Something I've been chewing on is legitimacy by process vs. outcome (means vs. end). We have far too long said if the means are done fairly (Musk bought Twitter legitimately, Zuck founded and unilaterally controls Facebook mostly legally), then we have to accept the outcome, even if that outcome is detrimental to the wider society. We just have to stop accepting that. Corporate law, money, etc. are all made up and are sold to the wider population as net boons to society. Why can't we dissolve and/or nationalize companies when they cease to be beneficial or have distinct negatives?
Copyright, patents, LLCs, publicly-traded companies, etc., all nominally exist to benefit society at large. They're not supposed to be this game of "I called shotgun so suck it!"
This is so naive in the extreme. Who decides the ‘societal good?’ Some centralized moralizing force, that will no doubt be in disagreement with large swathes of the rest of the nation. Thinking that FB is some kind of powerful national threat that must be managed by the government seems absurd.
Many of the alternatives to "a majority vote decides what's good or bad" are even worse. Lots of ink spilled on the downsides of kings or on anarchy vs some sort of democratic system.
What the poster is proposing about cracking down on large powerful companies isn't even particularly troublesome Constitutionally in the US; but even then, as with any other sort of regulations, Constitutional restrictions on what the legitimate government can and can't do can be taken too far, or can get outdated.
Hacker News is one of the most communist leaning forums online, while at the same time strongly supportive of US government policy. How those two go together you'll have to ask somebody else. Any thread you read will have "regulation and government nationalization" as the answer. It's the modern day equivalent of "God will fix it"
HN is one of the most pro-capitalist forums ever. Literally created by venture capitalists to promote capitalism and further capitalists' aims. I visit this site because sometimes Reddit is too much of a progressive echo-chamber.
> Since I have you, what do you consider communism?
To start with, nationalizing mass media and the press.
> Literally created by venture capitalists to promote capitalism and further capitalists' aims.
Capitalism and communism go hand in hand. If you don't believe me, read the communistic manifesto. Marx writes again and again that they need capitalism first before they can introduce communism. The ideologies are not each other's opposite.
Copyright, patents, LLCs, publicly-traded companies, etc., all nominally exist to benefit society at large. They're not supposed to be this game of "I called shotgun so suck it!"