AOC on Why Government Is Better than Free Markets: ‘The Government Is Us’

EXCERPT:

OCASIO-CORTEZ: "So I think there's two aspects to this. One is the idea that we can — the underlying idea that, you know, billionaires can save us, like, they can charity themselves or ourselves into a just society. I think that's an underlying tenet which I just believe is false. But also this idea that public money inherently belongs in the hands of the government, and I disagree with that notion as well. I think that there are certain systems that we share and we can establish these public systems for the sake of scale and for the sake of efficiency. Health care, education, etc. But there are also — there's also this piece that doesn't get discussed, which is basically that they're arguing against people having actual democratic power in our economy, which is a very different, different argument. It's to say we can't have different kinds of business models, business must be exploitative, we can't have worker cooperatives or worker-owned businesses, all of things that can exist in a 'free market society' but just doesn't follow the rules of concentration of money and power. So I think that that's ultimately the answer because — first of all, it's like we have to update, what is it, Mark Twain that says, you know, everyone's just a temporarily embarrassed millionaire, now everyone's a temporary embarrassed billionaire. And this idea that the — you know, that we can't — and also, in a democracy, the government is us. Can we just remember that?”