If a person vandalizes my car, the government is justified in stepping in. By the same token, if a person is polluting my water, the government has a right to step in.

But, if my employer doesn’t pay me what I want, that is my problem to work out. If I don’t like my benefits, again, that’s my problem. My employer is not violating my rights or harming me without consent. I can get another job. The fact that I work there is my consent.

If a business is defrauding people, the government can step in because that is a non-consensual depravation of their property.

Am I making clear my distinction here?

What other ways do businesses hurt people? I hate to take things on a case by case basis, but I can if I am not making my point.

The bottom line is that the government can haul you away and take your home, your kids, your freedom, or anything else it wants to if we let it. Businesses cannot do that to us. How are they more dangerous, then?

Vermonter, or Gandhi if you prefer , you seem to have a pragmatic approach to things, which I totally respect, but many of the people who you align yourself with politically want a much more regulated system than you seem to favor based on your comments.

I think there are definitely three different basic categories at work here: free-market, socialized economy (or at lest highly regulated), and the sort of middle view, which is somewhat free market with government regulation to prevent corporations from having too much power.

The problem from my side of the fence is that once you put the basic regulation in that the seemingly “middle ground” group wants, then it is only a matter of time before you end up with too much regulation.

I’m very much enjoying this dialogue that has been unfolding over the past few months…

But, I think saying that Scudder asking you who would protect you from corporations is not “sheer inanity” at all — based entirely on your own support of environmental regulation.

When we met at the blogger BBQ you made a comment about the poor environmental state of Texas… So, I was all geared up to challenge you that point.

But, as usual, you were honest and thoughtful enough to address it yourself.

Now, in theory, letting the market dictate things can sound good. But, that’s just theory.

See, it’s not just the environment.

There are countless stories of businesses who have caused harm to people — either through intentional fraud and corruption or out of their own ignorance.

And, by the same token, there are countless stories of the government causing harm.

Like with the previous posts about what liberals believe and Democrat’s attitudes about national security, it seems that you make exceptions to your arguments that have the effect of completely undermining them.

But, to me, as “world is not black and white” kind of person, I certainly appreciate that!

My personal belief is that a certain amount of regulation is just common-sense to prevent the development of unaccountable monoloplies.

The trick, I think, is to do them in ways that don’t lead to excessive and arbitrary beauracracy.

I strongly, but respectfully, disagree with your with your assertion that the major difference between liberals and conservatives is that liberals fear big business and conservatives fear big government.

First, I do not refer to progressives as liberals. Liberals are for limited government and individual liberty and republican forms of government. Progressives favor centralized, bureaucratic government and collective liberty and various forms of socialism.

Conservatives, however, recognize order, tradition, hierarchy, prescription, custom, and the intermediate associations of family, church, gild, and neighborhood. A conservative rejects the state-sanctioned economics of socialism and the monopolized greed of capitalism.

Read Belloc and Chesterton and Russell Kirk for these views. Also read Rod Dreher’s book, “Crunchy Cons”.