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Comment by twoodfin | Hacker News Reader

Planes stopped being directed where Congressmen wanted them to fly.

Congressmen who are elected to represent the will of the people and serve in their interests. I'll take that over the airlines who serve only themselves and whose only motivation is to take as much money from the public as possible.

Right, because famously, politicians are totally selfless and never do anything self-serving.

When are aren't doing their job to our liking, we have the ability to remove them and replace them. Try doing that with the CEO of an airline.

An individual has about as much power in either case. How many congress people have been removed at your bidding?

An individual has more power in the airline case: you can fly a different airline much more easily than you can move to a location with a different representative.

Not at all, one individual won’t do anything against a business that large. And what if 1000s more people fly the airline and it becomes so wealthy it buys up all the other airlines? Corporations are authoritarian, tyrannical institutions where only the wealthy have any ability to make change. The US government may be immensely corrupt, owned by the rich, etc but at least it’s a democracy.

> And what if 1000s more people fly the airline and it becomes so wealthy it buys up all the other airlines?

Then there is gonna be a gold rush of airline startups leading to amazing innovation, offers and low prices for consumers. Unless your government intervenes and regulates the market into a monopoly of incumbents, of course.

> Corporations are authoritarian, tyrannical institutions

Corporations are at the mercy of their consumers and investors. They get toppled every day. Remember Nokia? Motorola? IBM? Zoom? Heck even Intel lately?

> the will of the people

is not at all the same thing as having a choice.

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