* has no bearing on whether or not I consent to buy from a provider, yet the state presumes it does just by the virtue of its conceptual existence.

@Lupinate Sorry to answer one of your questions instead of ETBrooD....

'''what right do you have to force someone else to act on your behalf? If no one person has that right inherently, how does the state magic it into existence?'''

The problem that I see, and ETBrood still does not understand about these mergers are:

1. When do you stop them being bigger than the government?

2. When you take responsiblity and accountability into the relms of business and it is bigger than the country and government, how do the people win?

Companies by definition are voluntary. The state is not. That's the point, and it's why state =/= company. There are some similarities, as there often are with many things, but they're not the same.
To answer your question, no I can't tell the government to give me my money back if they do something with it that wasn't advertised. They just keep the money and never pay up, regardless of how failed their service is.