Comment Re:It's not the government (Score 1) 95
The billionaire oligarchs don't need much government to function, at least not in the sense most folks think of government. If the federal and state governments disappeared tomorrow, there would still be a demand for security services currently supplied (regardless of opinions of quality) by government law enforcement. The private entities that step in to fulfill that demand would still in turn have demand for these surveillance packages. The primary difference is in their relationship with citizens' constitutional rights and whether the remaining government would have the resources to enforce that new relationship. And that's just looking at the security angle; private corporations under our current status quo have shown a tremendous appetite for surveilling all of us as much as possible for their own purposes. Adtech doesn't disappear with a 99% reduction in government. Subsidies and regulatory capture disappear, but the natural monopolization factors only increase with that governmental reduction.
When you boil capitalism or any other economic system down, it's about which economic factors are allowed or enabled to convert to political power. Removing explicit political capital while ignoring the barely-indirect political capital available to (under our system) the grotesquely wealthy only reduces the number of people splitting that pie. It's all well and good to say that remaining 1% will be charged with keeping the economic elites in check, but that comes via regulation and enforcement, both of which require enough political power to both remain independent of the economically powerful and overpower it when necessary. It's no accident the loudest voices in the shrink-the-government movement place regulatory agencies and independent ombudsmen at the top of their hit lists.