Quote from: rainingbitcoins on July 26, 2011, 09:06:57 AM

Quote from: myrkul on July 26, 2011, 08:33:32 AM

So, Because some people fail to be responsible, I should support you stealing from everyone else to force them to be?

When you guys hold people to such an unrealistically high degree of responsibility that only a vanishingly small number of people can meet it, I don't see much other choice. Again, you have to design governments to react to how people actually are in real life, not how you'd like them to be in some fantasy world of Randian supermen! Why is this such a difficult concept?

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Private ratings companies could do all that tedious research, and that poor, overworked mom could only buy products marked by the ratings agency that they trust.

Haha yeah, trusting in private ratings companies is a great idea. That'll fix everyth-oh. Nevermind.

We don't expect people to be 'Randian supermen', We expect them to be self-interested, and pay attention to what they're doing. That's not hard, even for an 'overworked mom'. Why is that such a difficult concept?

Oh, Yes, because UL ratings are so untrustworthy.

Quote from: compro01 on July 26, 2011, 02:20:43 PM

Right, and UnbiasedTruthfulNews.com and the ObviouslyNoAgendaHereNoSiree show are completely unrelated to coke.

Listen to one show before you start talking about what you don't know.

Quote from: Rassah on July 26, 2011, 02:31:39 PM

And yeah, there are issues with construction crew unions and no-bid contract corruption, but who's to say that also won't happen with a private monopoly?)

The private 'monopoly' would still have to provide good service, at a good price, or a competitor could undercut them. A natural monopoly is still subject to market forces, even when it's alone. The threat of competition is just as good as actual competition, most of the time.