While freedom of association is fine on a personal level and maybe for small businesses, big corporation that are monopolies or oligopolies shouldn't have this freedom. They should be regulated and forced to serve everyone otherwise they have the power to exclude some people completely from such services with no alternative. Due to their power, their decisions affect people as if they are government decisions, yet we don't have a say on it like we do with the government so it's even worse than government censorship yet some people justify it because they are "private companies" as if that means something.

▲ protocolture a day ago | parent | next [-]

>big corporation that are monopolies or oligopolies

Monopolies and Duopolies suck even with regulation. If you want a state owned payment processor, pursue that goal. But you will end up in the same place, with reactionary leaders using the service to ban things that the voters disagree with, which sometimes will be porn in all likelihood.

>"private companies" as if that means something.

A private company can be competed with. You can legally pay these websites just not via those 2 most popular options. If something is actually censored, the state will use violence to prevent you accessing it. Theres a video kicking around the internet of NSW cops snatching a VHS tape from the hands of people trying to run a small banned film festival. Thats definitionally censorship. I know you want to take the anger people have at censorship, and transfer it away from the government to people you dont like, but its simply not censorship.

> Due to their power, their decisions affect people as if they are government decisions

The inertia of people who wont change their purchasing decisions to avoid those to options is the issue. Not their choice not to process payments.

▲ eastbound 2 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

What philosophical argument would you make for or against excommunication in the Middle Age?

	▲	goda90 2 days ago \| parent \| next [-]
		There's a good reason religious tolerance was an outcome of the Enlightenment.
	▲	pixl97 2 days ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		That religion and government have no place with each other.

▲ phyzix5761 2 days ago | parent | prev [-]

Why do we have this idea that big corporations are these giant scary entities disconnected from real people? Majority shareholders for Visa are the retirement accounts of regular people and retail investors. We want the public to dictate the actions of what other regular people do with their money without taking on any financial risk for those policies.

▲ ben_w 2 days ago | parent | next [-]

Allow me to explain by analogy:

  Why do we have this idea that non-democratic centrally-planned governments are these giant scary entities disconnected from real people? Majority stakeholders for state insurance, state healthcare, state pensions, state police, etc. are regular people. People calling for "democracy" want the public collectively to dictate the actions of what other regular people do with their money etc., but when you ask people in democracies if the electorate should take the *blame* when they pick a stupid government, they always say no and look at you appalled as if you'd suggest eating doggie biscuits.

To put it another way, why should society collectively make our pensions 1% better when the trade-off that entire categories of legal work, that our democracies have decided should remain legal, are made impossible to perform by the choices of a handful of private businesses that are big enough to set rules without being accountable to the democracies they operate within?

▲ Eddy_Viscosity2 2 days ago | parent | prev [-]

> Why do we have this idea that big corporations are these giant scary entities disconnected from real people?

Because they are. The corporate structure as well as the internal and external systems in our political/legal/economic systems are designed specifically to make corporations work as economic engines where risk, responsibility, and liability are distributed and diluted to the point it they pretty much evaporate. This means that corporations can do things like commit full on crimes, without any real person going to jail. Why? Because they are disconnected from real people by design.

	▲	RankingMember 2 days ago \| parent [-]
		I think this is a core reason behind the amount of public elation seen when the United Healthcare CEO was killed: people were happy to see an example of the piercing of a corporate structure carefully constructed to shield leadership from personal responsibility for its decisions.