1) What's wrong with the most qualified and skilled people being the most hired and successful? Would you rather have it like Mao Zedong's era where those who are most loyal to the communist party, regardless of technical skill and qualifications, were hired for political positions and professions?

2) Hong kong is a true laissez-faire free market. And last time I checked it does have a government.

1) Nothing wrong with qualified and skilled people being preferred, but a social safety net should exist for those who are temporarily or permanently not in a position to compete. Would you rather have it that these people are reduced to poverty?

2) Yes it does, but a true free market wouldn't need one. The fact that no anarcho-capitalist society exists proves government is necessary to curb the undesired social results of the free market.

50,000 BCE.

The silence was truly golden. Hope it comes again, and stays that way forever.

1) In a society with no safety net, one person fails, he/she's the only one that suffers. In a society with a safety net, one person fails, everyone suffers (b/c everyone has to chip in for him/her). But I do support a lenient bankruptcy code, which encourages entrepreneurs to take risks and build new businesses, which creates jobs.

2) A true free market does need a government, so that it can protect the economy from being disrupted by foreign invasion, criminals violating others' rights, and enforce contracts. There's not many anarcho-capitalist systems in the world b/c the people don't do enough to restrain their overbearing government.

1) So basically you're saying that people who suffer shouldn't be supported? Only confirms my opinion that you have no moral compass. I as a humanitarian am repulsed by you. Whatever happened to solidarity, sticking up for your fellow human being and plain empathy? Some people are just shit out of luck due to no fault of their own.

Are you a diagnosed psychopath/sociopath. The fact that you don't give a fuck if people suffer and blame the victim is indicative.

2) In an anarcho-capitalist society, corporations should ideally be able to provide security. The so-called 'free hand' should regulate the market in a way that it runs properly. Perhaps you should look into Adam Smith a bit.

1) I'm surely not apathetic to those who suffer. But the government is not a charity b/c it can only redistribute wealth. In order to give welfare money to the suffering people, the government must use taxpayer money. There are charities and churches for helping the suffering....and also the family unit. They're much better at helping the suffering than the government.

2) Absurd. Corporations provide security and protect our rights? We can't even trust them with our investor money (i.e. enron) and our nation's monetary policy (Federal Reserve- a private bank) and you're saying we can trust them to provide our security?

But I'm glad you agree that the invisible hand should regulate the market, as I do.

1) The solutions provided by charities and churches are not structural solutions. The state can provide those, although in my country usually does so on the basis that unemployed people compulsory have to apply for suitable jobs. And what about the sick and old? If church and charities had to provide for them they'd be overburdened.

I don't see any wrong in the rich showing some solidarity for people who are less fortunate, if necessary they need to be coerced into doing so. It's absurd that some people make billions while others live in slums in this world, and nonetheless education, healthcare etc. cost the same for the rich and the poor.

2) If you drive the free market to its final consequence then that is what you get. I wasn't agreeing with the free hand principle. I meant that in an ideal free market it should regulate the market which it often does not do well.

1) Why are they not good solutions? Why must we force everyone to chip in to accommodate for a few suffering people? 'Everyone' includes the suffering people. The US Dollar (yes it concerns your country b/c your country's reserve currency is USD) is overburdened thanks to the entitlement system. In order to accommodate for these entitlement leeches, federal reserve has to print more and more money, further sending us down into debt and lowering the value of the dollar. We're only a few more years until the US Dollar collapses and then everyone will be sufferers. What's worse, a few suffering people or everyone suffering?

Liberty and equality have an inverse relationship. The more equality the government enforces, the less liberty the people have. Rich people are business owners and creators of jobs. Let's say an employee named Bob works for Steve, the rich head of Corporation A, and makes 50,000 USD a year. Based on your advocation, the government increases Steve's taxes to $50,000 more per year. In order to keep the company afloat, Steve must fire Bob. Good idea, Onkel.

2) Last time I checked, after 100 years of United States being a true free market laissez-faire capitalist country, corporations never were the providers of security for the people.

1) Charity gives money to the poor, money doesn't help. Give a man a fish and he can eat for one day, give him the means to fish... Moreover, the amount of money raised by churches and charities is not nearly enough to address wide-scale problems like poverty, hunger, lack of health care, etc. And in practice, only a small portion of the money these institutions collect actually goes to help those in need. We have hundreds of thousands of unemployed people in my country. Where would they be without social security?

And not all people who suffer are entitlement leeches, that's typical rightwing bullshit. Also, if your country raised taxes, it wouldn't be burdened, it would have plenty of money to deal with its issues. And your example is bollocks. The rich here get taxed 52% (used to be 70%) and our economy was doing fine until America's laissez-faire economy fucked up because no one kept an eye on what the banking sector was doing.

This has nothing to do with the entitlement system. The US doesn't even spend 3% of its budget on welfare and foreign aid.

2) No, that's true, they're not. But if you drive the free market to its furthest extreme they would, or so anarcho-capitalist theoreticians think. I personally think such a society would collapse, but that's me.

My question of whether you rather have just a few people suffer or have everyone suffer has not been addressed yet.

Welfare is a lot more than 3% in the US. Social security, corporate welfare, medicare, medicaid, veteran's affairs, FEMA, etc.

According to this chart (http://www.usgovernmentspending.com/wel ... 012_4.html), 57% is spent on welfare if you count pensions and healthcare as part of the entitlement system.

It's not true that everyone would suffer. If I tax a dude who earns 1 million a year 70%, he'll still have 300k left which I would hardly call suffering. I'd love to make 300k a year.

And are you implying pensions are bad? Should people keep working until the day they die instead? As for healthcare, I've already mentioned how privatization in the Netherlands as made it worse rather than better.

Yes the rich guy who is taxed may still have a lot left over after being taxed but that money lost due to taxes could have been used to hire new workers.

The whole private sector pension system is based on a fallacy that saving in the stock market can provide a long term future for all when that is plainly not so in any situation, but is impossible when that system is looted for personal gain.

United states was doing fine w/o social security and medicare/medicaid. Yeah, people died from infectious diseases more than today but at least they didn't have the myriad of chronic diseases that people have today. The family unit took care of the elderly. The whole notion that you need pensions or government programs to take care of you when you're old is flawed. People should start investing in assets that produce passive income if they want to retire comfortably, not rely on pensions or social security. For health issues, studying and implementing Nutritional Immunology (the study of the correlation between nutrition and the immune system) could have old people live independently without the need for drugs and hospitals.

Taxing a rich person =/= taxing a company. Social security and medicaid aren't causing the economic crisis; the banks screwed up and royally so, not social security and medicaid. As for the family unit taking care of the elderly, no thanks. I don't want my folks to move in with me when I'm independent. I do think the elderly deserve pensions: when my dad retires at age 66 eleven years from now, he will have worked for 50 nearly years of his life, half a friggin' century, and I think such a contribution to society deserves some credit in the form of society giving a small part back.

And nutritional immunology doesn't account for everything; it doesn't cure alzheimers or parkinsons for example, neither does it fix a bad back.

Rich people are mostly entrepreneurs or business owners. Thus they are the job creators.

Social security and medicare require the federal reserve to print our money to oblivion.

If your dad worked that long w/ pensions, great...he deserves the money...that is, if he can get it. And even if he does get it....it will be taxed as capital gains tax. Cruel cruel government. Pensions and social security are ponzi schemes.

Nutritional Immunology is about prevention, not cures.

Then tax the rich. And before you say anything, read this:
http://www.governmentisgood.com/articles.php?aid=17&p=5

Taxes need not lead lay-offs or any other kind of economic problems. It's an absurd correlation.