Quis custodiet ipsos custodes? You acknowledge that elected politicians today are often corrupted or ensnared by special interests, but you seem to believe that if we just pass the right campaign finance laws, that will change. I doubt it.

Tragically, all politicians and government officials are drawn from the exact same gene pool as corporate CEOs, lobbyists, etc. They are equally subject to financial corruption, and also the corruptions of power-hunger, flattery, sexual favors, and all the other things that can thwart a pure devotion to the public good. Like corporate CEOs, they come in smart and stupid, honorable and venal, reflective and self-deluding, wise and foolish, experienced and naive, etc., and often a mixture of all the above.

The only sure thing about government officials is that they have the exclusive legal authority to use guns in pursuit of their political goals.

You and I come from that same gene pool, too. You earn your living off of selling your theories to the public, and could suffer the loss of your audience and livelihood (not to mention vitriolic attacks on your character) if you changed your mind about your current ideas. Many psychological studies show that people are very resistant to and skeptical of ideas that conflict with their existing views. Add to that the risk of loss of income and approval, and the effect could be just corrupting as any campaign contribution. (And, of course, I could be in the employ of some evil corporation, or just inordinately fond of personal freedom. I don’t claim to be bias-free.)

No, firefighters and librarians are not typically fear-mongerers, but claiming our “house is on fire”? Yes, that qualifies.

Fear-mongering is referring to “continent-sized islands of plastic debris” when what you’re really talking about is roughly 11 pounds of plastic particles per square kilometer of ocean area, or less than 2/10,000 (two ten-thousandths) of an ounce of plastic per square meter. Some island.

Fear-mongering is talking about “synthetic estrogens in 92% of Americans’ bodies” when it is actually in their urine that it has been found, meaning it was being expelled from those bodies, and there is no evidence that a) it is being built up in our bodies, or b) would do anything harmful even if it were.

What you call facts are what I call factoids. To someone who is science-challenged, doesn’t know how to research, is suggestible, has little resistance to the paranoid style and little historical understanding of the general course of human progress, these factoids can sound scary, while remaining essentially meaningless.

What the fear-mongers claim today is that our house is such a mess we should tear it down ASAP, and rebuild it according to plans developed by architects who have never successfully built anything before, using methods that have never been tested before or if tested, have resulted in buildings that collapsed, killing their occupants.

You promise that “we can create a more robust economy, prevent a crisis, and have a better quality of life” if we do what you want. That’s the kind of promise that has been made by every utopian who ever took charge of a country, and a lot of them even believed it. You’re so sure of your promise you call it a “no-brainer” but history tells us our brains should very definitely engage when someone makes promises about unprovable future benefits in exchange for enormous current sacrifices.

By the way, phasing out coal plants at the expense of people freezing and starving to death isn’t “protecting the public interest” unless you believe that a democracy means the majority gets to vote for the minority to die, because that would be useful to the majority. If enough people decided it was in the public interest for you to stop publishing books, would you still say that was not a “moral or individual rights” issue?

A corporation is incapable of good or evil, any more than a knife, a book, or a computer is. Like any other tool or device, it’s all about how it is used by people.

I disagree with you that “not all government decisions are coercive,” if by decisions you mean laws. A law (at least one that includes enforcement powers and penalties, as most do) is always coercive. In fact, that’s pretty much the definition of a law.

Just out of curiousity, Dave, in your brave new world, what do you propose “we” do with people like me?

I never even mentioned the word socialism in my comment, nor was my intent to “put down socialism” nor, for that matter, do I consider myself a conservative or an anarchist. (If you must have a label for me, you can call me a classical liberal.)

I’m sure one can be a socialist without being a transformational utopian a la Mao, Pol Pot and Castro – all vicious tyrants. And one can be a transformational utopian without being a vicious tyrant. It depends entirely on the means one is willing to use to accomplish the desired change.

I was trying to elicit from Dave a clear statement of what means he was willing to see used in the service of his transformational goals. He declined to answer that question or even acknowledge it. I could draw any of several different inferences from that evasion, but what’s the point? It’s not like I have to vote for or against him in an election.

On the Opera:
No, I was not at all happy that public funds were used by Seattle Opera that way. I love opera, but do not feel justified in coercing others to pay for my musical tastes. However, I do not vote in either Seattle or King County, so could do little about it.

Between the roughly $75 million in private donations it received (including my $1,500), the private donations it would have received absent the availability of public funding (I know I would have kicked in more if there had been no public money coming), a modest self-retiring bond measure, and private-sector style economies in the project, the project could and should have been built without coerced contributions from taxpayers..

By private sector economies, consider that the REMODEL of the 4-story 295,000 sq. ft. Opera House cost $127 million (the basic structure was retained), while the total CONSTRUCTION of the 76-story 1.56 million sq. ft. Columbia Tower building a few blocks away cost less than $340 million after adjusting for inflation. And the latter is considerably more luxurious on the inside and vastly more complicated in its engineering. Aside from my preference for voluntary cooperation, my frugal instincts are continually appalled at the extravagance in government operations.

Look, both you and Dave have me confused with your stereotype of a conservative to the point that you aren’t really thinking about what I’m saying. Or perhaps I’m being very unclear.

Both individual autonomy and social cooperation are necessary to the happiness and survival of human beings, but either of them carried to excess destroys the other. Voluntary social cooperation is much less destructive of individual autonomy than coerced cooperation, i.e., laws, and so I favor the former, where possible, and careful restraint on the latter.

Almost everybody can agree that it is OK to use force to prevent, say, a rape or an armed robbery. But is it OK to use force to compel support of Wagnerian opera? Is that really such an open-and-shut case that anyone who says no is espousing anarchy?

“If Mao, Pol Pot and Castro…”

Please, this is a knee jerk argument from every supposed “conservative” in the country when they try to put down socialism. None of those guys were socialists. Of course, I’m not for socialism. I’m just pointing out argument flaws.

“I attended Seattle Opera’s Ring Cycle. For me, this was a truly life-altering experience of art and human achievement. It was also consumption – about $1,000 worth not counting parking and – Good Grief! – $10 for a glass of mediocre champagne.”

Hmmmm, but it’s ok to take public money for your opera house? I guess socialism is good?

Public dollars raised: $44 million

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/news/entertainment/mccaw/story_finances22.html

It should also be noted the evil laws you hate “forced” upon you already exist. These laws just enforce different behaviors than what Dave is proposing here (note that he actually doesn’t mention any significant changes to law in the post). Corporations couldn’t exist without laws forcing people to acknowledge an imaginary entities rights. The majority of the investment banks wouldn’t exist unless they had changed from investment banks to regular banks in the last year…etc.

“i’m not against ALL community action; if you were seizing the land to build a levee to prevent the whole town from flooding, for instance, force may be justified.”

So, it’s ok to seize land to build a levee for a town that was dumb enough to build on a flood plain?

It’s all the same. Choices must be made by society all the time. Laws are instituted no matter what your philosophy is unless the person’s philosophy is anarchy. You can argue against the laws because you don’t believe in them, but you can’t argue that no laws currently exist to force our society to exist in it’s current form.