Here's the difference between government running our lives versus big business and why Libertarians are mostly pro market and if we had to choose a jailer, we would let companies rule our lives over politicians.
When it was discovered that Sony was spying on our activities via their rootkit software that came on their music CDs and installed itself on your computer if you tried playing the CD on the computer, they were very apologetic about it, immediately removed the spy software from their products and offered to exchange the infected discs with clean ones. Despite this sympathetic response, it is a reputation strike they are still suffering from.
When it was discovered that the U.S. government was spying on American citizens via their phone taps, their reply was, (paraphrasing) 'Well we need to do this. What are you going to do about it?'
See the difference?
If Sony has a bad reputation, they can try to fire their CEO or president or whomever but the bad rep sticks with the company name. It's not good enough to let the leader go in a company. It might help a little, but the bad stigma sticks with the name because the business was responsible for the action. What do you think of when I say Exxon, Firestone, Phillip Morris (changed their name for this very reason), Kathy Lee Gifford, Haliburton, Worldcom. Imagine if Enron were still open for business?
So if the American people are this harsh on companies for messing around with us, why aren't we very critical about our government? Why do we think we can replace our leader, our ceo, our president with a new one and somehow the evil will go away? People - our government is the beast, not the leader. This beast has a nature and regardless of who's leading it, it has the wrong intentions and it will execute those intentions with no regard to the individual.
It's not enough to just overthrow the leader. We need to hold the whole "company" responsible, make it want our attention, our money, our support like a lapdog that it should be; that it used to be. The American government doesn't have to answer to us because we don't hold anything over it. It already takes our money without our permission. It takes our money before we even see it! And if it wants something else; property, kids, job, freedom, life, it will take that too and has taken those things from others.
Is this how it should be? Who is serving whom here?
