> Corporations are no less evil than governments. If anything, they may be more evil, as they are motivated solely by profit and have no particular reason to care about the population at large.

Corporations are accountable. They are accountable as entities, and as individuals (owners, managers, employees). If they do fatal decisions, the corporation may go bankrupt. If people act immoral, they may get fired. If they cheat, they may be caught and go to jail.

Corporations can also choose to act ethically - and, according to a recent Freakonomics podcast, actually benefit from that by attracting better employees :)

Meanwhile in the real world, many corporations get away with doing all these things, abusing labour, regulatory capture and the people running them get rich as Croesus doing it.

Yes. And often with support from the Government.

In USA, corruption is regulated by law... Politics is all about getting financial support and basically selling laws and policies to the highest bidder.

Meanwhile in the real world, many governments get away with doing all these things, and much worse, and more frequently, and they have armies and police.

> Corporations are accountable.

To shareholders, who are motivated by profit. Accountability is worse than useless if it holds you to account for the wrong things.

Governments are accountable to their populations, at least in democracies.

Corporations absolutely rely on the public at large. More so than governments. You can choose to stop doing business with a corporation, and can stop giving them money. Can’t say the same about government. Yet you claim governments care more than corporations about “the population at large”?

Perhaps GP is an anarchist and doesn't want governments or corporations.

No, I think both governments and corporations can be a good thing - if they behave ethically and the people all the way from the top to the ones carrying out policies - are accountable for their actions.

Example: If a border-patrol officer chose to follow orders and take an infant from her mother - because it's policy, he should be liable to criminal prosecution for breaking domestic and international law. Like any soldier in the field is. If a soldier choose to follow an illegal order and commit crimes against humanity, he risk prosecution. Police officers, migration officers, judges, prosecutors - they don't. And because of that, they do a lot of harm. Again, not all of the time, and not to everyone. But too often, and too much.

> I think both governments and corporations can be a good thing

> Governments will always do evil.

> they are by nature evil.

Please either make up your mind or use less misleading language in the future. You made a strong, controversial assertion, which then turned out to be a pretty mundane belief upon challenge.

Well, I think the wrong people will search power. Always. That means that governments, by nature, will be evil. They will always to some degree do evil.

However, if the people abusing their powers (by evil intent, neglect or pure stupidity) are held accountable, and removed, may be the governments can become something I can live with, even mostly good.

Today, I think the balance is very much that the governments are on the dark side. Some more than others (yes China - I'm looking at you), but noone that I know well inspires any good feelings. I would not work for any of them. Even paying taxes feels deeply immoral.

> Well, I think the wrong people will search power. Always. That means that governments, by nature, will be evil. They will always to some degree do evil.

Sure, but this is trivially true. Individuals will always to some degree do evil. Corporations will always to some degree do evil. Religions will always to some degree do evil. There are no possible groupings of humans that will not to some degree do evil.

> Today, I think the balance is very much that the governments are on the dark side.

An interesting observation, considering the proportion of (functional) democracies is higher than it has ever been. At what point in history were governments not on the "dark side"?

Unless there is crony-capitalism going on companies have to find voluntary buyers of their goods and services to generate revenue. Governments use force to generate revenue. It's that coercive behavior that elevates governments to the potential for more evil than a corporation.