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loquitur, the point I am trying to persuade you to consider is that, to a greater extent even than in the area of medical treatment, the state has become the provider of criminal defense services because the "free market model", for a myriad of reasons, has priced itself out of the market of affordability of even the lower income earners in the top five percent of all American income earners.

This is fact, say....in defending against a murder charge in a criminal trial by jury. On a lower rung, I know from personal experience living in the State of NY, that even a couple both earning significantly above average cannot afford (justify?) the cost of legal representation in a complex, drawn out, divorce.

In civil law practice, especially in mundane areas like a concentration in real estate closings, even heavy reliance on the services of paralegals do not result in such services being "cheap", because, as you described, the cost of education and fixed costs of doing business are so high, especially in the pricier NY metro area.

So, can we agree that in the sectors of medical care, legal services, and in the asking price for the average home, the average income earner, unless provided by an employer subsidized benefit in addition to average income earned, cannot afford to purchase those services or that average priced house?

Isn't the consequence of the fundamentals related to the price of the average house, the core reason for the failure of Bear Stearns, the emergency FED "rate cuts", the rapid devaluation of the dollar, the killing of rate of return on middle class savings deposits?

What would have to happen to convince any promoter of capitalism that the system, going forward, is not definitely the best economic system for the majority of Americans?

Is there less "corporatism" evident today, than before this past sunday's news about the Fed's role in the nationalization of Bear Stearns? With a $30 billion loss risk mitigation guarantee extended by the Fed to JPM in exchange for it's agreeing to buy BSC for less than $250 million, didn't the Fed actually nationalize BSC?

Isn't doing something like that, a corporatist activity? Who does it benefit? Doesn't it benefit the elite at the expense of seniors seeking modest 5 percent return on savings deposits? Does it benefit the taxpayer?

<h3>Wasn't Italian fascism described by Mussolini, as "corporatism"? Why did the Fed guarantee any BSC "loss risk"? Isn't our entire system, if gains are permitted to rise to unlimited levels, but losses are stopped dead in their descent by Fed "bailout guarantees", at taxpayers' expense, closer to corporatism than they are to capitalism?</h3>

Hasn't the strength of US currency, with short term interest rates lowered by the Fed from 5.5 percent last september, to 2.25 percent, as of yesterday, been compromised in favor of shoring up the portfolios of speculators in real estate and traded securities?

<h3>Haven't the interests of less than 40 million specualtors subordinated the interests and the wealth and purchasing power of the dollar, of the other 160 million American adults, via all of the Fed's decisions since last september?</h3> What kind of a system, especially one that actually backed off on the rate of taxation on the gains of these same speculators, so blatantly puts their interests above the interests of the vast majority of us?

Not a free market, a capitalist, or a democratic system.....yet no protest that I can find......