Neither an individual voter, not an individual consumer operating in a large market is likely to cause a company to change.
But the individual consumer can just go to the competitor. An individual voter can vote for another candidate, but that vote is unlikely to make any change. Consumers and other actors in a market have more incentive to understand their actions than voters, because their actions are much more likely to have consequences, and these consequences are much more likely to personally affect the consumer, than the vote is to personally affect the voter. Also when you do elect a new president or congressman, or governor or mayor, typically the government as a whole doesn't change nearly as much as partisans on both sides would have you believe.
A government that is equal or greater in power to the corporations
I want the government to be greater in power than the corporations, if for no other reason that to prevent the corporations from effectively becoming the government, or from having some protected status where the government makes no moves against them whatever violence, harm, and/or crime they commit.
But worrying about governments becoming more powerful than the government in the US, is almost like worrying about the moon becoming hotter than the sun. The federal government, and in many ways even the state governments are massively more powerful than corporations.
The issue is not how powerful the federal government is, its very powerful, and far more powerful than any other individual or organization in the US. The issue is what should it do with all that power. If it routinely uses it to intervene against the free market decisions of its people, than it reduces both freedom and wealth. |
