One of the large bureaucracies will be there as long as you're alive, and there is no need to switch between health provider paperwork or worry it will disappear when you change jobs or become unemployed.

The government isn't an "at will" arrangement from which you can be sacked?

One word: accountability. Your employer is not accountable to you, you’re at best a cost center. Your government is accountable to you via process known as democracy.

Democracy clearly, empirically does not imply that the government is accountable to you.

No, it, literally and directly does, that's the definition of it. Your representatives are accountable to you via vote. If not that, then what do you think democracy even means?

I think democracy generally means that the population elects representatives who establish policy. That’s certainly true. But in what sense is the government actually accountable to an individual in any meaningful sense? If you are wronged by a democratic government do you honestly believe that you have a remotely decent chance of holding the government accountable? And how about for individuals who are among the least fortunate in society?

I mean, this tends to be covered in high school civics classes.

The government is bound by a constitution. Violations of your constitutional rights are remediated on an individual basis through the judicial branch. You may individually hold the entire government responsible for violating your constitutional rights. This happens regularly.

The government is also accountable to you in aggregate through the voting process. Yes you don't get to vote on each individual issue, as you're not an expert on literally everything and have other things to do, so you delegate. Less delegation happens in America than in basically every other established democracy. You don't like what your representative did, vote for someone else, or run for office.

The least fortunate are the disproportionate beneficiaries of constitutional rights. Yes it's not perfect, and direct democracy tends to lead to squelching the rights of minority groups, but that's why America has a constitution plus 3 branches of government with various checks and balances.

Your employer has literally none of the above, which is why it has no business in your healthcare. If you get fired from your job and lose access to healthcare you don't get to run for CEO, you get to fend for yourself. If you're wrongly denied cover under a socialized medical system you can sue anyone and everyone involved and also vote them out, while still having access to the private markets to fend for yourself just as you would have if you left the company you worked at.

[Citation needed]

And I'm asking you not just to show that a bunch of bad stuff has happened, but that in its totality at least one country most people would consider a democracy (a good but imperfect shortcut for this is if Freedom House rates them as such) has essentially no accountability.

Well, if you think that showing many many examples of democratic governments wronging individuals and then not being held accountable for those wrongs (including many examples of long-standing systematic wrongs, not just one-off extreme cases) is NOT sufficient evidence for the claim “democratic governments are not accountable to you,” then I don’t know what evidence would satisfy you.

Let me guess: you're thinking of civil foreiture and qualified immunity in the US?

I don't dispute the US is non ideal, I do dispute that as a whole the government is unaccountable. For example, what do you think would happen if Gavin Newsome (governor of California) had someone killed for disrespecting him? That's the kind of thing really unaccountable governments get away with.

So I'm asking you to not only show that bad things have happened and not been adequately punished, but that the government is fundamentally as unaccountable as a reference unaccountable government, like the U.S.S.R under Stalin or Britain under Oliver Cromwell.

Yes, that's an extreme requirement. But you made an extreme claim when you said not just that democracies are insufficiently accountable to be completely just but that they are unaccountable.

I didn’t have specific examples in mind, and my argument is not about what type of government is ideal or even whether it’s possible to do better. My claim was simply that democratic governments are not accountable to individuals in any ordinary meaningful sense, and I stand by that.

Of course many governmental officials would likely be held accountable for extreme misconduct if they weren’t able to cover up the evidence. And of course certain governments are more accountable than others.

Whats your definition of not accountable? Making an absolute and not relative definition sounds hard.

Just the everyday definition that people use in normal conversation, not subtle insinuation about political philosophy or anything like that. I’m accountable to my employer for showing up and doing solid work. A student is accountable to their instructor. I’m accountable to the government for my income taxes (and many other laws). It just means that there is a fairly clear set of expectations and a pretty reliable and straightforward process that disincentivizes violation of those expectations in practice (not just in theory).

Why does needing to be reelected not make a politician accountable?

You can't be fired from America because you get sick.

Because one isn't in an adversarial relationship with you?

You may be in the fortunate position that your government is not in an adversarial relationship with you. There are many people with that good fortune. But there are also many people who are not in that position.

I have some bad news for you - the administrative state is very much in an adversarial relationship with you if you do anything other than breathe.

Because I want to switch jobs without switching doctors loads of paper work, and health is the sort of fickle thing where if I get really sick they will always be able to price-gouge me so I rather remove the profit motive.

I've had several jobs, several insurance plans and a couple on the individual market.

Never had to switch doctors and the paperwork amounted to the receptionist asking if my insurance was current and handing them my card.