First of all, thanks to whoever is posting these transcripts. I almost definitely would never have watched the video!
One is the conceptual argument that states are the only legitimate political authorities that we have in this world, so they’re the only ones who should be doing this governance thing. …
Now all of those things are true.
I think this is considerably more controversial than you assume. While it has been a few years since I studied political philosophy, my understanding is that philosophers have largely given up on the classical problem of political authority—justifying why governments a unique right to coerce people, and why people have an obligation to obey specifically because a government said so. All the attempted justifications are ultimately rather unsatisfying. It seems much more plausible that governments are justified if/when they pass good laws that protect people’s rights and improve welfare—i.e. the morality of laws justifies the government, rather than the government justifying the morality of the laws. But this is obviously rather contingent, and doesn’t suggest that states are in any way the only legitimate source of political authority.
The authority of a company, for example, plausibly comes from something like their market power and the influence on public opinion. And you can argue about how legitimate that authority is
Here I think you are understanding the potential legitimacy of the influence of a private company. Their justification comes not from market power, but from people freely choosing to buy their products, and the expertise they demonstrate in effectively meeting this demand. To give a mundane example, a major shipping company would have justification in providing major input into international port standardization rules by virtue of their expertise in shipping; expertise which had been implicitly endorsed by everyone who chose to hire them for shipping services.
First of all, thanks to whoever is posting these transcripts. I almost definitely would never have watched the video!
I think this is considerably more controversial than you assume. While it has been a few years since I studied political philosophy, my understanding is that philosophers have largely given up on the classical problem of political authority—justifying why governments a unique right to coerce people, and why people have an obligation to obey specifically because a government said so. All the attempted justifications are ultimately rather unsatisfying. It seems much more plausible that governments are justified if/when they pass good laws that protect people’s rights and improve welfare—i.e. the morality of laws justifies the government, rather than the government justifying the morality of the laws. But this is obviously rather contingent, and doesn’t suggest that states are in any way the only legitimate source of political authority.
For more discussion of this, I recommend Michael Huemer’s excellent The Problem of Political Authority. There’s also a Standford Encyclopedia of Philosophy article.
Here I think you are understanding the potential legitimacy of the influence of a private company. Their justification comes not from market power, but from people freely choosing to buy their products, and the expertise they demonstrate in effectively meeting this demand. To give a mundane example, a major shipping company would have justification in providing major input into international port standardization rules by virtue of their expertise in shipping; expertise which had been implicitly endorsed by everyone who chose to hire them for shipping services.