samdoesnothing parent
The government and massive corporations being in bed with each other is nothing new. Different breed same species. Except tech execs think they're a lot smarter than they are.
Pretty much all execs throughout time have thought that.
It's nothing new, as it is essentially the only logical outcome of capitalism. It's not an aberration, it's an intended feature. Capital is power, and law and government is how that power is expressed and enacted over those without capital.
It's actually the logical outcome of any system with a consolidated monopoly on political power (the government). Blaming capitalism is ridiculous because alternative systems suffer from the exact same issue.
Sort of. Capitalism cannot exist without a monopoly of coercive state power backing it. So it makes sense to criticize it when that's what's actually happening. Other systems can work without coercive state power, are in fact intended to, and result in more freedom for the members of the resulting society, so I agree with your take on government generally.
Free trade and private property rights can exist without a monopoly on political power, but as with stuff like this I don't really know what's meant by "capitalism".
That being said I don't think at the present moment it's possible to have a society without some form of government, so then the question becomes "what do we do about it", and I think the answer is to limit the scope of political intervention and power as much as possible.