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A comment on TikTok Agreed to Buy More Than $800M in Cloud Services from Google. Parent comment

Re:TikTok Agreed to Buy More Than $800M in Cloud Services fr... by tehjoker on Tuesday July 14, 2020 @10:02PM (#23840394)
The US government and corporations are basically one and the same. The USG will extend deals that favor corporations. China is an "enemy" to the extent that it will harm the profitability and flexibility of US corporations or the military empire that supports US market dominance.

To think that a country half a world away would factor into calculations in any other way is a misunderstanding of great power politics. There is no military threat to anything a normal person would consider domestic interests.

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Re:TikTok Agreed to Buy More Than $800M in Cloud Services fr... by rpdillon on Tuesday July 14, 2020 @10:12PM (#23840440)
> The US government and corporations are basically one and the same.

Not really. Corporations and the government fight about all kinds of stuff, like encryption, and handing over private information about their users. Companies try to buy influence through lobbying, sure, but that's a far cry from 'basically one and the same'.

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Re:TikTok Agreed to Buy More Than $800M in Cloud Services fr... by tehjoker on Tuesday July 14, 2020 @10:29PM (#23840543)
This is a mere tactical disagreement. The government and the security state are extensively intertwined to an extent that the place where one begins and the other ends is hard to distangle given the revolving door of employees and defense contracts.

The extent to which the buisness community as a whole has the ear of the government vs the people is evident given the extremely large disagreements between public opinion polls and implemented policy. If corporations want something, they don't always get it, but if the people want something and corps disagree the people almost never get it.

Study:

Gilens and Page. "Testing Theories of American Politics: Elites, Interest Groups, and Average Citizens". American Political Science Association. 2014. pgs. 564-581.

https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/perspectives-on-poli...

BBC Article about it: "Study: US is an oligarchy, not a democracy" https://www.bbc.com/news/blogs-echochambers-27074746

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