Hey, Thomas Jefferson also said, "The natural progress of things is for liberty to yield and government to gain ground."
Like many of Jefferson's quotes, this one and yours are both out of context, with yours being in reference to a wealthy elite dodging taxes illegally. That context is a bit different than wanting the government breaking up a social media company because you disagree with it's methods of managing free speech.
Government is put in opposition to liberty not because it's called government, but because it holds a lot of power, and any concentration of power limits liberty, whether it's in the hands of government or corporations. At least the government is accountable (in principle) to the electorate and not to a board of directors.
Re:Designing the Facebook Company Brand
by sspyder on Tuesday November 05, 2019 @02:56AM
(#21450499)
The founding fathers were also very opposed to a two party system.
Re:Designing the Facebook Company Brand
by analogtsar on Monday November 04, 2019 @04:34PM
(#21446745)
You h types
Of course, healthy competition & pricing is a core issue here (duh). But power, in all its forms, is also a key issue. The founding fathers were very concerned about a corporation gaining too much power and interfering with democracy [1].
In addition, Facebook is constantly engaged in anti-competitive and unacceptable behavior, including buying multiple competitors (anti-competitive) and lying about its product (the recent inflated-ad-views scandal, which was literally a scam). The antitrust case against fb is complicated by the nature of the business, but there are plenty of very good reasons for the gov to investigate fb for antitrust violations [2].
Matt Stoller has done some good writing on monopoly, so has Binyamin Appelbaum. Both of them have books worth reading.
[1]: In 1816, Thomas Jefferson, principal author of the Declaration of Independence, said he hoped to "crush in its birth the aristocracy of our monied corporations, which dare already to challenge our government to a trial of strength and bid defiance to the laws of our country." (https://www.stamfordadvocate.com/local/article/Angela-Carell...)
[2]: https://scholarship.law.berkeley.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?art...