Youtube hearted comments of Florida Man (@floridaman318).
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@dominikkonarski4681 Amazon is not a part of the central state, but it is a state. Amazon is accountable to those who participate in it through ownership of shares. Ultimately the central state has final authority/power over any corporation or business entity, even fully private ones, but doesn't mean the central state will use that power or that the people that compose the society at large will tolerate the full use of that power. This is essentially what free enterprise is; it's specifically limiting the power of the central state to interfere in private activities or the activities of those mini states that are commonly owned, aka public corporations.
Look at Amazon. It's function is basically to move goods around and get them to the people that want them as quickly and efficiently as possible. Now, the government could, in theory, do this by simply expanding the existing mail service that's run by the central state. Instead, in free enterprise systems, the central state in a way could be said to "delegate" activities to a "mini state" aka a corporation.
Or take the English colonization of North America. Many of the colonies were actually handled by joint stock companies. The British Crown would draw up a contract saying it wanted to send X number of colonists to establish X number of colonies. Instead of financing it with the money the central state itself controlled, it put the risk onto private individuals wealthy enough to pool their resources to do it themselves. These companies were publicly owned. Many different people and even guilds (which are cartels) owned shares that financed these colonization efforts and those shares could be sold off or traded before the joint stock company became defunct after having fulfilled its purpose.
The central state grants legitimacy to corporations as well as providing the foundations for contract enforcement and the protection of private property.
A company owned directly by the state is much less accountable to the public than a publicly traded corporation is. Whoever is in charge of the government at the time can do whatever they want, and even in states where elections are held for government offices, the people that will run the state owned enterprise themselves are usually appointed, not elected. They have all the authority, and the people as a whole can't do anything about it. Worse, people who do not want anything to do with that state owned company will be forced to finance it through taxes or even be forced to buy its services or goods. State owned anything is only accountable to whoever holds office and has legitimate authority at any given time, not to individuals or to the public as a whole.
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