Nice try, but you know I won't sit still for that kind of paraphrase. My basic argument is that "the free market" is an idealistic abstraction, not a real-world possibility. Markets depend on rules, and viably enforcable rules depend on authority (i.e. 'legitimate' power). There is no such thing as "government infringement into the free market," merely variations in how governments exercises their powers to establish a market in the first place.
Excellent choice of word, you even put it in italics. You would combine both the establishment, and successive interventions to manipulate that establishment, as one and the same. Establishing rule of law is a basic necessity, rewriting it is intervention. Intervention should be exercised with even greater care than is given to the establishment. The primary, overriding rule being do no harm. The secondary consideration should be to do so without influence towards any involved party. Law must be without favor or it is not just.
Our government practices the exact opposite when doing favors for corporations, and it is only distantly related to the action of establishing rule of law in a just manner. My paraphrasing is a valid criticism of your refusal to separate the two.
As a distantly related aside, why is there not a single sane individual in the court system? Just in the last week we should have enough bribery convictions to wipe out at least two thirds of the congress, along with our dear leader, and yet it's accepted as legitimate activity...
Have you really never read even the first half of Leviathan? Hobbes really seems like your sort of guy in many respects, being a miserable sod with some verbal flair and a tendency to theorize. Plus there's all that fun pre-dictionary-era spelling when he goes on about the "warre of all against all" and whatnot.
Natural law and such is amusing, but largely irrelevant to me. I prefer practical applications, Adam Smith is my kind of reading, but a distant precursor to the Constitution is less useful than the writings of those directly involved. I'm a little lost as to why you'd think Hobbes though, you keep calling me an anarchist. Out of the prominent natural law philosophers, he should be the least in line with me from what I know.
No, you're obviously right. Socialism is a dirty word. But take away the abstraction and ask whether Americans want, say, the federal government to guarantee health care for all Americans, and the response is somewhat different.
It's less that they like socialism when separated from the word, and more that they're just too dumb to think their way out of a wet paper bag.
Ask them whether they're entitled to someone elses time and property. If they say yes, strip them of theirs and see if they complain. You'll have a 100% rejection rate, including all the self professed communists out there living in staffed mansions. Perhaps when the mind numbingly stupid idiots grasp that health care isn't free, and the only way to get it without paying for it is to steal from someone else, they'll be less inclined.
Public hospitals are required by law to give health care regardless of the ability to pay anyway, the mind numbingly stupid idiots could at least grasp that they're already being stolen from to pay for someone elses bills in the first place.
