Time to start de-Appling

The mistake is in regarding different organizations as fundamentally different creatures when they're not.

The theory of markets is that anyone can compete. That keeps people from abusing customers because they would go to someone else. Except that then powerful interests capture the system to have rules inhibiting rather than facilitating competition, and the market consolidates and that stops working.

The theory of the government is that everyone gets a vote. That keeps people from abusing citizens because they would vote the bums out. Except that then powerful interests capture the system to have rules that create a two party system so people have fewer choices, centralize rule-making power in the areas that were supposed to have local control so people can't vote with their feet and then that stops working.

It's not fundamentally different problems, it's the same one. Consolidation of power, also known as centralization. People find ways to corrupt the system to take away your alternatives.

One of the ways they've found is to put half the people on Team Government and the other half on Team Markets and get them to fight each other when they should both instead be working together to fight the autocrats and create systems more resistant to them.

It really is getting to the point where the crypto gang is right „not your keys not your bitcoin“…except for encryption keys.

DIY is pretty hard though even for the reasonably skilled. Even if you go full nextcloud or whatever - that’s not exactly risk free either

Governments should represent the needs and desires of humans. Corporations are algorithms designed to make their value go up - if not restricted by governments, they will crab-bucket eachother by any means necessary, including slavery. See: factory towns.

Therefore, corporations should have exactly 0 influence in governments, and billionaires should have the same influence as any citizen: one vote, and whatever influence they can peddle from a soapbox in a park.

This is obviously impossible because billionaires can buy TV spots. This is why governments under capitalism almost inevitably become extensions of corporations, which is what the OP comment means. In a system where capital = power, then, accumulation of capital means accumulation of power. You accumulate power, you use it to allow you to accumulate more power, you use it to allow you to accumulate more power... and so on.

I'm skeptical there's any solution to this within capitalism - I don't think highly socialized capitalism will work long term since the profit generating algorithms (corporations) will play within the rules to accumulate just enough of an edge to wedge their foot into government enough to get a smidge of influence, which they will leverage to weaken restrictions on corporations, which will allow them to get more influence, which will lead to them weakening restrictions further, and so on.

So long as capital can be converted into any power at all, I think the system will inevitably trend towards late stage capitalism / corpotocracy / plutocracy.

Do you believe billionaires should have more say in government policy than you do? Why? Why wouldn't a billionaire use more say to help themselves even more at your expense? They clearly love hoarding wealth and power, so, would it not be fair to say they'd like to do more of that?

Yeah there was this great cartoon many years back where a guy is on his computer and the FBI is looking over his shoulder at his screen. A character named 'Facebook' is pushing him aside and says "Let me show you how to do it". When you look at the cartoon for a minute or so you see in the shadow in the back of the room this robot labeled 'Google' and he's just quietly observing.

The point is that avoiding Android is also easy. I never had an Android device and have no interest.

Once again: The only problem is avoiding both platforms.