---

Power, Privacy, and Government
I'm with you when you want to hold the telecos' feet to the fire for playing along with the Bush administration's nefarious eavesdropping ambitions. Really, I am.

But here's the thing: At last count, there were more than 3 million people working full time for the federal government. Every one of them has a telephone sitting on his desk. And an Internet connection. Many also have work-issued cell phones. I'm no math whiz, but by my back-of-the-envelope calculations, that amounts to hundreds of millions of dollars in federal contracts.

You can inveigh all you like against corporate power. But corporations by themselves can't force us to do anything we don't want to do. Only the government has the power to do that--or corporations with power on loan from the government.

The federal government is enormous. It has a massive and growing influence over what happens in the private sector. Witness (as I've pointed out many times before) the fact that the richest counties in America today aren't near the country's entrepreneurial epicenters, but in the D.C. suburbs, home to most of the country's federal employees and government contractors. Now as lefties, you may find all of this to be sweet potato pie. But know that a federal government of today's size and scope also gives whoever is controlling it enormous leverage to bend the private sector to his liking. That's great when your party is holding the reins. Not so good when it isn't....

...Shouldn't that tell you something about just how frighteningly large and influential the federal government has become? The telecos concluded it's better for their collective bottom lines to risk pissing off all of their other customers than to risk pissing off this one.

If you want to blame "corporate greed" for the telecos selling out their customers, go right ahead. But recognize the cause behind that greed for what it is: massive market distortion wrought by an enormous and growing federal government. Don't blame it on the "free market," or "privatization." The free market had nothing to do with it....