Quote from: Rassah on July 27, 2011, 02:55:05 PM

Look at the private services you buy (insurances, products, etc). How many of those products have you seen advertisements for?

Geico lizard, Flo the Progressive insurance lady, hell I barely even watch commercial TV anymore, but there's two off the top of my head. You're also paying for ads in trade magazines and other places you probably never look.

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Why would economies of scale not exist in the private market? Especially without government busting up monopolies?

They would, but you're still going to have duplicated efforts on major projects that end up just being a waste of money. Imagine sewer lines from five different companies running to every house in America. That's the kind of thing I'm referring to.

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Both of my local state parks charge for parking at the entrance, with parking fees going to pay for park upkeep and maintenance. What's to stop a private organization from doing the same? (even if they have to raise the fees a bit to cover lack of government funding, and maybe add fines for littering)

State parks across the U.S. are starting to have to charge more and more fees and drop services at the same time due to extreme budget cuts. But really that was just a silly quote from a libertarian character on a TV show. You're supposed to chuckle at the idea of paying a token to look at a duck. Apparently you think that's a good idea, though?

Quote from: mykrul

Tsk... Because you come from the far left, and look to the right, and see me, you assume I am coming from the far right. You are wrong. You also seem to have a very 1-dimensional view of the world. It's not a simple line.

Yes, I know this. But there's no good way to describe this in an offhand way without posting a graph and all of that good stuff, and it seemed pointless. Obviously I realize there's a big difference between what you believe and what a Republican believes. You're welcome to call me just a leftist instead of a down-and-to-the-leftist if you want. Point is, libertarian ideas do get much more of a mainstream audience in corporate media because they aren't perceived as as much of a threat to those corporations. That's all. I do, of course, understand that this is more of a recent development and that as recently as the 1990s, those ideas were considered just as fringe as mine, but not anymore.