Politics & Power Quote by John Perry Barlow

Barlow’s line is libertarian disappointment sharpened into a backhanded defense of the state. He doesn’t praise government; he downgrades it to a single, begrudgingly tolerated tool: the counterweight to monopoly. The phrasing “the one thing” sets a trapdoor under every other civic ambition - welfare, regulation, infrastructure, rights enforcement - and then “not great at that either” makes sure no one mistakes this for faith. What’s left is the narrowest kind of legitimacy: government as the least-bad bouncer in a club where private power otherwise runs the door.

The subtext is that monopoly is not just an economic problem but a sovereignty problem. When a company can set terms, control access, and punish dissent, it starts acting like a government without elections. Barlow, a writer closely associated with early cyber-libertarianism and the Electronic Frontier Foundation, lived through the era when “the market” was supposed to keep networks open and innovation democratic. This quote reads like a correction issued after watching consolidation eat those ideals: telecom giants, platform gatekeepers, intellectual property maximalism, then the modern reality of a handful of firms shaping speech, commerce, and attention.

“Fairly reliable” is doing the cynical work here. It’s not a ringing endorsement; it’s an admission that concentrated private power is more predictably self-serving than public power, even when public power is clumsy and compromised. Barlow’s intent is to reframe anti-government instincts: if you care about freedom, you can’t ignore who actually has coercive leverage. In late-capitalist America, that’s often the monopolist - until government decides to remember it has teeth.